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Like most of us, my interest in aviation started at a fairly early age. At that time we lived close to the Amsterdam city-center, right under the flight path to Schiphol Airport which was about 7 or 8 miles to the west. Often at night, when I was doing my homework in my attic room, I heard the magnificent roar of piston engines (that sound still gives me a queasy feeling.) It usually was a KLM Super Constellation (with bright blue-white flaming exhausts and its belly and wings reflecting the street lights) turning into the final approach pattern. I loved the big planes and dug into all kinds of sources to know more about them. What attracted me most of all was the fact that the aviation enthusiasts community was so thoroughly international. English was the working language and everyone was willing and eager to help each other. It helped me a lot at school and, as an additional benefit, also gave me a much wider perspective, due to the discussions with pen-pals all over the world. During the mid-1960s the advent of the jet-airliners had swept everything propeller driven out of the mainline routes and they could be picked up for a song. As a result a lot of interesting equipment was used by a host of small operators. To make a living from it was a totally different story! But it ensured a steady stream of strange visitors to Schiphol and Rotterdam airport. Schiphol Airport was only half an hour away by bicycle, the only mode of transport for schoolboys in those days. So a number of us had the habit of just cycling over after school to see if anything interesting had arrived. And we struck up a casual friendship with others coming there for the same reason. And we knew the spots where we could get nice pictures. Rotterdam airport in those days was a small time operation where we soon got to know many people. I spent many weekends there, cleaning and washing small planes and helping out, for the occasional reward of a 'test-hop' in a number of exciting airplanes. From early on I had an interest in photography as well, after my grandmother had given me one of those old Kodak 'Box' cameras to fool around with. Sometime later I finally got a 35mm camera (from a US sailor who swapped it for a couple of cartons of cigarettes) and from then on I started to combine these two hobbies. The result was a rather large collection of negatives (but no prints, I could not afford to spend too much on photographic paper and chemicals).The negative collection grew even more, trading negatives with pen-pals all over the world and visiting air-shows and airfields in Belgium, Germany and France. These trips were either done on my bicycle, light motor-cycle or (later) in my trusty old Citroën 2CV, a car that was nearly as old as I was. This 'active period' lasted until my national service days. I had hoped for an Air Force posting, but was (of course) pitchforked into the Artillery, spending a lot of my time in Germany. Afterwards I tried to pick up the thread again, but the 'flame' was lacking. The aeronautical world became more and more standardized, the old Schiphol airport became a maintenance area and the new airport was cold, clean, efficient and impersonal. To my opinion the 'coup de grace' was given to all propeller driven aircraft during the first oil crisis in 1973. After that, only jets could be seen around Europe's airports and the aviation landscape became just boring. In the meanwhile I became deeply involved in the rapidly developing ICT world. Aviation receded even further in the background, supplanted by computer science studies, programming, software engineering, international project management and frequent travel. By now, I was using aircraft to get from A to B and either back or on to C, frequently not even having the time to look around at the airport. What mattered now about the planes was to know where to sit to have the most leg-room on long-haul flights and which carriers to avoid because of their bad service. This situation continued until about two years ago when I had been to a conference, hosted in Rosmalen. When I came out of this conference I noticed the lone F-84F standing guard there. I walked over to have a closer look and to take some photographs. Then I suddenly realized how time flies and that it had been over 30 years since I had been doing something like this. I thought a bit about the large collection of negatives lying somewhere (the garage? the attic?) and what a waste it was nobody could see and enjoy these. Lots of historical planes nowadays are exhibited in museums, often carefully and even lovingly restored. But a museum exhibit lacks the real life feel of things. And that is what many of the pictures from my collection offer. But how can these be shared with others? Then one night I came across 1000aircraftphotos.com, took a good look and decided to offer scans of my collection to this site for other people to share the joy and fun I have had! I do not believe in just looking at pictures so with each and every picture I will give some background information about the aircraft and also about the historical context and any other interesting circumstances. Ironically, this is also much easier now, because much of the once classified information is now freely available through the worldwide web! So, enjoy the pictures! If you want to use them, be my guest but please respect my copyright and do not use them for commercial purposes. If I make a mistake in some description, please send me an e-mail and I'll correct it. Above all, enjoy!

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