Cessna CJ4 captured by D5 / 70-200f4
If you’re like me, you might think that photographing a jet in an air-to-air photo mission requires a jet. In some cases, it most definitely does, but not in every case. This photo mission a few years back was done with the photo platform being a prop driven 172RG. How’d we match up speeds with the CJ4 not having to fly dirty? The first and most important aspect is the pilots. Both in this case had thousands of hours flying, flying formation which is key. With that, we matched up the speed by putting the jet on the outside of the orbit so it had to travel further than the photo platform, using up its speed to play “catch up”. That’s really all there is to it. When you keep it simple, you keep it safe and safety has to be goal one in a photo mission!