I wasn’t terribly shocked when I recently heard that New Pacific ceased trading. The model seemed a bit suspect when it was first announced and they rapidly transitioned to charter work and away from schedule flying. I still liked seeing their 757s when they showed up in Seattle but I never thought they would survive long. Sadly, that proved to be the case. Here are some other shots of their operations which we won’t see again.
It used to be that I thought parakeets were to be found in a park in London. They seem to have been quite effective at surviving and thriving in the UK and now they seem to crop up all over the place. I have seen them out near Heathrow and in Bushy Park. Richmond Park has had them for a long time, I think. They do provide a flash of colour in the south of England, but they are not a quiet bird. Their call is piercing, and they seem to be calling all of the time.
They are also fast fliers and getting shots of them while airborne has been a struggle for me. Since they are quite small, you need a long lens to get a decent image and picking them up with a long lens and then tracking – often against a busy backdrop – is very challenging. When they are in the trees I have had more success. Here are some shots that I have got of them in recent months. I will hopefully do a better job of catching them in flight before too long.
The number of operators attending RIAT attracts a lot of corporate attention. Consequently, there are a few bizjets that show up at Fairford too. Most of these are civilian operated but I may have been a little lax and included a military operated bizjet just because I can. Here is a selection of the corporate types that showed up during the several days of RIAT.
We took another visit to Stourhead in the autumn of 2025. It wasn’t just because we were looking for nice foliage colours but that wasn’t a bad side benefit. It also meant plenty of other people were there at the same time. The colours in some of the trees were really lovely. It helped that some trees were still green while others had become yellow and brown.
Walking around the lake gave nice views of the different trees. Additionally, we went up the hill to the folly which provided a nicer high angle view of the lake and the colours within it including trees growing on islands. Stourhead is such a lovely place. It is worth the National Trust membership fee on its own.
The provision of airborne early warning seems to be a topic that is vexing countries currently. The RAF retired its E-3 fleet without a replacement. They then ordered five Wedgetails only to later reduce the order to three. Now there is discussion of increasing it again. Meanwhile the US decided to similarly replace the E-3 fleet with Wedgetails and ordered two.
A change of administration brought a plan to scrap that idea, use satellite surveillance and buy some more Hawkeyes in the interim. Congress is pushing back on that. Meanwhile, NATO had planned to go down the Wedgetail route but is now looking elsewhere given the lack of commitment from the US to the platform. SAAB’s GlobalEye has since picked up more orders including one from France and NATO might follow that route. All a bit of a mess.
Anyway, all of that is a long prelude to the fact that the first of the RAF’s Wedgetail fleet made an appearance at RIAT in 2025. It was supposed to appear on one day but apparently scrubbed. Consequently, it was rearranged to come in the following day. I imagine the RAF didn’t want the embarrassment of it failing to appear. It made a run in with the Red Arrows providing formation support. Then it made solo passes and an approach for a touch and go.
I don’t know how far off service entry it is, but testing continues at Boscombe Down. I have seen its distinctive outline on the airfield when driving along the A303. Hopefully they will be active before too long and also that, this time, the funding is provided to keep the systems current unlike the issues that led to the E-3 fleet fading away.
I do not travel around looking for funicular railways (yet!), but I do seem to come across them on my regular travels. My visit to Scarborough has already shown up on this blog as a result of the shots I got while there on my cycling trip. However, I had excluded the funiculars. I say funiculars because I saw two although only one was operational – well, it would have been but not at the time I was there.
The working railway takes you down the cliffs from the town to the waterfront. Not a long run but I imagine it gets a few customers when the peak season is underway. I paid it a bit of attention as I walked around the town first thing in the morning. Then, I walked along the shore towards the spa and saw another track. This one has clearly been deactivated but the core infrastructure was still visible. I don’t know when it was taken out of service. This got me wondering whether there were even more in Scarborough when it was at its peak of popularity.
Regular visitors to the blog will know I find the A350 to be the best-looking airliner in production at the moment. During a visit to Heathrow, I got my first look at one of the more recent operators. Air India started taking delivery of jets last year. They have done the decent thing and put a colourful livery on their planes as opposed to the usual mostly white. I am grateful for this as well as for the good light I had when it came in.
Part of the reason for our visit to Bushy Park was because the rut was underway and I thought it might be possible to see the stags at their best. I hadn’t anticipated just how prevalent the deer herds would be. One herd was right in the middle of the trails and, while there was a dominant male that was overseeing things, there were a couple of younger stags within the herd.
These two were trying out their jousting skills. They would engage their antlers and push each other around for a bit before getting distracted by something nearby. They would look at that for a while and then get back into training. It felt like they weren’t really trying to prove anything to each other but were just getting in practice for the days when they might be genuine contenders for dominance.
Initially, I was on the side away from the sun and thought I would have to make do with that. However, it proved easier than I thought to walk around them and get shots from the other side. They seemed uninterested in the people that were watching them. After grabbing a bunch of images, I thought that video might be a better way to record their action – even if it makes it clear that they weren’t really going for it.
The Pakistan Air Force IL-78 showed up at RIAT in 2025 supporting the JF-17 Thunders. Unlike the more recent versions of the IL-76 family, this jet has the original engines. They are a low bypass ratio jet and are not in any way quiet. The high-pitched scream that they produce when idling is really hard on the ears. An occasional bit of fingers jammed in ears was necessary when the angle to the plane made the noise particularly painful, but it was worth it. However, nothing about stills images can convey just how loud these four engines were!
During some previous visits, I had seen the Thames Clipper/Uber ferries running up and down the river. They seemed to be pretty powerful beasts as they fought the strong currents that the Thames can produce. However, I never used them myself. I finally got around to using one recently. We had been down to Battersea and decided to take the ferry back towards the station rather than retrace our steps on the Tube.
It was a pretty good ride but had me wondering about its use in the centre of town. We didn’t go very far but we stopped multiple times en route. We were crisscrossing the river a lot so our overall progress was slow. We were not in a hurry but, even so, decided not to go where we originally planned and cut short to walk to the station. The speed with which they dock, unload, load and depart is very impressive. They have the whole thing well worked out. It is just a slow process. I imagine that a longer run would be a very efficient way to get through the city, but the price premium wasn’t worth it to me.
