Free to a good home: 40 years of aviation history

A pharmacist by trade, Vogel “spent virtually his whole adult life chasing his passion for aircraft photography”, says Wedell.

“He was an avid photographer, quite a skilled photographer, and he just loved photographing steam trains and aircraft, probably aircraft especially, and this was basically his life’s work,” he says. “He sacrificed lots and lots of time getting the shots from mostly Sydney Airport, but anywhere else that he could get live aircraft. He would have static shots, like most people, but most of his shots were taken while they were landing or taking off. And he had an aircraft radio in his shop, and he knew when certain aircraft were coming and going, et cetera, and he would be listening on his aircraft radio to the approach and the long approach and the shorter approach. And he would go to the particular runway, runway 34 or 16 or whatever it was, and to the spots where he knew he would get the ideal photographs.”

Vogel became a fixture at Sydney Airport, capturing pictures of a wide variety of aircraft, including the Boeing 707, 727, and 747; Douglas DC-3, DC-7, and DC-8; Short Sunderland flying boat; Canadair CL-44; and “numerous others across piston, turboprop, and jet eras”, according to Wedell.

“It wasn’t just good enough to get the one shot of an aircraft. He had to have it on approach or landing, taking off, or on the ground,” he says. “Then, of course, if the particular aircraft changed colours on the aircraft, he would do it all over again so that he’d have those, and he’d get shots inside the cockpit, and he used to go to weekly to the office at Sydney Airport, and he would be given access to the special sheets that they used to hand out to what was coming and going that week – stuff that wasn’t commercial, because commercial you knew, but he would get all the aircraft movements of that week, and they let him, he was privy to that. He was often seen at runway 16, at the fence, on the ladder. He had a ladder in his car at all times, and he would climb up above the fence so he’d get a clear shot. And I think they got used to him there. So, there was no problem.”

Unfortunately, since Vogel’s passing, Wedell has been unable to find a museum or historical association willing to take the slide collection off his hands, and so he has turned to Australian Aviation and its readers for help in fulfilling his friend’s wish to see his collection end up in good hands.

“I’d love to see it in some good role for the public for the future, because it’s basically a total record of every aircraft on every runway of every colour that’s ever been to Sydney Airport over 40 years,” he says. “Not a collector, but a museum, or Sydney Airport would be a good one if they could use a bit of their budget and scan them all, and I’ve even talked to the scanning people, and they could do it at a much-reduced price when they were quiet, they could just do them at very high quality. That’d be the best. But in the meantime, Sydney Airport, or HARS, or someone, or even Smithsonian, just somewhere where they can be of public benefit or historic benefit for the future.”

If you know someone who can store and digitise the slides to give the public the chance to experience this slice of aviation history, please contact Steve Wedell at [email protected].