Well today Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam visited Pune for the ride of his life, something he dreamt of as a child, to fly in a fighter jet and we were there to witness it!
I stay about 17kms from the Pune airport and Airforce base in wanowrie and with the cloud cover it made no sense to try an spot the jets doing their thing from my place, so we called up an aunt who lives in the aptly named locality, 'Vimannagar' [I wonder why the call it that!!!!] which shares its boundary walls with the airforce base.
We [Two brothers,Two friends and myself!] set out at 0800hrs as the president was scheduled to take off at 0900hrs, did breakfast with my aunt, cousin and niece' and headed to the terrace 8 floors above the ground for our ringside seats at the Airshow!!!!
The building in question is about 2 odd kays from the base so the 12x optical zoom was doing what it was made to do!!!! We get the news that the show's been rescheduled and will now begin at 1000hrs, a round of coke, chit chat and some ultra zoom shots at the parked jets saw us through the hour of delay.
The parked Jets......... from 3km away!!!
A Sukhoi-30 MKI takes off. Yup, that jet is really that low!!!
Ok, in the second picture and the picture below you'll notice a building that's closer to the friggin air base, so i thought to myself "Man, if i were on that building the 12x zoom would bring things so much closer!!!!"
Two guys soak up the sight from that building.............
The buildings, with our backs facing the runway!! [Yeah, yeah, i know you are thinking, he has to get his car in the frame!!!! Well, i do!!!]
There were a few other cars there to catch the action too!!!
So we approached security supervisor and requested him to allow us to go to the tank to click a few pics, amazingly he agreed and accompanied us to the top of the tank, approx. 9 floors above the ground, the building is about 500mtrs from the base, you can't get closer or higher than this!!!!
We perch on top of the tank and wait for some action, the prez in the SU-30, with 7 accompanying SU-30's have long since disappeared in the western horizon [Me thinks he wanted to see the arabian sea and the curvature of the Earth!!!!] Also in the air are 5 Jaguars too.............. the sky is now empty!
We waited..............and took some shots.....
This chopper was a signal for the Air show to begin!!!!!
And wham, the 3 Su-30's with the Prez in the middle one hit us in formation!!!!!
The jet banks a few hundred feet over us!!!!!
They finally land, the prez is in one of these!!!!
The Su-30's in the foreground and the massive MIG-29's in the background!!!
PS: The pics are massive, so imageshack will open downsized images, please click on the image to enlarge it!!!