The art of not being one with the universe

Went to Air 04 in Payerne. Very good show. The Swiss were good, but couldn’t beat The Red Arrows. The individual plane shows were also interesting, although it got a bit boring after a couple: They all did pretty much the same thing. Looping, fast flybys, rolls, etc. Although the quarter-turn jerk of the F-15 and the wobbling the F/A-18 did was nice. But it takes a trained eye to appreciate the real differences between an F-16 and a Mirage 2000. All modern fighters are fast, manouverable and noisy as hell. It’s small details that set them apart, although when push comes to fire, a good man in an old machine will swat a bad man in a new crate.

Forgot my sun lotion. As a consequence, am now nice lobster red with a camera strap mark on my neck and glasses stripe on my right temple.

The focusing capability of my camera is a disappointment. (I did honestly expect it to have one.) The autofocus is frequently slow, and if it can’t find a focus, it’ll frequently just pick not-quite-infinity. Scuze me? Hello, Konica Minolta? Do ah need ta whup yo asses? Manual focus is an even worse bitch. Not only is it a pain to set (with fancy digital buttons instead of manual twist-a-ring-on-the-lens thing) but it drifts. I swear ta ya, I focus it as well as possible, take a nice crisp test picture, and then when I wait for the right moment when the planes are doing their beautiful chicken run, and I get an unfocused image! Honestly, KM, are you feeble?

I left the airshow a bit before the end, since there were no big team-acrobatics left and I was rather too tired and hot. As I stumbled along, I happened to turn around, and saw what you should see a picture of somewhere around here, unless you’ve turned off images or are using Lynx. (If you are, consider Links instead. It’s superior.)

So somebody decided to (or oopsed to) vent their smoke canisters on the runway. Funny effect.