newppsa

As the average speed in the flight was 250 knots
(463 Kmph), accuracy by the lead pilot was
crucial and often is not as easy as it may look. The
success of a shoot of this nature depends largely
on team work with experience and a thorough pilot
briefing prior to flying. We did five passes over
Soccer City to get some variety where three
passes we led in the Hawk with the Gripens
formating on us and we 'chased' in the other two.

The sortie was flown on July 5 2010. The
formation consisted of a Gripen C (single seat)
and D (dual seat) carrying the Iris-T missile, as
this was the configuration used during the world
cup, with a SAAF Hawk as the photo chase
plane.
The purpose was to illustrate the SAAFs role
and responsibility in securing the skies over SA
during the the period of the tournament. John
Miller and myself, for a Global Aviator Magazine
feature, interviewed the Generals of the SAAF
who were tasked with managing this operation.
At the request of SAAB/Gripen International,
250 magazines were couriered to the UK for the
RIAT and Farnborough Air Shows to be
distributed by them to VIPs and others during
that week.
The full story written by John can be read in the
August edition of Global Aviator magazine and
Air Forces Monthly in the UK.

Frans Dely in flying kit holding his
Nikon D3 with 24-70mm Nikkor
bracketed to a small SONY HD
camera. He developed this setup to
shoot video and hi-res stills at the same
time.This was before DSLRs came out
with HD capabilities.
Dely says "The combination of this is
still better as the D3 is shooting 12
mega pixel at potentially 11 frames per
second while I get a full HD quality with
superb stabilization from the SONY.
After the sortie I had 2200 raw frames
and an hour of video to work with, all
without changing any cards thanks to
the dual slots in the D3 and the AVCHD
format. Exposures were 500th/sec
averaging f4 @ 200 ISO on an overcast
day."