Dave Garwood

DG: Start with a bright, sunny day and keep the sun behind you. This will light the airplane so it's not in its own shadow, and will keep the sun out of the pilot's eyes. (Take good care of your pilot; you need him to fly the model precisely and accurately.) The pilot will set up a pattern and repeat it, giving the photographer more than one chance to capture the image. He'll fly close enough to allow "filling the frame" with the airplane (the center of interest). This requires a skilled and confident pilot, and it makes sense to have a spotter too, responsible for keeping extra people away from this scene and watching for other model traffic. Have the exposure settings already made on the camera and concentrate on framing or composing the shot. Since it's difficult to keep a moving airplane in focus, I use prefocusing, or setting the focus on a preselected distance and releasing the shutter when the airplane reaches the selected spot. Choosing the spot depends on the background you want to include or exclude, and the focus distance can be measured from a previous pass of the model, or estimated and set on the distance scale on the lens barrel.