T-Birds with Sharkmouth - Fuerza Aérea Ecuatoriana June 1989

[Basilisk]

I visited the Fuerza Aérea Ecuatoriana (FAE) during June 1989, being able to take many pictures at various locations. Compared to now with only 18 A-29B Super Tucano's operated by two squadrons in the combat role, things looked very different 35 years ago when the FAE operated A37, AT-33, Strikemaster, Jaguar, Mirage F-1 and Kfir!

 

ALA de Combate 23 (Air Wing 23) was based at Base Aérea Eloy Alfaro near the town of Manta on the Pacific coast and operated three squadrons of which Escuadrón de Combate 2312 was the largest of the three with over 20 Lockheed AT-33 T-Birds and some T-33 on its strength.

 

 

 

FAE620 and 625 are two of the T-33s.

 

 

FAE604 was fitted with rocket tubes.

 

FAE-919 was one of the older airframes still in use.

 

The squadron was very active during my visit.

 

 

 

Also got some T-bird rides. Not the best aircraft to take air to air pictures as the wingtip tank is a pain in the but when taking pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And flying at 20000 feet and showing its teeth with the peak of mount Chimborazo, Ecuador's highest mountain standing at 6263 meters, as the backdrop.

 

 

 

 

Two T-Birds look better than one.

 

 

 

And four look better than two.

 

 

 

 

 

And the "Manpower" who made it all possible.

 

If you like to see more FAE T-33 pictures, there more in my flickr Album.

 

Thanks for looking and I hope the pictures are of interest to some.
Cheers, Peter

 

Edited December 22, 2024 by Basilisk

[cpoud117]

Fantastic work and a great source of inspiration!

[canberraman]

Some beautiful, rare and unique images  and top quality slide scanning. I'd be interested to know what hardware and software you use.

 

Mark

[Agent K]

Wow, what an exceptional album there, superb quality photos of a fascinating subject. That shark mouth suits the T-33 so well too! Thanks for sharing.

[RidgeRunner]

Fantastic shots, Peter!

[Basilisk]

On 12/2/2024 at 1:21 AM, cpoud117 said:

Fantastic work and a great source of inspiration!

Thanks, and who knows we may see a model finished in these colours.

 

22 hours ago, canberraman said:

Some beautiful, rare and unique images  and top quality slide scanning. I'd be interested to know what hardware and software you use.

Thanks Mark. For Scanning I use a Canon FS4000US scanner scanning at 4000 DPI together with VueScan as the Canon software doesn't work on Windows 10.

 

Unfortunately, there isn't just one software to get these results. I use Photoshop for colour correction, ON1 Photo RAW to denoise and sharpen the image. Then again Photoshop to tidy up the image and finetune the colours and contrast followed by slight sharpening in Topaz Photo AI of the aircraft only and then again using photoshop to downscale and sharpen for the JPG file. This normally takes between 30 to 60 minutes.

 

But I enjoy doing it as I finally can enhance the original pictures the way I like them as Kodachrome's colour weren't always perfect.

 

20 hours ago, Agent K said:

Wow, what an exceptional album there, superb quality photos of a fascinating subject. That shark mouth suits the T-33 so well too! Thanks for sharing.

Indeed, the T-33 nose is the perfect canvas for a sharkmouth. Of interest is that they are all slightly different and also some have painted on gills in the air intake duct!

 

13 hours ago, RidgeRunner said:

Fantastic shots, Peter!

Glad you like them. Cheers, Peter

[ColinChipmunkfan]

Some lovely photos here, thanks for posting.  Gosh a flight in a T33 taking formation photos on such a glorious day, You lucky man!!

Colin

[Latinbear]

Absolutely brilliant images of another rare subject. Thanks very much for sharing them. 

[exdraken]

Wow, simply fantastic!

Such a time-travel! (Not table... autocorrect  sorry!

 

[Basilisk]

On 12/4/2024 at 7:28 AM, ColinChipmunkfan said:

Some lovely photos here, thanks for posting.  Gosh a flight in a T33 taking formation photos on such a glorious day, You lucky man!!

Colin

Thanks Colin. It was indeed a great experience to fly in the already then vintage T-33.

 

On 12/9/2024 at 12:15 AM, Latinbear said:

Absolutely brilliant images of another rare subject. Thanks very much for sharing them. 

Thanks. I am glad you like them.

 

On 12/14/2024 at 7:54 AM, exdraken said:

Wow, simply fantastic!

Such a timetable!

Thanks.

 

Does anyone know a source which lists T-33 serial numbers and users? I would love to find out who were the previous owners of these FAE T-birds and what happened to them.

 

Cheers, Peter

[Hook]

Brilliant stuff!, thanks for posting.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre