Choose one: Well [slam!]; [dang!]; [bam!]; [done!]by
herfotomanComment: Thanks for the nice comments.
Here is the long short story, as I haven't paid my dues yet, and cannot create content.
Air show in May 2018, Nelspruit, Mpumalanga RSA. We were treated for a good 3 hours on amazing flying skills. Like this.
Link to photos in Facebook Facebook Formation
There were two sets of flying aces doing the cross-cut flying, at reasonable distances like this:
Facebook Crosscut1 Facebook Crosscut2
The fire-fighters treated us to their machines and equipment like this:
Facebook Water drop
These guys also flew past at impossibly close tolerances, like so:
Facebook Split flyby Facebook Creep fly
What was the question again? Oh yes what happened with the flying Cows. That's the ace's Group name. The aeroplane looks like this:
Facebook Flying Cows
Right, the last flight. Dusk was falling and the light was getting worse by the minute. The sun was hiding behind clouds most of the time, and I was contemplating the move to people photography, thinking that the bad light and speed of the planes will render all photos useless. Spotted the three Cows coming towards us for likely their last formation run.
I was shooting from the hip with the Tamron 150-600 most of the day, but had just switched to the 70-200L because of the fading light, still in manual, as I had to constantly fiddle with the ISO and Tv to get usable shots. High ISO on a Canon 7Dii can quickly ruin your shot, and more so with blue backgrounds. I digress, as maybe you want to know about the Cows and the Cross-cut.
They were approaching fast, well really not so much as they are bi-planes and fly quite slow, but bad light and zoom speeds the time to fiddle with things up dramatically.
Approaching, they were approaching fast. I was tracking them nicely, in close formation flight, when they suddenly did a small swerve out and violently back to one another. The Commentator's rambling came to a sudden end and we all just heard him inhaling sharply. Camera on Continious, so just kept pressing the button. Except I can't because it's not on auto tracking so after each 2-shot burst I have to release and press again. And zoom out as the big smash /fireball/through-flight immediately needs wider views.
All ended well as I got a nice spread of very nice images that day, and we were fully entertained. Those pilots are all crazy, and crazily good.
Perhaps you may wonder what happened, here are the Cows before and after the submitted shot:
Facebook Before Facebook After They received quite a cheer, for a stunt that was not meant to be quite so spectacular.
Message edited by author 2020-10-29 16:51:01. 
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