About taking the photo
On Monday 15 August 2011 I planned to go to Schiphol Amsterdam airport in The Netherlands to take some pictures for this EnoAeroPics gallery. But when aircraft started coming over my hometown Almere and even close to and straight over my house on their way to Schiphol, I decided to start an experiment. I tried out taking photos of the inbound aircraft while I was comfortably seated in a garden chair on my patio. The aircraft were flying at quite an altitude. Some flew too far away to get good results, but some came close enough to get acceptable pictures. This is the first of a series of who-knows-how-many- pictures-will-follow, as I can strongly recommend this relaxed way of taking aircraft pictures. Unfortunately I do not have an image stabilizer in my 70-200 lens with 1.4 converter for my Canon D50 camera, so I used a high ISO number and a fast shutter setting. This results in some "noise", especially in grey and white areas, but the quality may improve when I experiment further with lower ISO numbers and slower shutter speeds.
About this aircraft
Transavia Boeing 737-8K2 c/n 34173/LN:3266 PH-HSC is a special aircraft in the Transavia fleet. It first flew on 24 April 2010 and was delivered to Transavia airlines on 4 May 2010. In 2011 Transavia initiated a public contest to find a new slogan. The 16 year old Robert van der Vlies was the winner over more than 110.000 contestants. His Dutch slogan "Daar word je vrolijk van", (in English: "That makes you cheerful", or "Transavia makes you cheerful") is now painted on the fuselage of PH-HSC (partially visible above the windows). In April 2011 the aircraft was named after the winner, whose name is now painted under the cockpit windows. Note that in this picture PH-HSC has activated leading edge slats and partially extended flaps.
About the flight
The replay function of the very advanced Dutch flight tracker site Casper (with details of flights around a number of European airports) made it possible to get more details about the flight and height and speed of the aircraft when I took the photo. PH-HSC carried out flight TRA674 from Reina Sofia airport on Tenerife island (GCT). When the photo was taken at 15.04 hrs the aircraft was flying at an altitude of 1.900 ft, with a speed of 180 kts, some 20 miles out of Schiphol airport. Five minutes later it landed on Schiphol's Runway 09-27, nicknamed the "Roaring runway" (in Dutch: "Bulderbaan") because the approach leads the aircraft low over densely populated areas.
Related images in this EnoAeroPics gallery:
See more Transavia aircraft
More information:
Dutch flight tracker site Casper
See all images in this EnoAeroPics gallery on Flightglobal/AirSpace here.