There's an airfield in Northumberland, built in WWII, which is now a popular private venue for light planes and the odd small helicopter.

It also works with the UK military as a refuelling drop-in for (in the main) helicopters on manoeuvres in the North of England - Otterburn, Spadeadam and what have you.

Once in a blue moon you might hit lucky, and this happens:  

Pave Hawk

Pave Hawk

Pave Hawk

Pave Hawk - kicking up crap

Pave Hawk

Pave Hawk - followed in by Wildcats

Wildcats

Wildcat

Wildcat

Pave hawk

Apache

Apache

Pave hawk

Wildcat

Wildcat

Wildcat

Wildcat

Pave hawk

Apache

Apache

Apache

I understand that Pave Hawks are rare beasts in the UK, which was the main incentive for my buddy (and lift) Mark to be there - and this was only the second visit of a US-flown military aircraft to the airfield since the war.

Personally I'm not quite that "trainspotter-y", and I just enjoy the technical challenges attached to getting sharp, well composed images of helicopters, with as much blade blur as I can manage.

Mission accomplished, I think...

All images are with the Canon R5 and EF 100-400mm Mk II, sometimes with a 1.4x converter, and sometimes in 1.6 camera crop mode (which is on a user-defined button on the camera, so I can go from full frame to crop with one button press.)

Shutter speeds were usually 1/100, with a few at 1/80: I was a little bit worried about "shutter shock" at those speeds (the internet made a lot of noise about it when the R5 was released) but it was a complete non-issue, using mechanical/first-curtain shutter.

Very happy with how the kit behaved, then - but  then again, it never seems to let me down, and in fact it actually flattered me a bit, because I'm really rusty with slow shutter-speed shooting, and I rather expected some self-inflicted disappointment...