T-6’s ONLY


I promised you a few more images of the Texan T-6’s that practiced at the Dubuque Regional Airport for the airshows at the Oshkosh AirVenture last weekend. The North American Aviation T-6 Texan is a single-engined trainer aircraft that was used to train pilots during World War II and into the 1970’s. A total of 15,495 of different variants have been built and it remains a popular airplane used for airshows and static display (source: Wikipedia).

The engines are running and the pilots wait for their take-off

It took me awhile to go through all the photos and select some that I thought stood out and tell the story about their training runs and my efforts to get some sharp images with slow shutter speeds. I’m not unhappy with the keeper rate but there is room for improvement with my panning technique. As mentioned some time before, I use this kind of practice with the long lens for hopefully improving my photography of birds in flight. However, it’s also a pleasure to see how well most of these historical airplanes are preserved and kept airworthy.

All photos: Nikon Z6 III, Nikon NIKKOR Z 600 f/6.3 VR S, Nikon Z Teleconverter TC-1.4x,   @840mm, 1/80s - 1/125s, some photos slightly cropped

A formation of four coming in to the airport and ready to land