The best hobby in the world...
Aviation Photography Blogs
Written by COAP Online members
By Hugo Pech
 Red flag exercises began in 1975 to provide United States Air Force pilots and weapons specialists with a safe training environment to perform mock combat missions. Today, many U.S. allies take part in these powerful training exercises. During the Vietnam War, U.S. pilots lacked air...
By Bradley Rogers
Sunday 25th August saw Bruntingthorpe once again throw open its doors for a fourth all-teams public open day. Like the Cold War Jets Open Days of old, it took place on the traditional Sunday of the August bank holiday, which saw 117 lucky people indulge in a jet fuelled day. The c...
By Richard Bryant
This is the fourth time IWM Duxford have put on an evening ai show. I had always been busy when this air show fell. Not so this year and I decided to book for Lesley and I and then kept my fingers crossed for good weather.
The weather Saturday 17th August turned out to be excelle...
By Kev Baxter
“Never volunteer!” intoned the barrack-room lawyers back in the day. The young shavers this sage
advice was aimed at invariably were young, keen and their fresh-faced enthusiasm was an
anathema to the cynical veterans. More often than not though, these cynics had made limited or
no progr...
By Rich Cooper
Now, this is a delicate subject.
It’s dangerously close to biting the hand that feeds us, and it feels uncomfortable to go there when so many external barriers of red tape & bureaucracy are put in place to stumble this lifeblood of our hobby.
But Airshows. Air Days. Open Houses. Ai...
By Kev Baxter
An international collective of aviation enthusiasts converged on the UK to witness the D-Day 80th Anniversary celebrations in late May, early June 2023, under the auspices of Ian Allan Aviation Tours. Gathering in Chertsey, Surrey, the intrepid band of brothers and one sister, embarke...
By Steven Welch
"GLOCK01, cleared hot!" is followed by "Shack, GLOCK01!". The Grand Bay Range Control Officer tells the pilot of a 74th Fighter Squadron A-10 Warthog that he has hit bullseye with his 25 pound training bomb.
In the heart of southern Georgia, nestled just north of the Florida-Georgi...
By Kev Baxter
WHO, WHEN, WHY, WHERE, WHAT?
Who?
Ian Allan Aviation Tours is a sister company to COAP. Hailing from the days when this bunch of characters were young-ish, Ian Allan has been providing spotting tours and steam-driven, illustrated publications for railway geeks and latter-day, aviat...
By Dave Lockwood
“My memories are inside me - they’re not things or a place - I can take them anywhere”
I went to Andravida with no expectations, well none apart from getting up close to some of the last remaining Phantoms in active service. Getting close was just a part of a glorious couple of d...
By Hugo Pech
When the A380 was introduced by Airbus in October 2007, its was expected that the world’s largest passenger aircraft would be flying for decades to come. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
In 2019, Airbus announced it would stop production of the A380 due to the lack of sales. The ...
By Dave Lockwood
I’m writing this the day after the TLE Wattisham Apache shoot. A difficult day, with difficult conditions. Certainly not the best shoot I’ve attended, not the worst though.
Organisers have a tough enough time getting events like this sanctioned, so to get on an active base and clo...
By Wayne Kenward
The magic of Adobe Lightroom masking gives us one of the best tool sets for aviation photography. The ability to change the levels on the aircraft, sky and background independently means even the flattest image can pop.
This image of an RAF C-130 Hercules was was shot from Cad Ea...
