I have the fuji s3000 and love the camera. Best way to capture planes in flight is use continuous mode. If you go to the portrait setting on the camera, and select continuous you will be there. What this will do is take 2 pictures about 1/2 second apart. The time delay from pushing the shutter button till when the picture is actually taken can be somewhat a pain in the *****. I first started with auto mode, and tried to lead the planes in the sky so I would capture them. Then I started using continuous mode and got a lot better results. Just remember, you can always go back and review the pictures so you can delete the ones with bare sky.

Also with something with lots of action, like combat, it is best to go to move mode and make small movies of it. You can then run it through editing software and capture the frames you want.

If you want to rely heavily on software zoom, make sure you take pictures at a high quality. The lower quality settings will pixelize when you start to zoom too much.

It's a good idea to invest in some extra cards too, so you don't fill up with bad pictures and have to waste time deleting them and miss the action. I recommend Amazon for the XD card. They are about 40% cheaper than most retail outlets (I found out the hard way).

Also I found the NiMH batteries the best. I can usually shoot non stop all day with them. I purchased a set of four with a rapied charger at Wal-Mart for $30 and got an extra set of 4 for $16. That way I always got a set for back up.

If you want to learn the manual settings, set you camera in a stationary place and take pictures of the same object with different settings. That way you can see what they actually do.

Keep playing with it, and I am sure you will love it. Beats the old days of gonig and getting film developed, or doing it yourself (my darkroom has now become my hangar). After playing with it for awhile I am sure you will get the itch for a digital SLR the same way I have. I am hoping to purchase a Nikon this summer, although that takes away from the airplane budget dramatically.

Have Fun
Jamie