Message posted by lone wolf on June 28, 2005 at 12:14:09 PST:
I can't think of a Red Flag where there were only night sessions. I'm not sure what you are doing for preparation, but at the very least you should go to an air show and do some photography or video (whatever you plan to do at Red Flag). Red Flag will be substantially more difficult to photograph than any air show, but the air show is better prep than nothing at all. The planes will be further away at Red Flag, and more times than not, flying much faster. I'd say 300mm for 35mm photography is a minimum. For video, it's not so bad to have more scenary in the shot, so a reasonable camcorder will do. Video comes out kind of odd since you only hear the plane when it is very close, otherwise you pick up conversations of the spectators. I don't have one, but I bet a directional microphone would help. A mil air scanner is useful, though you can just listen to the ground stations on a regular scanner. [I prefer monitoring the ground stations for location reporting, but the air to air or AWACS conversations are more exciting.] For a flag in August, the odds are there will be someone else nearby with a scanner. It would be a good idea to listen to red flag scanner audio archives and use the "cheat sheets" to learn the jargon.
In Reply to: red flag posted by david strickler on June 28, 2005 at 10:10:38 PST:
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