Fokker 100 (VH-XWS)

These flights carry fly-in, fly-out workers to the gas field at Moomba and for now only on weekdays but even then, not every day. Alliance also serves another mining town, Olympic Dam, but with Fokker 50s. Moomba’s currently the only one with jet service and there had been talk some time ago that F70s would replace F100s but aside from the occasional F70 appearing here, F100s have remained the mainstay of the service.

This was also testing out a new Sigma 100-400 mm lens on a Nikon D7500 to see what it was capable of. The plane is about a mile from the photo location, the photo was cropped, but is about the sensible limit for a relatively good shot. Beyond that, details get even softer.

Amazing how this is almost exact replica of DC9 Series (Did someone steal designs?)

Hi Richard, tried a Nikon and Tamron of the same zoom. The Sigma's stabilzation is certainly not as good as claimed (at least on the one I got) but its sharpness is superb even edge to edge, beating the others hands down - better than it looks in this pic which suffers from distance and cropping the pic on a Dx camera sensor. Even my (now former) full frame D750's sensor couldn't do much better. I've just invested in the big time, so here's hoping the money was worth it.

Top shot Gavin!

Thanks Steve.

awesome snap.....5x and love the names of the towns in Oz!

Thanks Tom. A lot of names are aboriginal which can sound strange, let alone trying to spell SOME of them. If you want a laugh, Google the meaning of 'Moomba'.

Nice action shot Gavin-Must get over there when things open up.

Thanks Mike. You shouldn't be that far off being able to get over here IF NO ONE DOES ANYTHING STUPID! Be good to try to meet and greet if possible.

***ROTATE***