Code ALPHA Aviation Photography

Volkel Airbase, 11th of October 2010

Report and photos by Stacey Kort

Volkel was the setting for the annual "NATO TigerMeet". All NATO squadrons with tiger logos are invited to participate in this huge exercise which is held on a different location each year. This year the host of the exercise was the 313th squadron of the Royal Netherlands Airforce which is based at Volkel Airbase, The Netherlands. The "TigerMeet" provides an excellent opportunity to see specially painted aircraft and lots of activity. This is why Erwin Doornkamp and me decided to pay Volkel a visit.

Erwin showed up at 06:45 at my house so we could beat as much traffic as possible and to find a good spot near the fence. In the car we found out that we had winds from the northwest, so we decided to go to the spot at the southeast side of the base which was made especially for the spotters and photographers. We got there around 08:15 and we where just in time to catch two departing Gripens. It wasn't until 90 minutes later that the first wave started up and took to the skies.

More and more people poured in and it started to get pretty crowdy after a while, but because we were so early we stood at the front during the departures. A problem that we had was that we didn't bring stairs, so we had to photography through the crashgate, but that was managable. The distance between us and the runway sometimes caused that there were several heatwaves, but I would have enough possiblities to photograph the aircraft later in the day.

This day I also experimented with different camerasettings. I underexposed my shots and selected ISO200, eventhough we had crystalclear skies. The result was that I had very high shutterspeeds, so hopefully more keepers. And it worked! As you can see by the sheer number of photos in this report, I had relatively more keepers than before! So I'm sure to use the same settings with the same conditions.

At 11:00 the first aircraft of the first wave started to arrive back at Volkel. For those shots I moved back into the field so I wouldn't only photograph the undersides of the aircraft. Some aircraft came in low, but most stayed at a medium altitude. It was nice to see that some pilots were friendly enough to give us a nice wave. During the arrivals two Portuguese F-16s departed back home.

After the arrivals we had to wait for the second wave to start. The Lifeliner was scrambled a couple of times but was pretty hard to photograph. At 13:40 the second wave started. The amount of aircraft taking of was about the same as the first wave. After the departures Erwin and I decided to leave the crashgate and move into the field for the arrivals.

The light proved to be difficult for the landings. During head-on shots there was a lot of flat-light, only the backsides would be nicely lit, so I tried to focus more on those compositions. While the jets were landing, a flight of three choppers showed up, the two Italian AB212s and Polish Hind. Erwin told me those planes where camera-shy during the spottersday which was held the week before I was at Volkel, so I didn't expect much of them. But all of the sudden the choppers dove to the ground and flew over our heads several feet above! I don't think I came that close to a flying plane ever, in fact, I'm very sure of it!

After we regained our composure after the flyby we focused on the jets again. The landings where pretty uneventful and the pilots were as friendly as before. After the last jets touched down Erwin and I left so we could be ahead of the rest. To the TigerMeet team I say thanks for organising such a great exercise! See you next year in Cambrai?