Pic(k) of the week 37: Tanta Ju, 74 year old JU-52 going strong

Last week I travelled to Southern Germany for a large vintage aviation airshow/fly-in near Stuttgart. I will be covering this event extensively on this blog, after I have completed the image editing and have met the deadline for an upcoming article for Piloot en Vliegtuig aviation magazine.

Having said this, it is pretty obvious that this weeks Pic(k) of the week needs to be one from Hahnweide...
2013 Pic(k) of the week 37: Tanta Ju, 74 year old JU-52 going strong

The Junckers JU-52, often nicknamed Tanta Ju, is a German tri-motor transport airplane, manufactured from 1932 to 1945. Although there are a few more Spanish license built look-alike Casa-352's, there are only four "airworthy" JU-52 remaining in the world. 

Three of them, belong to the Swiss "vintage airline" JU-AIR while the last one is owned by  the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin Stiftung . JU-AIR tour their JU-52's and one Casa 352 around the world in order to provide rides to the public at airshows and other aviation events. The voluntary based company was found 30 years ago, when they initially bought 3 remaining Swiss Air Force JU-52's, trying to protect this vintage aircraft from extinction. 

HB-HOS, is a 1939 built Tanta Ju (Aunt Ju) and unfortunately has had a few mishaps since the start of JU-AIR. In 1987 it was severely damaged on landing into Koblenz (Germany), while it touched a snow wall in Samedan (Switserland) early 1998. Nobody was injured in these accidents, which is a testament to the ruggedness of the aircraft. 

One of the crew members was kind enough to let me photograph the flight-deck of this almost 75 year old bird. Even though it has a few modern instruments like the Garmin GPS on the glareshield, it is quite a contrast to the A380 I fly for living...

Image details:
Nikon D800 with 24-70 2.8 Nikkor lens
ISO 1600, 24mm, f4.5, 5 shot shutter speed bracketing (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2 EV)
Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop CS6
Development of the 32 bit image in Lightroom 5
Nik ColorEfex for contrast and detail enhancement

Remember, "Life is like flying a plane; it only gets complicated when we interfere with it" - Mike Grogan

BJORN










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