Mark's Wildlife and Adventures Blog

I went here the day before i flew to Manchester. It was very exciting! Dad drove me to our friends place at High Wycombe which is not far from Heathrow. Janine works for BA and gets us cheaper flights which is good. and we had lunch then went to Heathrow Terminal 5 and had a cup of tea and i watched a lot of planes!

Planes from Terminal 5 and the impressive roof from inside the terminal.





We stayed at Terminal 5 for a while then went to the eastern side of the airport to the flight simulator place at Cranebank. We had to have our passports with us as its a very secure area. There wasnt any room for Dad so he went to a local pub while we went in at around 8pm.

The Pilot was Matthew West who is related to my friends at Bostock in Manchester, he had always wanted to take me on a plane, since September 11th 2001 that has not been possible obviously but then he booked a simulator session for me which was excellent! I know i have to be up early next morning for my flight to Manchester but i will be fine!

It was very kind of him, these sessions can be nearly £200 and i got it for free! We met Chris who is another pilot for BA, Him and Matt fly the smaller A320 series aircraft so we all got into this nicely big simulator here.



It was very exciting being in a realistic 747 simulator and i sat in the pilots seat and felt like a real pilot Here is me with Chris.



Iam a natural pilot arent i!



View outside of the window before takeoff, looks so realistic!



I did a nice circuit around Heathrow, i took off from runway 27L and climbed, banked and followed the pink cross (its 2 pink lines that show you whether you are flying the aircraft straight and level) and flew towards London.......... I said, hope the people in the offices in London hwont be scared by me too much lol!

Then i turned the 747 back towards Heathrow again for landing on runway 27L again, it was such a great experience and Matt and Chris thought i did really well which was good. Much better than my flight simulator on my PC at home, the thrust levers and flaps feel harder to push and pull and you feel the aircraft moving.

We took turns in flying, i took more photos too lol.



I also did some videos too, and the other camcoder was filming nearly all the time which was excellent.







It was such an amazing experience and we were flying around for 2 hours! it went very quick but i enjoyed every minute of it.

Engine display.



Radio and Engine thrust lever and flaps area.



When we finished flying it was 10:30pm and we all had such a terrific time! we had a photoshoot afterwards, here is me with Matt and Chris.



Then we went outside and waited for Dad who got a bit lost around Heathrow! but we found him outside a Hilton hotel and i said thanks and bye to Matt and Chris and Dad took me home and i had such a great time!

We got home at midnight and i had to be up again in 6 hours for my flight to Manchester so i had got my hand luggage packed and went to bed quick so i wasnt tired for my flight to Manchester tomorrow!

Hope you enjoyed that folks, i certainly did! Thanks to Matt and Chris and Janine and Peter West for making this possible.

A few planes have special liveries promoting sports events, airline anniversaries (by painting in retro back to the livery they had in the beginning) and alliances. I caught a few of these this day.

Etihad A340-600 in the special F1 livery - this one is a very good favourite! I waiting until after 6pm to get this one, just a shame the sun decided to hide but glad i caught her.



Lufthansa Retro A321, Retro schemed planes are popular too.



These two were taken from the bridge at Hatton Cross tube station as the sun moves round at this time of the day.

PIA 777-300, this airline paints it's tails in many schemes, this one being the prettiest.



BA 747-400 and Cathay Pacific A340-300 in OneWorld alliance scheme.





Veuling Airways, this is a new airline that has advertisements on its fuselage.



Its very interesting to catch these, i was just planning on catching the Etihad so i was lucky getting more that i bargained for! I walked round to the other runway, this being a 20 minute walk, very healthy for me and walking round the hangars you find aircraft parked waiting for their next flights or stored awaiting new owners such as these ex BA b757-200's.



I also caught a go around on camera too from the bridge, this one seemed to go around rather late!



To finish off, heres a photo of the Emirates A380, very impressive.



Rest of the photos from this day here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21967655@N08/sets/72157621769988941/

Couple of Videos i did, Foxy in one of them.





Hope you enjoyed that folks, Heathrow is certainly a very interesting place isnt it.

I went to Heathrow today and the temperature was forecasted to be 30c! am i mad The underground was very hot though and i felt sorry for the poor businessmen who had traditional London full suits on (makes me think why dont they change while at work?) while i was in shorts and T-Shirt and sandals.

There was a debate at the time i read in the London Metro about the underground trains having air conditioning, they should do it would certainly make Underground Commuting a lot more comfortable for them, lucky iam just using it for pleasure.

At Heathrow they were using the easterly runway so i went to Terminal 5 and crossedthe road to a field where there is lots of shade which was good for this weather.

AA 777-200.



IranAir 747-200, this aircraft is quite old!



I noticed the sky looks very humid and heat hazed which isnt the best for photography unless you are really close so i was lucky.

This AA 777-200 had a special scheme of a pink ribbon to support a cancer charity.



This Delta 767-400 is painted in the Star Alliance group of airlines scheme, each airline in a group paints at least a few of their aircraft in the group's logo.



Later in the day i caught a selection of the arrivals i do not usually see, i tend to stay at Heathrow until 6pm now to catch different aircraft and airlines. The heat haze had increased by this point and the airport arrival weather information was forecasting 33c!

PIA 777-300.



Singapore Airlines 777-300.



All Nippon Airways 777-300.



Malaysian 747-400.



Korean 747-400.



Saudi Arabian 777-200.



Asiana 777-200.



Notice a lot of these operate either 777 or 747 aircraft! Long ago they had several different types but now changed to more efficient aircraft. It was very hot today and i drank 2 big bottles of water and used plenty of suncream to prevent getting dehydrated and burnt which was good.

Rest of the photos here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21967655@N08/sets/72157621656643217/

I did a few videos aswell with foxy in.





Heathrow Underground video.



Finally, a video of a Pigeon at London Victoria before my train went home, the Pigeon does something funny!



Hope you enjoyed that folks, i think the next time its forecasted to be 30c again (or if ever lol!) i will stick to the beach.

It was really Summer like today! I went on the VERY crowded tube train to Terminal 5 and walked down the road to a good point where i could catch 27L departures which was very good. I used Google earth to help me find it.

Here is a nice selection of the days photos i took, i also caught the three A380 operators too which was good.
What i did was, instead of my usual sort out photos one by one until they are all sorted (which takes forever) i just did the ones that looked best which is better i think.

Delta 767-300.



AA 777-200.



BMI A319.



Continental 777-200.



Air India 747-400, this airline has a striking livery.



Emirates 777-300.



Virgin 747-400 close up, trying to do a professional look!



Gulf Air 777-300 - this aircraft is beautiful.



Virgin Atlantic A340-600 - i like this one the best because its registered G-VFOX!



Here are the Three Muskateers.... oops sorry, A380's!







BA 747-400 in Oneworld colours.



Couple of Russian jets.

AN-124 at altitude.



TU-154 departing 27L.



Last photo, a BA 777-200 roaring overhead me when i was walking back to terminal 5.



Rest of the 61 photos here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21967655@N08/sets/72157616064538784/

I did some videos too here, with Foxy too!





Here is a video of my train arriving London Victoria and departing London victoria, to show Lois and get her more excited!





Me and Foxy had a really great day. I dont film on the Tube train much because of the crowdedness and also its more dangerous i have been told so i keep my camera safely tucked away in my bag. I plan to go to Heathrow again on the 4th April weather permitting yay.

Hope you enjoyed all that folks.

I began to realise that not all of my photos were being accepted on www.photos.aero because they had *blue cast* on them which meant that my Fuji S9600 (which enhances the blue colour on its own) was making the blue sky extra bright blue when i used the Enhance Photo feature such as this photo.

AA 777-200 using just Enhance and Unsharp Mask and resize. It does look extremely bright blue!


Then i got advised that using Enhance Photo was not a good move while editing photos and i should just use Brightness and Contrast instead and makine the blue colour control to -10 which took care of the blueness.

Here is the photo, in this case an AA 777-200 original.


After using -10 blue, leaving the red and green at 0.


After using Brightness at 25 and Contrast at 20.


After using Unsharp Mask and gentle cloning out the visible dust spot and resizing to 1024x683.


Then a perfect result and it got accepted on the site yay!
http://www.photos.aero/photo-full-size.php?p=34101

It was a great learning experience to get to know what was wrong and how to improve by a better technique with thanks to the screeners that advised me aswell, it does help having their msn link so that they can chat in more depth about it and i enjoyed learning from them.

This was done using my Paintshop Pro x2, its a very useful photo editing software to use, a lot of members use Photoshop CS3 which is more expensive and i only like to take photos as an amatuer not a real pro!

Hope you enjoyed the learning experience like i did.