Any tiips for the NIkon 80-400 AF-S?

[nikon50bigma]

I hope everyone is excited for the airshow this weekend!
I'm driving down from MA tomorrow for the show and in the process I decided to rent a lens (Nikon 80-400 AF-S) but I'll only get my hands on it tomorrow night. So I won't have too much time to play around with it before the show.
Any current 80-400 AF-S users have any tips specific to that lens?
I've heard some qualms about it's VR at high shutter speeds - any validity to that?

[gonzalu]

Drop the VR. It is useless at anything but slower shutter speeds when shooting stationary objects. Even panning can be problematic. You will get different opinions but if your shutter speed is above 1/500sec, the subject will be sharp if you track it well. VR will not help you there. In my experience, some Nikon lenses will actually add VR blur to the photos. For me the 200-400mm f/4 and this lens do that. The 70-200mm f/2.8 is immune to it so I leave it on all the time on it.

One tip for airshow is to use the Focus Limiter and set it to 6m-infinity. This reduces hunting.

If windy at the beach, take off the lens hood.

Stay above f/7.1 and below f/11. f/16 will diffract and f/6.3 is soft especially at 400mm

Stay away from the corners/edges. LEave some room and don;t fill the frame fully, especially at 400mm. The edges and corners are very soft compared to primes (of course) and more so than other zooms costing this much.

[nikon50bigma]

Thanks for the reply.
How is the VR around 1/250 (I was hoping to use it for prop blur)?