TCAHS Nightshoot One

Aviation PhotographyHistoricWarbirdsNightshoots
Written By Jack Goward

Well Spring is upon us, sort of. It is still extremely cold stood on an airfield at night though… This time I found myself a bit closer to home with a short trip up the road to Sywell Aerodrome on Saturday 16th March 2023. This fantastic little airfield played host to a new nightshoot organised by the Thomas Castle Aviation Heritage Scholarship team. It was also a unique opportunity, to photograph the first public appearance of a new Mustang on UK soil – more on that shortly.

Firstly, a huge shout-out to the TCAHS team for organising a truly wonderful event. Thomas Castle Aviation Heritage provide flying scholarships to young people, with the aim of giving them support and guidance on a journey into the world of vintage aviation. I won’t go into too much detail on this post, but please do visit the TCAHS website to find out more about this excellent operation!

Now – onto the shoot. As mentioned above, the highlight of the event was the chance to photograph the UK’s newest resident Mustang acquired by the Fighter Aviation Engineering team under the guise of Ultimate Warbird Flights – Commonwealth CA-18 Mustang, ‘G-JERK’ (c/n 1435). This former Royal Australian Air Force Mustang arrived in the UK in November 2023, painted up in the colours of 44-15152/QI-T ‘Jersey Jerk’ – and it is a stunner.

It was a real treat to get up close to this beautiful airframe, which I think is now the prettiest mustang on UK soil… I took my time with the camera on this shoot, it’s not often that you get an uninterrupted view of warbirds on the ground but I thought the aircraft was positioned perfectly by the organisers. There was a plethora of angle and light options throughout the evening, especially later on as it performed a ground-run after the sun had gone down. To date – some of the best images I’ve produced.

In addition to the Mustang, the shoot also included a number of other participants including the Cassutt Racer IIIM ‘G-RUNT’, DH Chipmunk Mk.22 ‘G-APPM/WB711’, DH.82 Tiger Moth ‘G-ANTE’ and former Red Bull Air Race competitor Zivko Edge 540 V2 ‘N540BM/24’, flown by ex-Red Arrows pilot Ben Murphy across the 2018/19 seasons. There were a couple of other airframes out in the form of an ex Blades Aerobatic Team Extra 300, a Pitts S-1D Special and SE.5A replica which sadly I didn’t get time to photograph.

To summarise, I truly hope that the Sywell Nightshoots under the TCAHS organisation become a mainstay for aviation photography events in the future because I thought this was an excellent evening, with some really fantastic photo opportunities. Thanks to all involved with the running of this event, looking forward to the next one!

As always here’s some useful links covering some of the fantastic organisations involved in this event.

 Until next time…

Jack

Jack Goward
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