Night Patrol

What a day, up to Coventry airport (near Baginton) for a dusk photo opportunity with the Shackleton WR963.
I was going to go on the bike but a bad back for the past few days made me think twice. In the MX-5 I have leather heated seats so it was like having a poultice on my back for the journey there and back.
It was quite a brilliant afternoon and early evening. First of all we had the Nimrod running it's engines, see extra. When it started to get dusk at 16:15 the Shackleton started it's engines, one by one in sequence.
It's a tremendous sound and the memories of my 13 hour flight, in an aircraft very like the blipped one, came flooding back. The one I flew in was a MkIII and had a Tricycle undercarriage with a nose wheel rather than this MkII with a tail wheel.
I also did a 9 hour Nimrod flight in the Mediterranean with 203 Squadron from RAF Luqa, Malta, that was very exciting!
The Shackleton was the forerunner of the Nimrod and it spent a few decades very effectively hunting down Soviet shipping and submarines and carrying out search and rescue missions all over the world. My flight was from Masirah, out into the Indian Ocean, patrolling and then back to Masirah. 13 Hours!!
I was a bit dissapointed that there were only about 20 enthusiasts there, I would have expected a lot more interest. However, it did mean we weren't all jockeying for position to take photographs,
My very poor quality photographs, especially the videos, made me think I need to treat myself to a much better camera in the future.

You may remember I dropped and totally broke my Olympus and so I'm now using an old Casio Elixim that used to be Julia's. 
It's ok for snaps but you can't get any decent shots if you zoom and it's also difficult to know what settings to put it on.