Monthly Archives: November 2015

Grasmere

Our Lake District stay was based out of Ambleside. It is only a short trip up the road to get to the pretty village of Grasmere. Home to William Wordsworth, it was also a good starting point for a walk through the surrounding hills taking us down to Rydal, around Rydal Water and back up to overlook Grasmere before heading back down into the village. Grasmere is a very picturesque lake which makes it pretty standard fayre for the Lake District where everything is picturesque. Even by Lake District standards, though, it does look great.

Our walk took us up on to the hillside overlooking the lake and with a view up towards Dunmail Raise and on to Thirlmere. While it started out a bit overcast, the sun started to break through as we walked and the sunlight on the hillsides amongst the shadows of the clouds made the place look magical. These pictures do nothing to share that feeling with you. The village of Grasmere is a very popular tourist location but, thankfully, most people stay close to the village and our walk, while not devoid of other people, was pretty quiet. We did come across the same three people at various times but managed to pace ourselves to allow them to head off leaving us with a bit more space. Having people around was not so much of an issue but, since I am a bit out of shape, I don’t like to see other people while I am struggling with a climb. I have to maintain the pretense that I am in good shape!

Some Corporate Movements

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Much as the light aircraft movements at King County don’t get much attention, there is so much corporate jet traffic that it can also get overlooked. The bigger jets like the Globals tend to be more interesting to me. However, there are plenty of different types coming through. As with the light aircraft, here is a selection from a recent trip.

More of the Island from the Air

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By now, if you have been following recent blog posts, you will have seen a bunch of pictures of the Isle of Wight taken while flying with Pete in his Arrow. Our trip around the Island included a fair few other spots that I photographed so these shots are some of the other things we saw that didn’t fit into an individual blog post.

Closest Yet on the 777-300ER Gear

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You might not think a really windy day was going to be a great time to head out and take photos with a long lens hand held. This certainly is not ideal but there are some advantages that a really windy day can bring. The purpose of the trip was to catch the new Virgin 787-9 service coming in to SFO on a Sunday afternoon when I didn’t have anything else planned. While the wind was very strong, the light was nice so I gave it a go. What I didn’t realize was that, while it was windy at home, it was really windy at SFO! Everything was operating on the 28s because the wind was above 30kts and gusting to well over 40kts. This also meant that departures got airborne quite quickly given that they started with over 30kts after zero takeoff roll!

The heavy jets were frequently airborne before the intersection of the runways and this included an Air France 777-300ER. Consequently, I was able to get a clearer view of the gear during rotation than I have managed before. Above are a still of the gear during rotation and also an animated GIF of the rotation in progress. I think I shall consider myself happy with this. It is the best I have got. Unless I get to spend some time out by the runway while one is departing, I doubt I will get a better chance than this.

Stourhead

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One thing that there is no shortage of in the UK is impressive country houses. As a result of the financial circumstances of many of the old families that owned these places, a lot have ended up in the hands of the National Trust. One of the most attractive estates is Stourhead in Wiltshire. This was not originally on our schedule during our UK trip but we had a change of heart regarding our original plan for the day and decided to head to Stourhead instead. We are still members of the National Trust so this was a freebie for us (if you excluded the amount spent over the years on membership!).

When we visit these estates, our focus is usually on the grounds rather than the houses themselves. While I am interested in the external views of the house, the interiors are often a bit repetitive and something I will only bother with if I have plenty of time and there is something special about the insides. Normally, I am far happier walking around the grounds. In Stourhead’s case, the grounds are quite stunning. There are many buildings scattered around the estate, there are lakes, bridges, temples and a village within the estate including estate cottages and a pub. I imagine you could avoid ever having the leave if you were so inclined!

Visiting these places in September is a good idea. The weather is still pretty nice but the holidays are over and so the number of people attending has significantly dropped. I think it is fair to say we were amongst the youngest people there! If we lived closer, I would certainly enjoy visiting Stourhead at various different times of year. I imagine the fall colors will be impressive and winter would be very nice to see.

Update on the 100-400

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Nearly a year ago I got the new model of the Canon 100-400 EF lens. I had it on back order when it first came out and it arrived just before Christmas so became an impromptu gift to me! Almost everything about the lens I liked. However, if you read my initial thoughts on the lens which I covered here, you will have seen I had a concern about softness in one part of the image. I have used the lens extensively since then and, while I have not always had an issue, I have continued to be concerned about the output in one area – particularly when compared the the excellent sharpness the rest of the image was displaying.

I sent the lens to Canon earlier this year for a service. I explained my concerns and they took a look and told me it was functioning properly and returned it. I took it on another shoot and got more shots which did not look right. This time I emailed CPS and provided them with some sample shots. They suggested it didn’t look right and told me to send the lens back in with a description of everything to date along with more sample images on a card.

I now have the lens on its way back to me. Here is what they found.

Your product has been examined and it was found that the optical assembly was broken causing the auto focus to operate improperly from time to time. The 6th group lens and 2nd group lens were replaced. Product functions were confirmed.

It is nice to know that I wasn’t imagining things but a little disappointing it took this long to get to the bottom of things. Of course, I could have done some of this sooner if I had been more certain of the problem. In future, I will be a bit more willing to trust my instincts. Now to get the repaired lens in my hands and test it!

Salisbury Cathedral

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We had a nice evening out with my nephew, Chris, while we were in the UK. He took us in to Salisbury for dinner. When we had eaten, he took us for a short walk through the center of the town and to the Cathedral. It was nicely lit up for the evening. I only had my cell phone with me but the camera on that seemed to do a reasonable job capturing the shot. I was pleasantly surprised. Just for comparison, I add a picture below of the cathedral I took a few years ago while flying over Salisbury with my friend Sean in his Europa.

Tucanos Low Level (But I’m Not Prepared)

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The Lake District is an area that is known to be popular for low flying military aircraft. In all of the years I have been going there, I have hardly seen any jets coming through. Mainly that was because I was there at the weekend and the military don’t tend to fly much at the weekend. I was hopeful that we might see some traffic on this trip since we would be there midweek. We did get some traffic but it didn’t go quite as planned.

A few times we saw Hawks zipping over the town while we were outside. We were generally getting ready to go somewhere else and they caught me out as they came through. On one hike I took a long lens with me. Of course, this didn’t go to plan. Most of the time I was looking at some lovely scenery so I had a wide lens on the camera. This was the time the RAF chose to show up. No jets this time but a selection of Tucano turboprop trainers. I wasn’t expecting them when they came through so grabbed the camera with the lens I had on at the time and got a few shots. These won’t be of much use to me but they do remind me of the excitement of being caught out be a low flying plane of any type.

USS Coronado LCS

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As a small boy, my Gran would take me to Portsmouth each August for Navy Day. We would spend a day walking around the dockyard and getting on to various warships to see what they were like. This was a pretty big event and, in those days, the number of ships in port for those days is probably more than the Royal Navy has in total today. The result of this was an interest in an early day with warships. Growing up by the water meant that ships of all types were a regular feature of life.

Warship design underwent quite a transition. Traditionally, warships had been slender designs that achieved speed and supposedly provided the most stable ride. However, this was not an approach that was universally agreed and shorter broader designs started to gain favor. The Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates were one of the first signs that Navy’s were taking new configurations seriously.

The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has gone a stage further with one of the builders. There are two LCS designs in production and one of them has a narrow center hull and two additional outboard hulls further aft. This trimaran configuration provides slender hulls but with a lot of stability and the space for a large deck. One of the LCS ships was in San Francisco for Fleet Week and took part in the Parade of Ships.

USS Coronado (LCS-4) was the ship on display. She is the second of the General Dynamics – Bath Iron Works ships to be commissioned and entered service in 2014. As she entered the bay under the bridge she turned towards to city and you could get a good view (albeit at some distance) of the unusual hull shape. As she got closer, the view was more abeam the ship but you could still see the layout of the armaments. As she headed away, a view of the stern hinted at the hull layout but really emphasized the width of the deck.

The US Navy is currently reconsidering its needs and is looking for a frigate that is more heavily armed than the LCS designs but makes as much use of the hull designs as possible. We shall see how that all works out. In the meantime, this is one of the more unusual shapes afloat. The Zumwalt destroyer is even more unusual so I shall have to try and see that at some point too.

United 757 Display

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You don’t often get to see an airliner maneuvering at low level. They tend to be up and away or approaching to land in a stable configuration. Each year at Fleet Week, united bring one of their airliners as part of the air show and it gets to be thrown around the bay, if not with abandon, at least with more vigor than is the norm for an airliner. In the past, the 747 has been the display aircraft of choice. Since I have been here, they have been using the 757.

The bay provides a nice backdrop for any display but one that uses a big airplane is well suited to the area since they have to maintain a reasonable distance from the shore at all times unless they are climbing out over the crowd. A combination of clean passes and gear and flaps deployed passes made for some good variety and some aggressive climb outs at high power and low weight were nice. Watching the plane turn over the Marin side of the bay was also pretty cool.

This may not be the most dynamic of air show performances but it has a novelty factor that makes it worth seeing and it certainly brought some variety to the show on the day. I’m just glad I got to see it this year. Last year they displayed on the day I was there but the low cloud base meant that we mainly heard them above the clouds but saw very little.