The most unusual/rare aircraft you have seen/photographed

[Angry Turnip]

Any weird and wonderful aircraft you have seen or photographed?

Probably the one of the most exotic I have seen was the SR-71 Blackbird at Farnbourgh 1986-what a machine!

SAD STORY FOLLOWS so if you are of a delicate dispostion do not read on










At the Farnbourgh Airshow 1986 the SR-71 Blackbird was making one of it`s last public apperances in the UK.
I took a whole reel of 36 shots of some really good shots as the aircraft arrived did a circuit and landed with that huge red parachute behind it.
Brilliant I thought to myself-I should have some cracking shots there,then as the show finished I began to rewind the film in the camera and I heard a crunch .

Oh expletive deleted I thought to myself-then I thought I will take it to a photographers shop and they might be able to do something with it-at worst I might have lost a couple of shots.
Went into town and went to said photographer shop,told him what happened-he said he would take a look.
He went into the dark room and then a few minutes later he called me in-the film had broken a sprocket two shots in and torn horizontally the entire length of the film

I was gutted just like my roll of film-------morale of story?

Thank goodness for digital!!!

[vortex003]

What sh@te luck!!
And the SR-71 to boot

Just remember to keep your digital images backed up on a seperate hard drive.I had been using CD's to start with until one became corrupt and i couldn't access a whole months images.
I swiftly bought a 400GB drive before the entire CD became inaccessable

The Catalina is probably the rarest bird i've managed - i think the other airworthy one sank after doing too many saltwater landings

[casper]

Mine would probably have to be the Russian aircraft that came over to Farnborough in 88 (I think)

Tu-22m Blinder
Mig-31
Yak-36 Forger
Ka-50 Hokum

Also a few that are rare to me but maybe not to others
C-5 Galaxy
F-4 Phantom
Mosquito

[Dave]

I haven't seen many Russian aircraft at all, infact I don't think I've ever seen a Russian aircraft at all with the exception of an old 4 propellor engined aircraft at Prestwisk, ohh and the An-225 flying overhead!

The rarest aircraft I have seen include;

-Shorts Belfast
-F-117 in formation with the Red Arrows (RIAT 2003?)
-B-2 in formation with two F-15's, the formation flew all the way from the US, did ONE flypast, then headed back to the US! (RIAT 2003 again)

[Angry Turnip]

Those Russian beasties are very impressive.

[casper]

They were indeed - on the ground anyway. Unfortunately none of them flew during the show and I wasn't around to see them depart