Something brought me to some shots of a jet now sadly gone. The MRJ has shown up on the blog in the past. I saw one at Paine Field which showed up here. That wasn’t my first encounter with the Mitsubishi developed aircraft, though. While they were built in Japan, flight testing was undertaken at Moses Lake in Washington. Ferrying the jets across the Pacific meant choosing the route and one of the jets was routed from Hawaii to California. It landed at San Jose and, since I was living in the Bay Area in those days, I went to see it arrive.

San Jose has pretty reliably good weather and the conditions were about as good as you could hope. The light can be a bit harsh, but it wasn’t too bad. The arrival gave a good chance to get a shot. The stop was not a long one. Clear customs and refuel and then they were on their way north to Washington. Departure shots at San Jose are a little limited. The spot I had was a bit far down from the point the planes get airborne so they can be quite high by the time you get a good look, or the heat haze is bad when the angle is better. Still, I did get some shots that are okay.