Over the winter of Covid, I spent a lot of nights exploring different subjects on YouTube. Many of these nights, I's start around 8:00 PM. I'd watch a few videos and next thing you know it was 2:00 AM. On the good side, I could have been eating the whole time. On one of these adventures, I found myself in the Mach Loop. Search it in YouTube, It is not what you think. While watching, I saw an aircraft I thought was a C-130 doing low level maneuvers. But it looked a bit odd. And as it turned out, it was an Atlas A400.
The Atlas 400 is a European military transport aircraft, built by a division of Airbus. Cargo-wise, in terms I can understand, it is designed to slot in between the C-130 and C-17. The customer base is primarily European with about 95 units produced at this time. It looks like the fleet could grow to as many as many as 170 units. They are out there. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to enter and tour the aircraft at this show. Just more reasons to go to another airshow.
The aircraft is prop driven by four Europrop TP 400-D6 engines, each moving 8 Ratier-Figeac FH385 and FH386 variable pitch tractor propellers. I started looking at the design of the propellers and to be honest, I got lost. Props have come a long way in design past a simple slat. But the key word is props and what it means to me. Slow shutter speed. Between this aircraft and the other prop driven aircraft, I threw away most of the air shots as not viewable. I've gone to the if there is not prop blur, with few exceptions, there will be no kept photo. The best inflight shot of the A400 I have is at 1/160th of a second. Most of the other shots are at 1/200th of a second. So that is the shutter speed range. The ground shots are much easier.
In selecting what shots to keep from the Thunder Over Michigan air show last weekend, one of the positives to the decision is to catch multiple subjects in a shot. In the airshows, if I can get viewers in a shot with an aircraft in flight - I like it. So a take off in the distance is a great way to line up the viewers to get in the shot.
I was too far away to catch the vapor trail coming off the props very well, but if you pixel peep up close, they are there. The take off 842 RPM was doing its best to show off the circular vapor trail, but I was just too far away to really capture it.
This is the best shot of the group, taken at 1/160th shutter speed. Cruise setting is designed to be 730 RPM. The shutter speed really did a nice job.
I don't get to see many aircraft outside of the US inventory. And a cargo aircraft too. I enjoyed watching this aircraft do its thing.
I do get a kick out of aircraft naming. Still going with Galaxy is the largest. Call me a Homer.
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