A highlight of the Parafield Airshow for 2012 was the participation of The Roulettes, which are a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) formation flying aerobatic team.

The last time I had the opportunity to see the Roulettes in action was at the RAAF Edinburgh airshow in 2007, so I was very much looking forward to the opportunity to photograph these aircraft during their performance.

Flying the Pilatus PC-9/A (a two seater variant build under license in Australia) the Roulettes display involved a number of aerobatic manoeuvres in various tight formations with smoke trailing from the aircraft. There are 6 Roulettes performing the display, however 7 Roulettes in total were on the ground at Parafield Airport, the 7′th is a spare aircraft.

A number of photographer’s with photographers passes were offered the opportunity to photograph The Roulettes performance from the first level balcony of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower. Which provided an awesome opportunity, offering a fresh perspective (angle) on the aircraft from an elevated view as they taxied past, directly in front of the tower towards the runway.

Three of the Roulettes lining up on the runway, ready to take off in preparation for their display.

Captured flying head-on in the wedge formation:

Performing an inner loop whilst maintaining the wedge formation:

Roulettes 5 and 6 flying break from the main formation to fly in mirror formation, which involves one of the aircraft flying inverted directly above the other.

The aerobatic display is concluded with the breaking of formation, the commencement of which is captured in the image below, as the outer Roulettes begin to roll out.

A small subset of the Roulette images taken on the day are presented above, additional images will be uploaded to the Aerobatics Album as they are processed.

The Clipsal 500 has a large assortment of on- & off-track entertainment accompanying the race, of particular interest to me are the air displays performed by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). This year ‘The Roulettes’ returned performing their aerobatical and formation flying, which I unfortunately missed, however I will catch up with them at the upcoming Internode Parafield Airshow later this month!

A McDonnell Douglas F/A-18B Hornet (B model being a two seater variant) was also performing low altitude, high-speed passes over the circuit on both race days as part of the entertainment. Flying out of RAAF Edinburgh, this year the Hornet was A21-112 from 75 Squadron, based out of RAAF Tindal in the Northern Territory.

These photographs were taken from outside RAAF Edinburgh, capturing the Hornet returning from its display over Adelaide city. Weather was better than last year, but still fairly overcast.

Using the Canon EF 400mm f5.6L lens afforded some nice close up shots, the co-pilot can be seen looking in my direction in this shot.

Although the 400mm prime is an extremely sharp, fast focusing lens, it isn’t the best choice for aviation photography due to its inflexibility. I’ll be hiring a Canon 100-400 f5.6L for the Parafield Airshow to provide better flexibility and maximise opportunities.

Touch down, taken through the fence.

I look forward to capturing the Clipsal 500, hopefully from a new vantage point in 2013.

This left the performances up to a lone McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, undertaken by an Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) F/A-18B (B model being a two seater variant), flying out of RAAF base Edinburgh.

The weather was absolutely terrible on Sunday, but I was determined to test out my new camera, a Canon 7D, on the Hornet returning to Edinburgh after it’s performances. I arrived at a vantage point on public land, which proved a popular spot amongst like minded aviation enthusiasts. With my RF Scanner tuned to the local Air Traffic Control (ATC) channel I had the advantage of remaining in the car out of the rain until I heard the Hornet radio ahead it’s imminent approach.

Attached to the camera was a Canon EF 400mm f5.6L lens and the camera was setup in Shutter Priority (Tv) mode such that I could specify a desired shutter speed of 1/1250 to adequately capture the fast moving aircraft. I haven’t had much opportunity to experiment with the 7D’s autofocus system yet, especially on fast moving subjects so I went for a conservative center grouped Zone AF setting, in AI Servo mode which I found to work really well overall even in the poor weather and light conditions.