Monthly Archives: May 2016

Solar Impulse and Shooting at Midnight

The round the world trip of Solar Impulse, the solar powered aircraft conceived of by Bertrand Piccard and built/flown by him and Andre Borschberg, resumed its journey after an enforced stay in Hawaii while they dealt with some overheating issues with the batteries. By the time the batteries were fixed, it was too late in the year to continue. The aircraft charges its batteries during the day and uses them at night. If the day is shorter and the night longer, the flight is not sustainable. The arrival of spring meant they could resume the trip.

Originally the leg from Hawaii to the continental US was supposed to go to Phoenix. The break meant they came up with a revised route which included a stop in the Bay Area at Moffett Field in Mountain View. This meant I could cover it for Global Aviation Resource. There are two articles I prepared which you can see here and here.

The arrival was scheduled for about midnight. Late landings and early departures are scheduled to provide the calmest conditions. The very high aspect ratio, lightweight airframe is sensitive to turbulence. It also is easier to schedule a very slow aircraft in to the air traffic patterns during the night. While the time moved around a bit, it ended up being pretty much as expected. This brought the issue of how to shoot an aircraft at midnight.

I took a second shooter with me in the person of Hayman Tam. I wanted stills and video for the story and can’t get both at once so we worked on it together. He would focus on stills and I would get video. I would also get some stills too. The plane is sufficiently slow that you can get both for most situations apart from the landing itself. It didn’t hurt that Hayman had just taken delivery of his D500 which should be a lot better in low light.

I was mounting my camera and the 100-400 on a gimbal mount to steady it for video. This was also helpful for getting stills. Not ideal but better than nothing. I was at the max ISO for my camera of 12,800 (excluding the extended ranges) with -1 to -2 in exposure compensation. Even so, it was still a very slow shutter speed. Some bursts of shooting were necessary to get a reasonable shot. Fortunately the aircraft has a lot of lights of its own otherwise there wouldn’t be much to see. It’s a shame my new bodies hadn’t arrived at the time as they might have been able to get better results. Even so, I was quite pleased with what I got considering that I was shooting in the darkest conditions I have ever tried for a plane.

Texas One Retires (for now)

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I saw online this weekend that Southwest Airlines had retired Texas One, a jet painted up in Texas colors. Texas One is a 737-300 and Southwest is accelerating the withdrawal of the 300 Series jets. It flew out of Dallas to a facility that will break the jet for parts. By coincidence, I happened to shoot this very jet the day before when it arrived at SFO. I had no idea that it would be at the end of its career. Nice surprise. For those that like the colors, fear not. I hear that Southwest will be painting another jet in this scheme before too long.

Michael Jordan’s Gulfstream

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Waukegan Airport is the home for a number of corporate aircraft. One of the regular visitors is a Gulfstream belonging to a man who has a home in the area and who is associated with Chicago area sports in a big way. However, the aircraft is wearing colors that are more associated with his college playing days in North Carolina. The result is possibly not the most attractive paint job you have ever seen. It does include the logo of the man in question in his trademark (literally) pose of Air Jordan. I once spent a portion of a day driving around the airfield with the Airport Manager. As we went through one of the electronic gates, he spotted the remnants of a cigar on the ground outside the gate. Apparently, this is one of Michael’s cigars. He is not allowed to smoke them when on the ramp so he drops them just before entering the area.

The Royal Navy Comes to Farnborough

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Another flashback post today. This one is an old Farnborough airshow and it included a rather large flying contribution from the Royal Navy. I don’t now recall exactly why the Navy was so committed to this show. This wasn’t even on the public show days when the display is often modified for the public from the format used for the trade days.

The main element of the display was six Sea Harriers. These were FRS1 models prior to the F/A2 upgrade program. The aircraft took off in groups of three and included a formation hovering routine with the jets arrayed along the runway providing a jet in front of most of the viewing crowd. Some fast flying was also a part of the display of course.

Helicopters also contributed to the display and the low speed capabilities of the Harrier meant that it was possible to combine the fixed and rotary elements together in one formation. The whole thing made quite an impression as a recall. The sound of six hovering Harriers was certainly enough to give the eardrums a workout!

Adam A500 – Rare But Still Out There

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I was talking with a longtime friend of mine about some stuff recently and it got me thinking about a project he had worked on a few years ago. He was heavily involved in Adam Aircraft based out of Centennial Airport south of Denver. The company had two projects; the A500 twin piston and the A700 twin jet. The company ultimately folded with only about half a dozen of the A500s delivered to customers and the A700 still in flight test. I was wondering whether I had any shots of either type.

I did make a visit to the company while he worked there and got to walk around the flight test hangars. Sadly, no cameras were allowed so I don’t have any images of the work the company was doing. That is a big shame. However, I did come across A500s twice. One time was at Oshkosh where a couple of the planes were on display together. Later I also saw one parked up at Palwauckee (now called Chicago Executive) where it had a cover over the fuselage. I believe some are still flying but, without manufacturer support, I imagine they are not cheap to keep.

80s Airliners

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In previous posts I have talked about the program I am going through the scan all of my old negatives and transparencies. It is a far speedier process than I used to use but it is still pretty time consuming and I am about a third of the way through the collection. It will depend on how many rainy weekend days I get as to how quickly I go through them. Something I am discovering as I go is that I have a variety of shots I had completely forgotten about. Over the years I have gone through the sheets of negatives from various aviation events that I wanted shots from. I was pretty familiar with what was there. What I hadn’t realized was that my old film days would often include two or three shots of an aviation topic in amongst a bunch of other shots.

I have been coming across all sorts of shots, both civil and military that I had forgotten about. The majority of them are airliners, some of which are types now out of service and occasionally airlines that don’t exist anymore. Old 747-100s, some early Airbuses, 727 and 737-200, the occasional Ilyushin and even a Shorts Belfast show up. Needless to say there are some appearances by Concorde too.

A combination of poor technique, less than ideal conditions and some less than pristine negatives means that these shots are not going to be gracing the walls any time soon. However, they are an interesting reminder of things that have gone. I wish I had more comprehensive coverage of the time but I actually didn’t take that many pictures at that time. A tad disappointing but I can’t change it now.

Crosswind Training in the Citabria

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This Citabria was flying circuits at Hayward while I was there. The wind was pretty strong and coming across the runway so the pilot was taking the opportunity to practice their crosswind landings. A lot of wing was down into wind in order to compensate for the conditions and, while they occasionally struggled with some of the bigger gusts, they did seem to have good control of the aircraft. I guess awkward conditions are a reason a lot of flyers would stay on the ground but this one saw an opportunity to get some good practice in. Nicely done!

Black Hawk Welcoming Committee

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A work trip recently took me through Chicago Midway. I wasn’t there long before getting on my next flight. We were taxiing out to depart and were coming past the National Guard air unit based on the field. They operate a bunch of Black Hawks. A couple of them were parked up on the apron and one was on approach. My plane conveniently had to hold for a while so I got to see the Black Hawk fly its approach and land. I only had my phone with me but here is some footage of the arrival.

Special Liveries

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On the whole, airline liveries are getting less and less interesting. Whether it is the branding style, the minimizing of cost or the need to return jets to lessors without too much repainting being necessary, they are ending up a bit dull. However, periodically, an airline will paint one or more of its jets in special color schemes. These may celebrate some event, recall a previous airline that was merged in at some point or be part of an alliance. Whatever the reason, it makes for some variety which is welcome.

I figured I would see which special liveries I have managed to photograph over some time. All of this was prompted by a recent China Eastern A330 that came in to SFO. My friend Roger told me it was coming in which came as a nice addition to the morning. As I was looking at the shots, I started flicking back through the catalog.

I decided not to include the alliance aircraft here. OneWorld, Star Alliance and Skyteam jets tend to be rather similar so I didn’t think they added something special. However, plenty of other jets have been more distinctive looks. It turns out that I have more of them than I realized and I didn’t want to just food this page so maybe I will have another batch of these at some point.

Everyone Has a Trainer Design

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The late 80s was a period when a whole bunch of companies were trying to come up with the perfect trainer. A large number of sir forces were considering the replacement of their trainer fleets and much discussion was underway about what the appropriate type of trainer was for the future. Basic jet trainers were ultimately going to be replaced with turboprops in a lot of places but that was in the future. Meanwhile, all sorts of trainer designs were in the works either for the basic training task or for slightly more advanced levels of tuition.

Some of these designs made it to production. Some of them never got beyond the prototype stage. Not all of them went away entirely. Even today you can still see some of the designs in an upgraded and modernized form being pitched at much the same market as they were thirty years ago.

Let’s start with the Redigo. Built by Valmet in Finland, the Redigo was a turboprop evolution of a previous piston trainer, the Vinka. It was seen as a capable but low cost training solution. Finland bought a number although they are now retired. A couple of export customers also took some. Aermacchi bought the rights to the aircraft in the 90s but I haven’t heard much about it since.

The Microjet was a small French design. Powered by a couple of diminutive Marbore turbojets, it produced way more noise than its small size would have suggested. The V tail configuration was distinctive and it made a number of airshow appearances. The project was supposedly driven by Microturbo, the manufacturer of the Marbore engine – presumably to create a market for the engine. It never proceeded beyond the prototype stage though.

Promavia created the Jet Squalus aircraft. Promavia were a Belgian company but the design was originally from Stelio Frati in Italy. Painted in colors that represented Belgium, it showed up at a number of air shows. However, it also never proceeded beyond the prototype stage.

The RFB Fantrainer was a German program. It was a tandem seat aircraft with a ducted fan behind the cockpit. It was designed to provide fighter-like handling characteristics in a training aircraft. It was judged successfully in a competition to provide a trainer for the Luftwaffe but instead they went with a USAF based training program and did not take the aircraft. It was sold to Thailand, though. I don’t know what their current status is. The aircraft was also the basis for a jet powered aircraft offered for the US JPATS competition by Rockwell. However, it lost to what became the T-6 Texan II.