Afterburner.nl - Meiringen 2007

	Hunting for Swiss fighters in the snow We ended the aviation photography season 2006 at Axalp and surrounding area. With this experience in mind all winter, we decided to start the new season 2007 in the same area. It was an early season start, mainly due to the hunger for some Swiss hardware pictured in the snow. To do so, we choose to visit the Weiderholungs Kurs (Repetition Course) at Meiringen. This course took place from halfway March until the first week of April. To maximize the chances of snow, we decided to be there in the first week of the exercise. And what a choice we made! We had blue skies and temperatures from about 20-22 °C all week… Of course we will not complain about that but you can imagine that absolutely nothing was covered in snow, except for the higher mountain levels. Looking back at it, it would have been better to go the last week of the course, since the snow showed up early April… Nevertheless we were pleased with the weather conditions as they were. To be able to catch the F-5s and F/A-18s with snow, one just had to be more creative. Look for the right spot where the aircraft take off and catch them with a snowy mountain behind. As you will see on the pictures on this page, we managed to do so. In fact, that was quite hard to do so. Since we were there in the first week of the exercise, most of the training took place in the class rooms. And Meiringen seemed to be the most silent place in Switzerland. We arrived at Meiringen very early in the morning of Tuesday 13 March, about 2 AM. It was very very cold that night and we hadn’t seen the sky any brighter then tonight. Amazing how many stars were shining at Meiringen. We slept a few hours in the cold car, waiting for the things to come. But they didn’t. The first days appeared to be academic days and the flying schedule didn’t start before Wednesday afternoon. Not to waste more of our time, we diverted to Alpnach, Stans and Emmen that day. And since we knew there was no flying program the next morning, we repeated that journey on Wednesday morning. In the afternoon we were back at Meiringen in time to witness the first aircraft going out. Meiringen is probably one of the greatest bases in Europe to the photographer as you can almost access any photogenic point you can imagine on an airbase. Our goal was aircraft with snow, and with a good position and some luck this mission was accomplished on the first attempt! Taking off aircraft did pass the snowy mountain tops and we were in the right position. The base was quite active this afternoon and at the end we went back to our ‘zimmer frei’ satisfied. We went to Interlaken that evening for a nice haute cuisine dinner. We found a great place for that: the local McDonalds… Thursday was completely available for Meiringen again. We wanted to go for a variety of photo spots. Among them was a spot up on the mountain (spot 10 on the excellent Scramble airfield guide). From here, you get the most impressive view over the field. You can see the aircraft taxiing out of the caverns. A tremendous sensation to see the aircraft taking off below you from the edge of a mountain looking down a few hundred meters! The only disadvantage is that the aircraft are quite far away. I attached both 1.4x and 2x extender to the 300/2.8 mm lens and even then there was a lot of cropping to do to get a reasonable picture. But we hope the pictures on this page will pass on this sensation a bit. Having seen the early wave from above, we decided it was time to go down again and see the action from up close. We have been standing at various locations again. One of them was the new observation terrace on top of building A. This provides a great opportunity for pictures under a different angle than the regular ones from the ground. Aircraft using runway 27 are touching down just in front of you. Very nice! For today night flying was scheduled as well. We decided to grab some food for dinner and return to the field to enjoy night operations as well. We both brought a tripod as well. After finding a good position for this night activity, we set up our gear in order to try to make the best out of it. However, there was literally no light at all! The Hornets were about 15 meters in front of us. They were standing still at the beginning of the runway only a few seconds before they lit up their afterburners and roared away. What a sensation from this close! We have seen a lot but this was extremely violent from this close and in the dark. After the wave went out around eight o'clock, we packed our gear and left Meiringen for home. At 03:00h we arrived back in Eindhoven. What a way to start the season! Thank you Rob for your great company and nice article on your Dangerzone web pages! Looking forward to a next time!