YOUR team has written a few reports about the Red Arrows whenever they come to perform at the Bournemouth Air Show.

I like all those because I feel a certain affinity with the aircraft they use. They are Hawks.

I started as a professional photographer in 1957 and joined what became the Ministry of Defence in 1958 at Boscombe Down.

I started flying as a photographic observer in 1963. Part of my job was to film tests and trials of aircraft using high speed cine cameras, from a "chase" plane alongside the 'testing' plane.

Through the 1970s, I filmed many sorties against the Harrier for Hawker Siddeley Aircraft at Dunsfold.

HSA were so pleased with the filming that I did for them that they requested my boss in the MoD to allow me to film the first three flights of their new Hawk aircraft in August 1974.

We used a Boscombe Down Hunter 7 for the chase.

A few years later I was flying in the Hawk to film other aircraft trials.

Your paper has seen fit to print nearly 50 of my photographs over the past few years and, at 78, I'm still keen on picture taking.

ROB FORRESTER-ADDIE

East View Road, Ringwood