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En vol amb l'Arcus M, D-KLIE (C4) ultima meravella en velers biplaça de Schempp Hirth. Un dels millors a nivell mundial.
Vista del actual buque insignia en biplazas de Shempp Hirth, el Arcus M, (D-KLIE) en vuelo, casi en base de nubes con turbulencia.
Flying cross country the Arcus M, D-KLIE (C4) almost at the clouds base, with light turbulence.
I put two random words together as a title description, put the title description 'Surveillance tendencies' into Google, and this is what Google Ai came out with.
Surveillance tendencies refer to the increasing use of monitoring technologies and practices in various settings, including the workplace, public spaces, and even online. This trend is driven by factors such as the desire for increased security, greater efficiency, and a perceived need for control, particularly in remote and hybrid work environments.
Here's a breakdown of key aspects of surveillance tendencies:
1. Workplace Surveillance:
Extent:
Employers are increasingly tracking employee activities, including emails, website visits, chats, keystrokes, and location data.
Motivations:
This is often driven by a desire to maintain oversight, especially in remote work settings, and to ensure productivity and compliance.
Methods:
Examples include email monitoring, keystroke logging, GPS tracking, and the use of video surveillance.
Trends:
The rise of hybrid work models has amplified the need for surveillance, with many employers feeling more comfortable with in-person work due to the perceived need for direct observation.
2. Public Space Surveillance:
Growth:
The use of surveillance cameras in public spaces is becoming more widespread, with advancements in technology like AI and cloud-based systems further enhancing their capabilities.
Purpose:
These systems are used for security, crime prevention, and traffic management, among other applications.
Concerns:
There are growing concerns about privacy, potential misuse of data, and the impact on civil liberties.
3. Online Surveillance:
Platforms:
Social media platforms, websites, and online services collect vast amounts of user data, which can be used for targeted advertising, personalized recommendations, and even surveillance.
Impact:
This raises concerns about privacy, data security, and the potential for manipulation and misinformation.
4. Emerging Trends:
AI and Edge Computing:
AI is being integrated into surveillance systems, enabling advanced analytics, facial recognition, and automated decision-making.
Cloud Technology:
Cloud-based surveillance systems are becoming more prevalent, offering scalability, remote access, and advanced processing capabilities.
The Internet of Things (IoT):
The increasing number of connected devices creates new opportunities for surveillance, but also raises concerns about security and privacy.
5. Guiding Principles:
Legality: Surveillance activities must be conducted within the bounds of the law.
Legitimate Aim: There should be a clear and justifiable purpose for the surveillance.
Proportionality: The extent of surveillance should be proportionate to the purpose.
Data Protection: Safeguards should be in place to protect personal data and prevent misuse.
In conclusion, surveillance tendencies are evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements and changing societal needs. While surveillance can enhance security and efficiency, it's crucial to address the ethical and privacy concerns associated with its increasing prevalence.
A nearly branchless strike during blue hour. An arcus cloud hangs below the main cloud base.
Used a Fujifilm X-T3 in movie mode @ 4fps.
Looking down from the top of the Brocken to the curve as the train still has a little while to go before it reaches the summit. At this point we were above the cloud base, totally amazing. After this photo with my spikes on I walked down to the track and into the trees down the line. The snow up to my knees in parts.
Wooloondool Catchment Sunset in 'natural' texture....
I asked a friend to tell me about these unusual clouds; he obviously has time on his hands but it is very informative:
Cumulus-Nimbus. (abbreviation CB) - They are the thunder storm cloud. Their development requires 3 components;
1) Sufficient/adequate moisture
2) unstable air mass (due uneven/isolated heating (ground conduction resulting in convection)
3) a trigger to start the convection process, after which the Adiabatic Lapse Rate takes over (ie., ALR = uneven reduction in temperature of rising air pockets dependant on its moisture content thus effecting its relative density and subsequently creating a 'boiling' effect, hence the bulging cauliflower type appearance in the lower levels - same as ordinary Cumulus clouds in basic appearance apart from the 'Anvil' shaped top).
There are 2 main triggers; mountain range or, in our case, the coinciding of an alien air mass as experienced with the arrival of a cool change (ie., 'Cold Front').
The Anvil shape is characteristic of a CB. A graphic illustration of 'Wind Shear' with altitude gain (increase in wind speed with altitude gain).
The CB cloud must exceed 20,000 from base to top for it to be able to generate hail. The instability within such a cloud is sufficient to cause structural failure to all aircraft except smaller, stronger military aircraft. Prior to airborne radar being fitted to airline aircraft (about 1960 ~ 1970 ?) there were many 'unexplained' airliner losses due to this reason (Viscount over Botany Bay, Sydney was last large airliner lost in Australia due to this reason.
Stratus and Stratus-Cumulus. The remainder of the cloud is "Stratus" and "Stratus Cumulus" (S) (SC). You can see examples of both in the photo. The lower fragmented pieces are referred to as 'Scud' and are often as low as 500 ft above ground.
If the base of the strata-form cloud is between SL and 8,000 amsl then it is called Stratus Cumulus (SC). When the cloud base for this type of cloud is above 8,000 it begins to form slightly different visual characteristics and is called Alto Stratus (AS). There is usually no turbulence associated with Stratus cloud (absence of convection), however, the existence of such cloud can sometimes mask the presence, in the lower levels of developing CB's.
Thank you Bruce, I am sure viewers will appreciate.
IMG_6540
I don't want to hear,
I don't want to know
what nobody knows,
on another plain
another level
another world for all it's sincerity
out of reach
out to teach
for want of the other side
and all it may preach
let life be still
if it will
for your inner will
be still
free it all
if you care at all...
and I think you do
I believe I do
I see we all do
as we come and go
returning here
leaving there
following everywhere
one and all
within this world
we travel
coming and going
let all the nice people pass through
for nobody ever stops
to stop,
a momentary ticking thought of time...
anglia24
in the clutches of June 4, 2008
The large tornado funnel is under the rotating cloud base at the lower left. Video: youtu.be/EsiMaGcRzHQ
I felt like Jia Dao's hermit today as I ventured up onto a cloud hidden Kinder Scout. The rain wasn't quite as unrelenting as last time, but still; it had a steady enough rhythm to it.
Ringing Roger has featured in a few photographs in my portfolio as it's a great place to see how layers of sediment were deposited and solidified in succession, forming what are called "bedding planes" in technical geology speak. Over time the wind and rain have also had their influence on the shape and form of these rocks, creating (in my opinion) some of the most interesting gritstone sculptures to be found in High Peak.
I managed to get below the cloud-base eventually, the rest of the day spent mainly (and fruitfully) scouting out the leeside of Win Hill for compositions to re-visit in heather season...I think I found some great scenes. We'll see in August!
When I looked over to Pen Yr Ole Wen, this one little area really caught my attention. It was how the cloud base was just being caught in the ridges of the top and they seemed to linger there as the cloud passed on by. What finished the photo was a little touch of an angry sky.
Canon EOS 6D + 24-105 F/4 @80mm
ISO 100
F/10
Exsposure Time - 1/10 of a second
Vlog
Waking with sore legs, my mood was lifted as I realised I was in the mountain Inn at Claunie and not in my one man tent. A leisurely start and a full Scottish Breakfast soon got us going after our long day the day before.
The forecast wasn’t looking good with Gale force winds for the summits and a weather front due to hit by midday! So we decided on a nice wee leg stretch up the Munro Carn Ghluasaid. Only a couple of kilometres from the car park, this was the ideal target to bag before the storm hit Glen Shiel!
As we drove the short distance to the start of the walk we could see the clouds were moving quickly over the tops, however they were OVER the tops which was a good sign , unlike the previous day!!.
An excellent stalkers path zig zagged its way up the mountain and before we knew it we were on the ridge leading to the broad summit plateaux. The cloud base was still above the summits and the views were magnificent, even in the wind that was trying its best to blow us over!! To be honest this felt more like a shoulder of Sgurr nan Conbhairean than a summit in itself!! Anyway it was good to see a view as when I did the round of three many moons ago it was in wet driech conditions with views of nothing!!
A few summit selfies and we about turned and set off back to the car before the rain came. For once – and unexpectedly – our timing was perfect as the heavens opened about ten minutes after we reached the car. Another fine outing
Royal Air Force Lockheed C-130J-30 Hercules C.4 ZH877 "ASCOT103" seen just under the cloud base over the North East of England heading South bound.
05/05/21
The only Dragonfly that i saw all day and then only for a few seconds. The weather was very windy and a closed cloud base.
September 1, 2018 - I-80 Westbound by Gibbon Nebraska US
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After that last storm fizzled out. I had a short drive back to K-Town and what looked like a roll cloud from a distance turned out to be a shelf cloud without it being attached to another cloud base.
Technically this should have appeared to be rotating on a horizontal access but its definition would be a shelf cloud. Due to its formation. This time of years almost anything is possible cloud-wise in Nebraska.
I pulled off for a few minutes til this passed over. It would eventually become a severe thunderstorm as it went through Adams County and eastward. Storms were traveling fast at 45mph so I wasn't going to try and stay ahead of it and chase this cell.
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The Midland Pullman heading south through Corrour station after the weekend at Fort William. The highest mainline station in the UK at 408m above sea level. Low cloud base but dry so not that bad, atmospheric some may say.
Winter Sundays in March 1979 were very busy on the Settle - Carlisle line. There were the usual WCML diversions for annual engineering work and additional ECML diversions due to the collapse of the Penmanshiel tunnel.
An unidentified Class 40 is ready to pick up a pilotman at Blea Moor loops as there was single line working over Ribblehead. Semaphore signals, both water towers and both railway cottages are still standing. Ingleborough and Simon Fell are both lost above the cloud base. The natural scene persists but the man made scene has changed considerably during the intervening years.
Copyright Stephen Willetts - No unauthorised use
We're only a third of the way through summer, but I'm already longing for autumn. Once again flicking through past photographs whilst waiting for my camera to be repaired; this was taken on my second ever photo-hike in the Peak District, last year in October.
The day brought with it amazing conditions, starting with a thin low cloud base that allowed for the blue to be visible behind it, producing something between a rainbow and a fogbow, more intense in luminosity than anything I've ever seen.
As the sun broke through, these colourful arches formed and the landscape within was spot lit intensely creating the vision of a proscenium arch surrounding a stage.
Wicklow way above Glendalough Co Wicklow. The track rises into the cloud base approx 300M further on
In the lowest level of the atmosphere (troposphere) air cools with height. Hot surface temperatures causes a parcel of air to rise and cool adiabatically (~5.5 degrees F/1,000 ft) until it reaches total saturation (cloud base). This parcel will continue to rise and cool (3.5 degs F / 1,000 ft) if the ambient (surrounding) temperature is cooler. If the environment continues to be unstable it will force the parcel to reach the stratosphere where the atmosphere begins to warm.
Unless the thunderstorm is severe, the parcel usually stops rising and begins to spread horizontally forming an anvil (cirrus deck). However, if the parcel is still warmer than the surrounding air it will overshoot the top of the anvil until it finally reaches thermodynamic equilibrium. In this time lapse, the storm pushes through a cirrus level of clouds (remnants of an old anvil). The parcel's instability was so strong that it prevented an anvil from forming at the end of the clip as a cloud column accelerated upward.
I have no idea what mountain this is. I took a drive out to the Lochcarron area and found the cloud base to be too low and not enough water in the river for the shot I wanted.
I took one photo at a loch, and on the drive home the clouds broke enough to make me pull over and get the long lens and a grad filter out.
This is my first photo in a good while now, hopefully that's me back in the saddle again!
I still find it hard to comprehend the mixed content in this image. My dutch hiking pal Rob and I had just turned around about 150 feet short of the summit of Mount Teide. That would put our altitude at marginally above 12,000 feet.
Rob is seen cautiously making progress down the ice encrusted lava, whilst central to the view is the top of the Mount Teide gondola. Beyond that, bare of snow and ice due to the baking winter sun is an expanse of high larva field and then further back a significant cloud base can be seen making its way towards us.
Those who know the high mountains will understand that the combination of the severe ice and encroaching cloud were plenty enough reason for Rob and I to terminate out ascent.
Image taken 04.03.2018.
A fortuitous gust of wind arranged thick clouds to frame the Picos de Europa mountains in Northern Spain.
We spent most of the trip to this spot wondering what the big deal was and cursing the clouds that had dogged us all day. Jim, the more energetic of our group decided to head off to the next hill to see what was there while the rest of us sat down for a Snickers bar.
A few minutes later, a small gap in the clouds exposed a patch of distant mountain and a with a few more gusts the gap begain to expand. Hoping that the opening would expose more, I picked up my camera and moved into position. The gap expanded more than I had initially hoped for, and then the foreground clouds cleared for a few seconds revealing Jim taking a photo in the foreground.
Despite waiting in the cold for another two hours, that was the only decent view we got of the mountain as the cloud base rose higher until we couldn't see more than 5 metres ahead of us.
Picos de Europa, Northern Spain, 2012
Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS
Today wasn't really textbook sensible flying weather. Unstable air giving a risk of thunderstorms, and wind turbines showing that I'd have to launch from the wrong side of Tap O' Noth didn't stop me taking a look up to the hill fort anyway. Sure enough the sky bubbled a little ominously, but the shade created by the menacing clouds starved the ground of the heat needed to create them, so as I stood on launch the sky cleared a little. Little puffs of air did roll up the steep southern face so I prepared to fly; the sun would soon be heating the farmland below, so the puffs may have a bit more energy by the time I launched, or that was my theory. In fact, as soon as I was ready to launch the wind switched 180 degrees and firmly stayed that way, so I foolhardily carried my wing to the much less steep north-west corner in the slightly desperate hope of simply flying round the west of the hill and back to a field on the south side.
That plan seemed to work, an easy launch led to me gliding round the hill and then bumping in to a surprise thermal which was strong enough to carry me up 800m, well above the peak, in to a position where I could tentatively explore the cloud-scape.
Conditions were still a little ominous; storm clouds tend to suck in air underneath them, creating conditions which to the naive pilot seem especially easy to soar and climb in, but quickly turn in to terror as the usually easy task of getting back to the ground becomes seemingly impossible. So I was fairly conservative in my flying, monitoring the growth of the bubbling clouds, and the extent of remaining blue sky that would be my escape route should I find myself climbing at an alarming rate.
It's often the case that the air moves in interesting ways; today it was blowing from the north between ground and peak height, but completely opposed at cloud-base. The forecast was for air to be generally converging on the very area I was flying in, another inducer of rising air, resulting in a myriad of clouds of differing levels. It made for a beautiful aerial playground where instead of being under all the clouds, I had the chance to fly over and around them for a change.
Here I'm looking down at Gartly, just visible in the centre of the frame. Huntly is catching the sun to the north, in the distance left of frame.
Three USAF KC135's cruise the air to air refuelling area off our Norfolk coast. One Euro Fighter a potential customer.
BUT, at the time we had noisy fighter jets overhead above the cloud base.
Not had their transponders on I guess, so not showing on radar.
DENVER,Colo.- My daughter Penelope plays with the curtains in our apartment on February 15, 2014. I spend most of my time taking care of my four-year-old, I photograph her more than any other subject. If I'm lucky she'll be pleased when she is old enough to appreciate them.
Normally I keep my family images private on this platform, but flickr is the only place I can store my images with little worry of filling up that unprecedented amount of free storage.I exhaust other cloud based services within an hour of signing up. On flickr, I have more than 7,000 images stored, which is 3 percent of a terabyte. So now I use flickr to host images for my blogs, who charge too much money for too little storage. . It's a no-brainer really.
I'm just going to share what I want to share from here on out. Family or not.
Half of the experience of landscape photography is the journey up the point you press the shutter and even long after you’ve packed down and started heading back home. It’s why to the photographer, the final piece often has far more meaning than just the artistic principles, compositional technique and processing that culminated in its being.
When I set out I hadn’t realised that a named storm had hit the UK. I’d checked all the local charts and forecasts but hadn’t really zoomed out to the bigger picture, perhaps rather foolishly. My route started in Hathersage where I made my way up to High Neb on Stanage Edge, the rain was relentless and the landscape disappeared and re-emerged from the cloud-base. I’m an optimist when it comes to shooting in harsh conditions but the driving rain made it impossible to shoot anything without the lens being covered in droplets.
Having found the limits of my waterproofs ability to keep my dry and soaked to the bone at this point, I decided to press on along the edge along to Higger Tor and photograph the Kit Kat stones, as I had intended to on New Year’s Eve. An altogether different scene presented itself to the one I had been expecting just two days earlier, with cloud and rain straking through Burbage Valley and between Higger Tor and Carl Wark in the background.
As I was photographing the scene, I realised the last time I shot it was also during a named storm, that being Storm Claudio in November 2022. Quite the opposite of this photograph, dramatic light was the defining feature with a contrast between cool and warm hues that puts it up there with one of my favourite photographs. The experience of the day carried on well into the evening, the flooding and landslides caused by Henk resulting in me being stranded in Nottingham for the night although my stay at the Bentinck Hotel was an extremely pleasant, if largely unanticipated one!
INSTAGRAM @caseyhowdenphoto www.instagram.com/caseyhowdenphoto/
A typical “two trains for the price of one,” 10,720 foot ZG4MQ comes through Brinkley, AR after having just held north of another of the many tornado warned storms in the midwest. The particular storm for which this train was holding did form a small funnel that teased in and out of the cloud base, but didn't look like it would do much more than blow a foam cup off a picnic table.
3/31/2023
IMAGE INFO
- Viewpoint is looking north-north-east from Central Lookout hill (~320m south-south-east of the Central Lookout carpark area off Stirling Range Drive) after some heavy showers had passed through.
- Talyuberlup Peak (783m A.S.L.) is obscured by the cloud base.
- Peak heights (above sea level) & approximate line of sight distances (from my viewpoint) are courtesy of the Peak Visor online panoramic 3d database:
peakvisor.com/panorama.html?lat=-34.42512591796618&ln...
************************
SOURCE INFO
- Original 35mm frame captured using a CANON AF35M 2 (aka "Sure Shot 2" or "Autoboy 2") compact camera, with KODAK CL 200 (aka KODACOLOR VR 200) 35mm color negative film.
************************
PROCESS INFO
- Digitized using a CANON Canoscan 8800F scanner at 3200 dpi, 48 bit color.
- Digital scan was post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS Windows to remove artifacts, correct color shift, improve sharpness & restore overall image quality from the poor quality original.
On the first day of this summer's flying holiday in Annecy, I was confronted with an ominously cloudy set of peaks behind the Planfait launch. Everywhere else, the sky looked nice, full of puffy cumulous, invitingly marking the many thermals around the lake, but first some height was needed to get to those, and I tentatively drifted back, climbing above the carpet of forest, under the blanket of cloud, with neither world seeming to offer much forgiveness should get too close...
The cloud shrouded the peaks of Les Dents; to find myself swallowed up in it would be unpleasant to say the least, as the priority of finding clear air away from those sheer cliffs would be compounded with the fear of crossing paths with any other pilot who exercised similarly poor judgement. So tentatively I pushed a little further into the wedge of landscape rising to meet the cloud, continuously watching the other wings to assess whether anyone was climbing - or being 'sucked' - beyond their control.
Fortunately the cloud base was rising too, the occasional break in the base revealing tantalising glimpses of prehistoric rock-faces before swallowing them back up in the grey wisps. Steady as she goes paid off though, and soon I was pushing forward, away from the mountains again. Heading for the clear air I was climbing all the while, briefly through the base of the cloud into the white room, in a trajectory roughly calculated and backed up with crossed fingers, that took me out of the side of wisps a few seconds later.
138_GHP_Airports_5Oct22 - Greater Houston Partnership State of the Airports with Mario C. Diaz, Director of Aviation, Houston Airports held at the Marriott Marquis October 5, 2022. (Photo by Richard Carson)
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A fantastic visual demonstration of the low cloud base at Edinburgh yesterday by this United 757
Edinburgh Airport - EGPH
My review of the year (or another excuse to post a few more that didn't make it first time around!). Part Two: Spring
Every spring for the last three years I have visited Scotland but one bird has eluded me, the Dotterel. The pinnacle of my year therefore was a day spent in the Cairngorms in the company of Marcus Conway (www.ebirder.net).
With fresh snow falling on the mountains just a few days earlier, delaying the birds return (as a Schedule 1 species, the window between their arrival and the start of nesting is very narrow), and the cloud base unusually above the top of the mountains all day, we couldn't have timed it better. Several pairs were present and I finally had the chance to photograph these beautiful birds.
Without doubt, my 2013 Bird of the Year. Other favourite images from 2013 can be seen here
On Glanville Place, Volvo B9TL Wrightbus / Gemini 2 number 351 (SN11 EAW) is the first of a very fine batch of buses, new in 2011 (351 to 400 and 951 to 960)
Several of our buses are dressed in black right now, with a very eye catching wrap-around advert for Square: a point-of-sale system for sellers, which enables merchants to accept card payments and manage business operations. Square is cloud-based and offers both physical devices, which read payment card information, and software. It offers financial services and includes features designed to support business operations.
It’s seen to best effect like this, in profile.
Evening Clouds that I have played with using some of the Nik Collection.
Base Edit in DxO PhotoLab 3
NIK Color Efex Pro 4
NIK DFine 2
Have a great weekend, everyone. Byee!
(My 10 year old PC crashed and now I cannot open Photoshop (CS1?) I might be out of action for a while, as I figure out what to do next...might have to be a new PC and some non cloud-based editing software?!?!)
Mammatus are pouch-like cloud structures and a rare example of clouds in sinking air. Sometimes very ominous in appearance, mammatus clouds are harmless and do not mean that a tornado is about to form; a commonly held misconception. In fact, mammatus are usually seen after the worst of a thunderstorm has passed.
As updrafts carry precipitation enriched air to the cloud top, upward momentum is lost and the air begins to spread out horizontally, becoming a part of the anvil cloud. Because of its high concentration of precipitation particles (ice crystals and water droplets), the saturated air is heavier than the surrounding air and sinks back towards the earth.
The temperature of the subsiding air increases as it descends. However, since heat energy is required to melt and evaporate the precipitation particles contained within the sinking air, the warming produced by the sinking motion is quickly used up in the evaporation of precipitation particles. If more energy is required for evaporation than is generated by the subsidence, the sinking air will be cooler than its surroundings and will continue to sink downward.
The subsiding air eventually appears below the cloud base as rounded pouch-like structures called mammatus clouds.
Mammatus are long lived if the sinking air contains large drops and snow crystals since larger particles require greater amounts of energy for evaporation to occur. Over time, the cloud droplets do eventually evaporate and the mammatus dissolve.
Mammatus typically develop on the underside of a thunderstorm’s anvil and can be a remarkable sight, especially when sunlight is reflected off of them.
The Reparto Sperimentale di Volo (RSV) test pilot's returned to RIAT 2024 with a fully aerobatic display from their Alenia C-27J Spartan. The high cloud base on a couple of show days allowed for the full display to be performed which includes numerios derry turns, barrel rolls, and even a full loop. Not too shabby for a cargo aircraft! -19/07/2024
My quest to obtain an amazing lightning photograph continues. The storms this night primarily had cloud to cloud lightning and only a couple bolts reached the ground. This one barely got into the frame, but check out those crawlers going for miles across the sky, all the way across the frame! Sadly, junk clouds obscure the view partially, but it was amazing to periodically see bolts leap for 5+ miles along the underside of the cloud base. Hopefully more storms next week.
Microsoft Paint 3D on Windows 10 can be fun to play on without any knowledge on 3D n stuff. But, your PC must co-operate, as most of these cloud-based apps are notorious for crashing on you. Though, it's the Photos app more than the Paint 3D.
Act 3: The Ice Crystal Rainbow
(On October 23rd, Along RT395, a small black car approaches the Jupiter Shack in Lee Vining California at approximately 11:27AM. unbeknownst to it's occupants, the storm of all storms has been brewing over the Pacific Ocean... tiny Ice crystals frozen miles out over the sea are just now reaching the eastern sierra ridge. Tumbling over Mt Dana and Mt Gibbs, they strike a warm air mass settled in the valley of Lee Vining. What happened next... I will truly never forget.)
Earthshaker: (Peering thru the moon roof) BABE! What the hell is that.
Mizzy: "What the hell is that. Looks like something is hovering over us. It's behind the clouds."
(The small black car travels cautiously for a few more hundred feet, 4 eyes glued to the moon roof and the strange object partially obscured and glowing outside above the car. Only it's outer violet red rim is barely visible behind a massive low altitude Steven Spielberg like cloud base.)
Earthshaker: "It's a rainbow!"
I'd like to say this was a walk in the park, but in 80MPH wind gusts... it wasn't. I actually feared for my life. And I'm not being dramatic for dramatics sake. It's hard to describe what I was feeling and seeing at this exact moment.... I've never seen anything like this before and I may never see it again. It lasted a LONG time. It took a while to process what we were seeing, and I can honestly say it felt like the end of the world. In a place so larger than life, so desolate and so grand, directly above my car, a strange glowing orb appeared to be hovering over an unmovable line of ferocious clouds. When I say unmovable, I mean it's like they just kept reforming in the same place. As frantic as they were at reinventing themselves before our eyes, that cloud line you see never drifted away. And neither did that alien like rainbow orb. At the moment, I kid you not, I thought maybe the atmosphere was giving way and I felt like we might be in serious trouble. Real wrath of god like thoughts crossed my mind. It was terrifying. The wind was nothing short of tornado like, with gusts that would just about lift the car up off the pavement. Upon the realization that this event wasn't going away anytime soon. I pulled my car to the side of the road and reached for my camera. Being that It looked like an electrical storm, I quickly concluded my TALL tripod would be like dangling a candy treat in front of the thunder god himself, so I left it behind. Gladly I might add. I couldn't get this shack from the front and maintain the cloud line and halo, so I settled for a side profile..... I would have to leave the quick safety of my car to reach this composition.... crouched in the brush as low as possible.... i started firing multiple exposures at a high ISO... watching my shutter speed to freeze the foreground grasses. I rattled off 80 or so shots, all the while, a heightened sense of awareness and a growing sense of fear overcame me. Lets just say I was well aware that this could ultimately be the smartest or dumbest thing I ever did.... Considering that at any second I expected to turn and see a full blown vortex of a smiling tornado spiraling over head, or worse yet, a lighting strike. Ouch. It didn't take much time to convince myself that I got the image... vertically and horizontally, not to mention that I was scaring the hell out of my girl... who sat in the car watching me from a distance. Her mind, I later found out, deeply focus on a drainage ditch a few 100 FT from our car... in the event we needed quick shelter. How cute. I hurried back to the car in a wind battered mess. Clutching "my precious" camera like golem from lord of the rings. "My precious" A sinister grin now crossing my face.... I got it!
Mizzy: "Sorry babe. Lets get the hell outa here."
PS The following is an email from the King of sky optics, les cowley, regarding what you see here.
"Hi,
It is iridescence produced by small water droplets in the pileus cloud. The cloud is pushed upwards above a thunder cloud. More here:
www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/iridim6.htm
www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/irid1.htm
Les"
his website www.atoptics.co.uk
This Spitfire MKIX has quite a history so, i thought it best to use the words of the BBMF website to do it justice. Spitfire AB910's colour scheme is based on Spitfire Mk Vb BM327, ‘SH-F’, named “PeterJohn1”, the personal aircraft of Flight Lieutenant Tony Cooper, one of the flight commanders on 64 Squadron in 1944.
Tony Cooper’s desire to become a pilot began when he had a ‘joyride’ in an aircraft of Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus, sitting on his sister’s lap at the age of five. His dreams were almost shattered when his applications to join the RAF were refused twice, because the medicals showed that he had a badly damaged ear drum. Then in late 1937, aged 21, Cooper was accepted for pilot training with the RAF Volunteer Reserve at Luton. It seemed that the RAFVR was less particular and, as he says, “There was a war coming”.
Instructor
After completing his flying training on Miles Magisters and Hawker Harts, Cooper was sent to the Central Flying School (CFS) at Upavon in July 1940 on a flying instructor’s course. There he flew the Avro Tutor biplane and the North American Harvard – the first aircraft he had experienced with a retractable undercarriage – and within the month he had qualified as a flying instructor.
Cooper spent some time instructing at No 7 Service Flying Training School (SFTS), Peterborough, on the Fairey Battle. Then, in November 1940, he was posted to No 31 FTS at Kingston, Ontario, Canada, instructing on the Fairey Battle, the North American BT-9 Yale training aircraft and, from July 1941, on the Harvard. By June 1942 he had over 1,300 hours total flying and was assessed as an above average flying instruct
Back to UK & to the Spitfire
Whilst at Kingston, Cooper met and married a Canadian girl, but this did not stop him from continually pestering the authorities to be allowed to return to the UK on ‘ops’. Eventually, his wish was granted and he returned to England with his wife, who was moving from a land of plenty to a strange war-torn country with all its restrictions, shortages and dangers, where she knew no-one. Cooper’s parents took her in whilst he attended a Spitfire conversion course at No 61 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Rednal (and its ‘satellite’ airfield of Montford Bridge) in Shropshire, initially flying the Harvard, with which he was by now very familiar, and then Mk 1 and Mk II Spitfires. He completed the OTU course at the end of June 1943 and, although he had less than 60 hours on the Spitfire, he was assessed as an above average Spitfire pilot.
64 Squadron Spitfires
PeterJohn1 In July 1943, Tony Cooper joined No 64 Squadron, which was temporarily based at Ayr in Scotland with its Mk Vb Spitfires, undergoing a period of rest and training. He was to serve with the squadron for the next 16 months. He had yet to acquire any operational experience, but he was now a very experienced pilot with some 2,000 hours of flying under his belt as he entered the fray.
His exposure to operational flying began when 64 Squadron moved from Ayr to Friston in August 1943 and, a few days later, on to Gravesend in Kent. Many of the operations conducted by the Squadron were over occupied Europe. The pilots flew on fighter sweeps and escort missions to daylight bombing raids carried out by medium bombers, such as Martin Marauders or Lockheed Venturas. They also escorted Coastal Command Bristol Beaufighters on anti-shipping strikes off the coast of Holland.
On these sorties enemy anti-aircraft fire, ‘flak’, was, if anything, more dangerous than encounters with Luftwaffe fighters and, in his comments in his logbook, Cooper frequently wrote, “Heavy flak”. The escorting Spitfires were often hit by enemy ground fire and on many occasions Cooper witnessed one or more of the bombers they were escorting being shot down. Sometimes Cooper led a section of Spitfires down low over the Continent to strafe targets such as barges.
Deanland (“Tentland”)
At the end of April 1944, in preparation for the impending invasion of France, 64 Squadron moved to the Advanced Landing Ground at Deanland, near Lewes in Sussex, where conditions were somewhat Spartan. There was no permanent accommodation for personnel, everyone was expected to live under canvas and only four blister hangars were provided for aircraft maintenance work. For many of the Squadron, Deanland (or “Tentland” as it was sometimes known) took some getting used to. Tony Cooper recalls: “Deanland was a bit of a come-down; luckily it was summer time when we suddenly found ourselves on this hump in the middle of the Downs. We were in tents and I found myself using the same equipment my father had used in the First World War: a truckle bed made of wood and canvas and the same materials for a bath and wash stand. Food and drink did arrive fairly regularly, but where from I’m not absolutely sure. At night it was very cold, but when D-Day came along we didn’t get much sleep as we were doing up to four shows a day and were kept very busy.”
An entry in Cooper’s logbook against 5th May 1944 – a day when he flew a dawn patrol for 1 hour and 55 minutes – proudly notes the birth of his son, Peter John. On 22nd May, he records that he took over a new personal aircraft, Spitfire Mk Vb BM327, coded ‘SH-F’, which was named “PeterJohn 1” after his newly-born son, who he was not able to see until the baby’s christening some weeks later.
D-Day
On D-Day, 6th June 1944, Cooper’s logbook shows that he flew twice. No 64 Squadron was tasked with providing ‘Low Beach Cover’ over the American assault. The Squadron ORB records that Cooper was allocated his personal Spitfire BM327, ‘SH-F’, for both sorties. He took off at 0430 hours (before dawn) for his first sortie of the day, as part of a 13-aircraft formation, providing “Fighter Cover for Utah Beach” and landed back after a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes airborne (the first hour recorded as night flying). The naval barrage was so intense that it was not safe to be over the coast and the Wing Leader withdrew the formation to a safer distance. Cooper’s remarks in his logbook give an interesting picture of the confusion that reigned and suggest that the invasion stripes, so painstakingly painted on by the ground crew, were not entirely effective: “Navy shelling coast defences – first landing [by the invading troops - Ed] made at 0620 hours. Nearly shot down by a Thunderbolt – Spitfire in front actually was – Another Spit hit by naval shell and blew up – General Brock’s benefit!”
D-Day from Tony Cooper cockpit Remarkably, Tony Cooper carried his camera with him in the cockpit and took a photograph over the invasion-striped wing of his Spitfire just after dawn broke on D-Day, looking towards another of the Squadron’s Spitfires in tactical formation. The thousands of Allied ships in the Channel are not really visible in the photograph, but they were to the pilots.
On the evening of 6th June Cooper flew his aircraft on another sortie over the invasion beaches, taking off at 2200 hours, this time tasked with, “Fighter Cover for Omaha Beach”. His comments in his logbook against this sortie read, “Hun bombers attacked invasion fleet – tremendous return fire from ships – one bomber destroyed.” He landed back at ten minutes past midnight – almost 18 hours after his first take-off that day – logging two hours and five minutes of night flying. When asked about night landings in the Spitfire on the short, temporary runways at Deanland, which were lit only by ‘goose-neck’ flares, Tony says, “I remember them well, with reasonably controlled terror, especially when it was raining!”
D-Day+1
On 7th June (D-Day +1) Tony Cooper flew three fighter cover patrols over Utah and Omaha beaches; two of them in his personal aircraft “PeterJohn 1”. In all, Cooper was airborne for a total of 7 hours 25 minutes that day. The Spitfires’ freedom of movement was severely restricted by the low cloud base and the many anti-aircraft balloons being flown from the Allied ships involved in supporting the landings; this led to a much increased risk of collision. The last operation of the day took place in the late evening, with Cooper leading a section of 4 Spitfires flying in formation on him in the dark, with no lights showing. This sortie provided ample evidence that it was possible to be nearly as frightened by your own side as by the enemy, as Cooper recorded in his logbook: “Very bad visibility – no attacks – sent forty miles out to sea on return owing to reciprocal homing vectors – very shaky experience – brought in eventually by rockets”. By the time Cooper’s section landed, it was completely dark and his No 4 ran out of fuel as he was taxying back to dispersal. Cooper recorded 2 hours and 35 minutes of night flying in his logbook for the sortie.
June 1944
The intense flying rate continued: on 10th June, Cooper flew three times, then once on 11th, twice on 12th and three times on 13th. As was typical of many other units, June 1944 was the busiest month of the war for No 64 Squadron; its total flying hours amounted to a staggering 1150 hours – the bulk of which were flown in the two-week period after D-Day. Everyone was stretched to the limit, especially the ground crews who had to work long hours to keep the Squadron’s Spitfires in the air. Meanwhile, the pilots had to endure the strain of continuous operations. Cooper’s experience was typical and his personal flying total for the month was 75 hours of which 71 were operational and 25 were flown in the dark.
Spitfire Mk IXs
Tony Cooper In late June 1944, No 64 Squadron was moved to Harrowbeer, in Devon, to become part of the Harrowbeer Spitfire Wing with No 129 Squadron, with Wing Commander ‘Birdie’ Bird-Wilson as the Wing Leader. No 129 Squadron was commanded by Cooper’s good friend, Squadron Leader Johnny Plagis, who was godfather to Cooper’s son Peter John. BBMF Spitfire Mk IX MK356 is now painted as Plagis’ aircraft at that time. His story features on page 28 of this magazine.
A few days later 64 Squadron was re-equipped with Mk IXB Spitfires with which it flew fighter sweeps over France. It continued to take losses. Sometimes pilots were able to bring a flak-damaged aircraft safely home to base, sometimes they force-landed, sometimes they had to bale out and all too frequently a pilot was killed. Many sorties now involved strafe attacks against ground targets such as locomotives, vehicles and barges; inevitably there was enemy flak to contend with and on almost every sortie at least one of the Spitfires was hit. It was, therefore, an event worthy of note when Cooper wrote in his logbook against one bomber escort sortie, “No aircraft hit! All returned”.
On 5th August, after escorting 15 Lancasters of 617 Squadron, which dropped 12,000lb ‘Tallboy’ bombs on the U-boat pens at Brest, Cooper led his section of four Spitfires in a strafe attack on flak positions. He says that as they dived on their target, “It was the worst flak I’ve ever seen in my life”. The No 3 in Cooper’s section was killed during the attack; his No 4 was also hit and forced to bale out only 2 miles off the enemy coastline. The pilot climbed into his dinghy and was picked up by an Air-Sea-Rescue Walrus seaplane, in a courageous rescue, and he was back at base within three hours
September 1944
In September 1944, 64 Squadron and Tony Cooper flew sorties in support of Operation ‘MARKET GARDEN’, the Arnhem Para-landings. Then, on 27th September, during an escort mission for 130 Halifax bombers on a daylight raid against the synthetic oil plants at Bottrop, in Germany, the engine of Tony’s Spitfire Mk IX failed when he was almost halfway across the sea between Belgium and England, having apparently been hit by flak over the target. With the Belgian coast being the nearest, he turned around and glided through 12,000 feet of cloud, breaking out at only 1,000 feet, to crash-land, wheels-up, near Moerbek, Belgium, an area that, as it turned out, was just 4 miles inside the Allied lines and which had been in enemy hands only 36 hours earlier! Tony managed to ‘hitch a lift’ in an aircraft back to Thruxton the next morning and he was flying again that afternoon. His comment in his logbook simply reads: “Engine failed – crash landed – PITY!”
Off ‘Ops’
In November 1944 Tony Cooper was posted off ‘ops’ and back to instructing. In his 16 months with 64 Squadron he had flown some 600 hours, the vast majority of it operational flying and had twice been ‘mentioned in despatches’. He had seen much action, including being involved in the D-Day operations; he had made a significant contribution and was very lucky to be alive. Many of his fellow pilots on the Squadron – his friends and colleagues – had not been so fortunate.
Instructor at 53 OTU
During his time as an instructor at No 53 Spitfire Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Kirton Lindsey and Hibaldstow, Tony Cooper once flew Spitfire Mk Vb AB910 (on 19th November 1944), which is now, of course, part of the BBMF fleet of Spitfires. Remarkably, he also witnessed the infamous ‘girl on the tail’ incident with AB910 at Hibaldstow on 14th February 1945, when Flt Lt Neill Cox DFC* inadvertently took off with WAAF Margaret Horton on the tail of the Spitfire. Tony Cooper’s last sortie in the RAF was flown on 18th June 1945. He now had over 3,200 hours total flying; he had flown some 160 operational sorties and had survived 5 forced landings, two of them at night, two on fire and one as a result of being hit by enemy fire.
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