This day was a stark contrast to the previous day, with wall to wall sunshine greeting us in the morning.
We'd chosen a Monday to visit Naval Air Facility Atsugi, as this was supposed to be the day the US-1 aircrews swap-over, meaning a good likelihood of seeing one fly.
We saw a single YS-11 movement but, due to the distance and the heat-haze, shooting it proved tricky.
Then we spotted our quarry, a US-1 taxiing out for a flight – excellent!
It then proceeded to do a number of circuits and on each one the clouds rolled in more and more. I only shot a single approach with blue sky in the end.
There were a bunch of Kawasaki P-1 jets parked on the ramp but unfortunately none of them moved while we were present.
Later in the day there were constant circuits by various P-3s and by now the sun had well and truly given up for the day.
A somewhat disappointing visit in the end, only made good because the US-1 was flying.
The following morning we went back to the base, but the rain was hard and the cloud was on the deck, so we made our excuses and decided now would be a good opportunity to head back to the Tokyo area and cut our loses.
