Nothing extra special, but I’ve finally caught up with some locals in daylight, so quite happy about that! As usual, comments are welcomed, trying to get used to both my camera and to editing in Lightroom.

G-VSXY – Airbus A330-343X – Virgin Atlantic

G-OZBL – Airbus A321-231 – Monarch Airlines

G-DBLA – Boeing 767-35EER – Thomson Airways

OH-LKP – Embraer 190 – Finnair

N277AY – Airbus A330-323X – US Airways

G-BWDB – Aerospatiale/Alenia ATR-72-202 – Aurigny Air Services

G-CELV – Boeing 737-377 – Jet2

D-AIRH – Airbus A321-131 – Lufthansa

1024px images are available on Flickr. The log is available below;

D-AIRH Airbus A321-131 (412) Lufthansa
D-AIRK Airbus A321-131 (502) Lufthansa
D-CGBR Learjet 55 (55-122) Jet Executive International Charter
EI-ENO Boeing 737-8AS(WL) (40302) Ryanair
G-BWDB Aerospatiale/Alenia ATR-72- (449) Aurigny Air Services
G-CELV Boeing 737-377 (23661) Jet2
G-CPEU Boeing 757-236(WL) (29941) Thomson Airways
G-DBLA Boeing 767-35EER (26063) Thomson Airways
G-FBKA Cessna 510 Citation Mustang (510-0096) Blink Ltd
G-MONR Airbus A300B4-605R (540) Monarch Airlines
G-OOBL Boeing 767-324ER(WL) (27393) Thomson Airways
G-OOPE Airbus A321-211 (852) Thomson Airways
G-OZBK Airbus A320-214 (1370) Monarch Airlines
G-OZBL Airbus A321-231 (864) Monarch Airlines
G-OZBP Airbus A321-231 (1433) Monarch Airlines
G-TAWC Boeing 737-8K5(WL) (39922) Thomson Airways
G-VSXY Airbus A330-343X (1195) Virgin Atlantic
HB-IYR British Aerospace 146-RJ100 (E3382) Swiss International Air Lines
N172AJ Boeing 757-223(WL) (32400) American Airlines
N277AY Airbus A330-323X (380) US Airways
N50SN Dassault Falcon 50EX (310) Skadden Arps
N550SN Gulfstream G550 (5195) Skadden Arps
N900SN Dassault Falcon 900EX (117) Skadden Arps
OH-LKP Embraer 190 (190.00416) Finnair
OO-DJR British Aerospace 146-RJ85 (E2290) Brussels Airlines
PH-BXF Boeing 737-8K2(WL) (29596) KLM-Royal Dutch Airlines

As usual with my luck, however, the Pegasus flight was cancelled and the Sky Airlines was an all-white 737 which arrived early and then didn’t depart until much-much later. On with what I did photograph, then!

G-TCDA – Airbus A321-211 – Thomas Cook Airlines

TC-OAL – Airbus A321-231 – Onur Air

TC-OAF – Airbus A321-231 – Onur Air

OY-VKF – Airbus A330-243 – Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia

A7-AFL – Airbus A330-202 – Qatar Airways

TC-OAV – McDonnell Douglas – MD-82 – Onur Air

G-VAST – Boeing 747-41R – Virgin Atlantic

TC-SGH – Boeing 767-86J(WL) – Saga Airlines

Not a bad morning in all, some nice Turkish charters, as well as some now “old” colourschemes, with the Qatar A330-200 and old Virgin livery!

There are a few different ways of doing this;

• Hardware firewalls – great if you have physical access to the server, this act (surprisingly!) like a wall between the internet and your server, only allowing access to the ports you choose. This can cut down on the number of issues if your server comes under a DDoS accack, but it won’t stop them.
• Software firewalls – very similar to their hardware equivalents, but all requests reach the server before they are then dealt with. Often requests will get all the way to Apache before they are stopped, increasing the load on your server.
• IP Tables – IPTables, contrary to what the name suggests, does not deal with IP addresses directly, it deals with TCP ports and access to them, either allowing or blocking remote devices access to ports on your server.

Either a good firewall and IPTables will – hopefully – secure your server from 99% of “chance” attacks. I prefer IPTables, it comes with CentOS and hasn’t let me down – yet!

IPTables

There are many websites that detail how to set up IPTables, but I find the CentOS website itself provides the best explanation of how it works.

Chains

These are 3 predefined chains in the filter table to which we can add rules for processing IP packets passing through those chains. These chains are:

• INPUT – All packets destined for the host computer.
• OUTPUT – All packets originating from the host computer.
• FORWARD – All packets neither destined for nor originating from the host computer, but passing through (routed by) the host computer. This chain is used if you are using your computer as a router.

For the most part, we are going to be dealing with the INPUT chain to filter packets entering our machine – that is, keeping the bad guys out.

Rules are added in a list to each chain. A packet is checked against each rule in turn, starting at the top, and if it matches that rule, then an action is taken such as accepting (ACCEPT) or dropping (DROP) the packet. Once a rule has been matched and an action taken, then the packet is processed according to the outcome of that rule and isn’t processed by further rules in the chain. If a packet passes down through all the rules in the chain and reaches the bottom without being matched against any rule, then the default action for that chain is taken. This is referred to as the default policy and may be set to either ACCEPT or DROP the packet.

The concept of default policies within chains raises two fundamental possibilities that we must first consider before we decide how we are going to organize our firewall.

1. We can set a default policy to DROP all packets and then add rules to specifically allow (ACCEPT) packets that may be from trusted IP addresses, or for certain ports on which we have services running such as bittorrent, FTP server, Web Server, Samba file server etc.

or alternatively,

2. We can set a default policy to ACCEPT all packets and then add rules to specifically block (DROP) packets that may be from specific nuisance IP addresses or ranges, or for certain ports on which we have private services or no services running.

Generally, option 1 above is used for the INPUT chain where we want to control what is allowed to access our machine and option 2 would be used for the OUTPUT chain where we generally trust the traffic that is leaving (originating from) our machine.

You will need to be logged in as the root user in order to set up IPTables. Firstly, check whether it is installed (it should be installed by default on CentOS). Type rpm -q iptables and you should get the version number back, mine is currently iptables-1.3.5-5.3-el5_4.1, yours may be different.
Typing /etc/rc.d/init.d/iptables status will list the status of your IPTables installation, and any rules associated with it. Mine shows;

Table: filter
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
num target prot opt source destination
1 ACCEPT all -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
2 ACCEPT tcp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22
3 ACCEPT tcp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:21
4 ACCEPT tcp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80
5 ACCEPT tcp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:3306

Chain FORWARD (policy DROP)
num target prot opt source destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
num target prot opt source destination

This shows there are 5 rules set up on the input chain, which are all inbound connections. As you will be connecting remotely first temporarily set the default policy on the INPUT chain to ACCEPT otherwise once we flush the current rules we will be locked out of our server; iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT

1. iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT. This is the rule that does most of the work. We are adding (-A) it to the INPUT chain. The -m switch is to load a module (state), which is able to examine the state of a packet and determine if it is NEW, ESTABLISHED or RELATED. NEW refers to incoming packets that are new incoming connections that weren’t initiated by the host system. ESTABLISHED and RELATED refers to incoming packets that are part of an already established connection or related to and already established connection. Finally -j (jump) to the target action for packets matching the rule – in this case ACCEPT.
2. iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT. This rule is to ensure access via SSH over a remote connection, ensure that you change the port number to the SSH port you selected previously. -p tcp defines the protocol in use, in this case it’s TCP. –dport 22 is the port number.
3. iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 21 -j ACCEPT. This rule is to ensure access via FTP.
4. iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT. This rule is to ensure access via HTTP.
5. iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 3306 -j ACCEPT. This rule is to ensure MySQL connections are accepted.

As your server is not in use as a router, you don’t want packets (data) to pass straight through, use iptables -P FORWARD DROP to drop these packets if they try. Finally, iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT will allow packets to leave your server.

And to save these changes, type /sbin/service iptables save, this should give you a response stating Saving firewall rules to /etc/sysconfig/iptables: [OK].

That’s IPTables done!

My server is in Germany somewhere, owned by 1&1 Web Hosting, who aren’t particularly expensive, and are nice enough to pre-install and configure your server with an Operating System (OS).

Anyway, there are some basics that need to be done before you can use your server for web-traffic. I use CentOS5 for my server OS and Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 for my administration front-end, but most of what needs to be done uses Secure Shell (SSH) Command Line Interface (CLI). For this, I recommend the free tool, PuTTY.

You will have gathered by now there are a lot of acronyms to be learned – I’ll try and define them as I go through!

Setting Up Your Server

Logging in to your SSH/Terminal/”root” session

Assuming you have your operating system, front-end admin panel and associated services installed and pre-configured (this is usually done by your server host, if not then you will need to do this yourself), you’ll need to get your SSH/”root” login details and load up your server in PuTTY.

<image coming soon>

Changing your SSH Port

Your default SSH port will be 22, we’ll change this first, as a common attack on servers is brute force entry via SSH.

1.  Check this Wikipedia link to view a list of TCP ports currently in use. You will want to chose one that is not being used.
2. Log in your root session using your log in details.
3. Use the vi editor to modify the sshd_config file:
• Type the following, noting the space after vi: vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
• There will be a line saying #Port 22. Use the keyboard arrow keys to move the cursor down to this line.
• Press the i key on your keyboard, you will notice it now says “– INSERT –” at the bottom of the screen.
• Press the DELete key to remove the # symbol, then use the arrow and DEL keys to remove the port. Change it to something that is not listed on the link above.
• Press the ESCape key, the “– INSERT –” test will dissappear.
• Type :wq, this will appear at the bottom of the screen. Press ENTer, and the editor will disappear again.
4. Restart the SSH service by typing service sshd reload. Your root session may close at this point, if not…
5. Close your root session using exit, and then re-open PuTTY and check to ensure you can log in with the newly selected port.

<videocoming soon>

It was also the year with my first DSLR, a Sony A200 with 75-300mm and 18-70mm “kit” lenses. To be honest, not the best when it came to flying work, just lacked the speed in focusing and quality at the top end of the 300mm for the flying work, but perfect for stuff on the ground!

Anyway, on with some pictures…

Swiss Air Force PC-7 display – very dynamic, certainly a change from the norm

As you can see, it was a bit wet to start off with! Created some nice reflections though.

It was nice to see the BAC1-11 again. For the last time, as it transpired – replaced with Airbuses now.

Another “last” – French Air Force Mirage F.1CR…

…and the Greek Air Force RF-4C Phantom II.

Then it got wet…

..and then very wet! I must have been mad to raise the camera at this point!

Oh, and then it was dry again. Nice to be able to get a KC-10A in full-frame with no-one in the way. Rain has it’s advantages I suppose!

And in order to inject a bit more colour in to a very grey day, the Midlands Air Ambulance!

As always, you can find more on Flickr. Comments here, there or elsewhere greatly appreciated!

-Author unknown

-Author unknown

EZY602 (Belfast – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
KL1035 (Amsterdam Schiphol – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester

Updated 10:44 7th February 2012

EZY616 (Belfast – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7012 (Amsterdam – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7046 (Paris CDG – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7058 (Brussels – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7120 (Alicante – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7208 (Barcelona – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7224 (Berlin Sconefeld – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
EZY7292 (Geneva – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
FR442 (Dublin – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
FR1134 (Shannon – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
FR7112 (Szczecin – Liverpool) diverted to East Midlands
FR9621 (Kaunas – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester
FR9863 (Malaga – Liverpool) diverted to Manchester

Updated 10:53 7th February 2012.

BA008 (Tokyo – London Heathrow) diverted to Frankfurt
BA010 (Bangkok – London Heathrow) diverted to Amsterdam Schiphol
BA012 (Singapore – London Heathrow) diverted to Prestwick
BA026 (Hong Kong – London Heathrow) diverted to Cardiff
BA028 (Hong Kong – London Heathrow) diverted to Prestwick
BA036 (Mumbai – London Heathrow) diverted to Paris CDG
BA068 (Philadelphia – London Heathrow) inbound to Heathrow
BA094 (Montreal – London Heathrow) diverted to Amsterdam Schiphol
BA098 (Toronto – London Heathrow) diverted to Prestwick
BA116 (New York JFK – London Heathrow) diverted to Prestwick
BA138 (Bombay – London Heathrow) diverted to Cardiff
BA142 (Delhi – London Heathrow) diverted to Glasgow
BA174 (New York JFK – London Heathrow) diverted to Cardiff
BA188 (New York – Newark to London Heathrow) diverted to Frankfurt
BA192 (Dallas – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA194 (Washington – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA196 (Houston – London Heathrow) diverted to Dublin
BA208 (Miami – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA212 (Boston – London Heathrow) diverted to Prestwick
BA214 (Boston – London Heathrow) diverted to Frankfurt
BA218 (Denver – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA226 (Atlanta – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA228 (Baltimore – London Heathrow) diverted to Dublin
BA246 (Sao Paolo – London Heathrow) diverted to Amsterdam Schiphol
BA252 (George Town – Nassau – London Heathrow) diverted to Brussels
BA256 (New Delhi – London Heathrow) diverted to Munich
BA264 (Washington – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA282 (Los Angeles – London Heathrow) diverted to Barcelona
BA284 (San Francisco – London Heathrow) diverted to Frankfurt
BA292 (Washington – London Heathrow) is inbound Heathrow
BA296 (Chicago – London Heathrow) diverted to Dublin
BA303 (Paris CDG- London Heathrow) returned to Paris CDG
BA264 (Washington – London Heathrow) diverted to Shannon
BA377 (Toulouse – London Heathrow) diverted to Bournemouth
BA389 (Brussels – London Heathrow) returned to Brussels
BA561 (Linate – London Heathrow) returned to Linate
BA709 (Zurich – London Heathrow) returned to Zurich
BA811 (Copenhagen – London Heathrow) returning to Copenhagen, turned around and inbound Heathrow
BA853 (Prague – London Heathrow) returning to Prague, turned around and inbound Heathrow
BA901 (Frankfurt – London Heathrow) diverted to Bournemouth
BA963 (Hamburg – London Heathrow) returned to Hamburg
BA981 (Berlin – London Heathrow) returned to Berlin
BA1303 (Aberdeen – London Heathrow) returned to Aberdeen

Many thanks to Martin on Civilian Aviation for some of the above, as well as my followers on Twitter and various others!

Updated 18:19 05/Feb/12

Keep an eye on #snowdiv and #flightdisruption for more!