Hullo jeallen, yes the thread on the Beike is 3/8 female Whitworth and if you remove your tripod head you should find a male 3/8 Whitworth thread on almost every brand tripod I`ve ever seen.
Simmo

Good morning jeallon, My gimbal is branded "Beike"(never heard of them before) and here is an Ebay link to a Chinese gentleman selling them for AU $89.95 with free postage, world wide. When I look at the quality of the Knock off I have to wonder how people like Wimberly,Benro or Induro justify their prices.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/360-Gimbal-Tripod-Head-BK-45-Specialized-1-4-Screw-fo...
Sorry for the long link but that`s it. Also a small airport (like Albion Park) would be a small airport anywhere in the world. The city of Wollongong is a long narrow city squeezed in between the Pacific Ocean on one side and The Great Dividing Range on the other.
If you can go the extra for the longer lens a 150-500 zoomed back to 300 is a better option than a 300 zoom at full reach. Most zooms are a bit soft at full reach, even the 55-300 which I also own and was my favourite until I got the Siggy.

Father Ted, one caveat when you focus on infinity. A lot of people just manually focus till they hit the stop at infinity, if you do that you will have focussed past infinity. (that usually starts an argument) Use the AF to focus on a distant land mark. I disable AF on half shutter press in the menu and use the Af button on the back of my K20 so it doesn`t refocus every shot.With the K10 you can assign AF to the OK button on the up/down wheel.After a while using thumb to focus and index finger to shoot becomes instinctive. I now do that all the time.

Hullo Rob, At airshows spot metering is the only option, and even then you will find that the sky will swamp the exposure meter and you will get a dark aeroplane. This is one application when shooting in RAW is the best option as you can apply all of your corrections and see the result instanly and all of the other settings you mentioned are redundant.
Simmo

Hullo jeallon, yes I have found a gimbal mount to be invaluable, properly mounted the camera/lens is virtually weightless and balanced. The gimbal mount that I use is a cheap Chinese (Ebay) Knock off, about AU$90.00 and it`s brilliant. The above photos were taken at Albion Park, Wollongong - the home of HARS and I was sitting about half way between the crowd line and the flight line (HARS member), which was quite close but still the subjects were focussed at infinity. I once read an interesting article on the "Other" Pentax forum entitled "Infinity is a lot closer than you think". Some rough experimenting showed that with the 150-500 Sigma, anything more than about 190 metres away was at infinity. I did the same tests with my DAL55-300, surprisingly infinity was about 220 metres away.
Don`t take my word for it - try it for yourself.
Simmo

Rob, the 150-500 is my current favourite airshow lens. It is heavy but I can hand hold it (I`m 67) but I use a mono or tripod when I can.

[IMG]http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p78/baldrick1946/_IMG6835.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p78/baldrick1946/_IMG6754.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p78/baldrick1946/_IMG6747.jpg[/IMG]
For most of these the lens was pre focussed on infinity and the AF not used. At most airshows unless you can get very close or the pilots are breaking the rules, most cameras will be focussed on infinity anyway.
Simmo

Ah got it sorted. Firefox does have an English Oz dictionary, but they seem to think that we have funny American spelling too. Had to download English UK version to get it right.
Simmo

Thanks Gwyn, I edited the post because I realised that the spellchecker was in the browser as you say. However I`ve had no luck in changing it.
Oh well I might have another try.
Cheers Simmo

I`m an active member of the Historical Aircraft restoration Society in Australia and I`m part of the Catalina crew. The avatar is a sticker that we had made to sell to supporters. Luckily my favourite hobby is photographing old aeroplanes.

This one of those impossible questions, because every body has their own preferences. It`s a bit like asking whats the best make of car......
Since I bought my first DSLR the strangely named but brilliant *ist DS, I have tried:
Bibble pro/ Aftershot
Capture One Pro
DxO Optics Pro
Lightroom
ACR
Lightzone
Photivo
Pentax Photo Lab
And for some reason I keep coming back to Silkypix Pro. Pentax say that the Silkypix conversion engine gives the best Colour rendition with Pentax cameras and thats why they used the Silkypix engine to make their own propriety software supplied with Pentax Cameras. Unfortunately they stuffed it up completely.( they used the Silkypix v.2.0)- Silky pix are up to v.5.0 now) Photivo produces absolutely brilliant results but have the least intuitive interface ever.
Simmo

Commiserations, I know exactly how you feel. I was lucky my insurer replaced everything stolen with new gear. Hope yours does to.
Simmo

Hullo Chris, yes I did that test with the lens fully open and I`m glad to see that you are sceptical and planning your own tests, I was, when I first heard of it. I would hate to think that any one would rush off to an air show and try that without doing their own tests first. As a matter of fact I`m planning on re-doing my test as the first one was done when I was using a Sigma 70-300 APO DG and I`m keen to see if there is any difference with the Pentax 55-300.