Author Archives: Rob

Typhoon Air Data System

Working through some older shots for another project, I ended up looking at some shots of an RAF Typhoon displaying. As I was zoomed in on some of the shots, it was interesting to see the air data vanes on the underside of the front fuselage as the plane maneuvered. There are several vanes around the underside of the front fuselage and the differences between them can tell yaw and pitch angles. In one shot when the jet was climbing straight up, the vanes are all pointing in similar directions. Shortly before this, as the jet was pulling hard, the angle of attack was higher and the flow up around the front fuselage results in some significant differences in vane angle.

This is the sort of thing that is very important when designing and clearing a flight control system. We had a front fuselage wind tunnel model for the Typhoon during the development program. This was used for intake design but also for air data system modeling. The way in which the various vanes move is vital to understanding the control law requirements. It is also important when considering failure modes. If one vane should fail, how much it impacts the flight control behavior and how much the system detect the failure. Will the aircraft be vulnerable to control loss in the interim? The Tornado did not have as complex a flight control system, but it did have augmentation of the controls and, as it rolled, you would get quite different readings from the angle of attack probes on each side of the fuselage. How much of a difference was normal versus what was a failure was an interesting analysis problem which I enjoyed working on. My days on Typhoon were relatively limited and shortly before first flight so I never got involved with the results of the testing program, but I do enjoy looking at the resulting aircraft whenever I get the chance.

Molds for an Unlikely Airframe

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I was up at Arlington airport to see some vintage planes one weekend and was a short distance away from the hangars that Eviation operates from. This is where they built their Alice prototype. A composite airframe, the Alice was molded on site by the look of things. All I read suggests any production aircraft will be significantly different from the prototype so the molds are probably surplus at this point.

Whether that is the case or not, at least some of them appear to now be stored outside. I took a few images of them because the shaping is quite interesting and the construction of the molds themselves is something I like to see. Tooling for an airframe is not as elegant as the airframe it will produce and it needs to be rigid to allow it to produce what is needed. Now it is no longer needed, I wonder what its future will be.

Wichita’s Finest is Everywhere in the Parks

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Kenya and Tanzania have many small airstrips scattered around the countryside including in the national parks. These provide quick transfers between locations if you are willing or able to pay and don’t want the long and bumpy road trips. There are a variety of types that are used for these services and I shall show some others in upcoming posts. However, one type does dominate.

The Cessna Grand Caravan is everywhere in the region. It has the right size for many of the trips, it has sufficient capacity for luggage with the baggage pod beneath he fuselage, it is fine with the rough surface strips that are in most places and it is PT-6 powered so very reliable. We saw tons of them during the trip and also got to experience a flight on one. I was surprised to find it was a 1×2 configuration. I had assumed that they were 1×1 but not in this case. It got a lot of us in there but getting in and out was not an easy process. The aisle was minimal!

I have no idea how many Grand Caravans there are in use in rural Africa but I imagine that Cessna has delivered a ton of aircraft from Wichita to the region. I suspect that the best replacement is another Caravan. The Islander might once have been this sort of workhorse but the efficiency and reliability of the Caravan must be what has made it so ubiquitous.

Granite Falls

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I’m not sure what it was that led to this but I happened to see Granite Falls on Google Maps one day. It is a small town about 45 minutes north of us which I will have seen the sign to on many occasions as I go up Route 9 but which I had never thought of previously. Needless to say, there are waterfalls in Granite Falls. I looked at some of the pictures on Google Maps and decided to check it out some time. We headed up one weekend to have a look.

Since it was just the beginning of Fall, there hadn’t been much rain recently. Consequently, the falls were not flowing very heavily. However, looking at the shaping of the rocks around the water, it was clear that the level can be much higher and the force of the water, substantial. The falls were in stages and, while there is a fish ladder alongside, some salmon were actually trying to leap up sections of the falls. They were infrequent so I never managed to catch one airborne with the camera.

We walked along the trails that runs the length of the falls. The cliffs on the other side are very steep and you are deep in a valley. It was difficult to really capture the scale of the place. However, I did resolve to wait for the weather to get worse and to have more run off from the mountains before making a return trip to see the falls in a more aggressive mood.

Hot Air Balloon Searching for a Landing Spot

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Nice evenings during the summer mean balloon flights over Woodinville and the surrounding area. I was driving home one evening and, as I came up I-405, I could see a balloon that looked like it might be close to home. Rather than turn towards the house, I headed for one of the nearby fields that has been a landing zone for balloons before (and that have made it into posts on here). When I got there, the balloon was close but was tracking slightly west of the field so no way it was going to make it in. It was heading towards the town so I decided to drive towards the south side of the town to see where it might end up.

I was coming around the south side on the road that skirts the town and the traffic had come to a halt. This was because everyone was watching the balloon low overhead. I actually took a shot through the sunroof of the car as it came low over me. I looped around the roundabout but didn’t take the south exit because the crew seemed to be heading that way and I didn’t need to crowd things.

I went around to the next road and looked back across the fields as the balloon continued on its way. It wasn’t touching down so I guess the area was not ideal. I figured I might head a little further south and see if it came even further. I took the road to Redmond and pulled off at one of the field entrances. Sure enough, they were still drifting south but looked like they might finally be getting close to landing. I didn’t shoot much video, but I did get a little to emphasize the way the balloon was drifting through the trees. As I watched it, the ground crew pulled up and started honking at me. They were incredibly rude. As soon as I saw them arrive, I was getting out of the way. Not my fault that they were struggling to catch their balloon, but they behaved like everyone should just get out of their way. I did anyway but, if you are reading this balloon crew, don’t be assholes to bystanders if you are struggling to recover your balloon and its passengers.

Red Bark

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The arboretum in Seattle is unsurprisingly home to many interesting varieties of trees and plants. One tree that caught my eye was (perhaps) a type of willow that had bark that peeled to reveal an intense red coloration beneath. Sometimes these colors don’t seem to show up as well in an image but I fortunately had a polarizer with me and that took out some of the reflection and glare and allowed the color to show up well. Cropping in tighter seemed to make more sense, too.

The Cormorant Beats Me Again

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One of my goals for going to the air show at Abbotsford this year was to see a Cormorant fly. I know this would sound like my normal interest in the bird species but this time it means the AW101 version that is flown for Search and Rescue by Canada. Sure, I have seen plenty of 101s over the years with the British and Italian examples, but I have never seen a Canadian one before. It was due to display during the show. When I got there, I was delighted to see it sitting on the operating ramp.

However, my optimism was unjustified. There was no announcement during the show about what had happened to the SAR demo, but it just didn’t happen. The day shows did get the demo, but the Friday evening show was a no go. It was a fun show, so I wasn’t too disappointed, but it was a little frustrating to still have never seen a Cormorant airborne. One day…

Lions Abound!

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For the first of my animal related posts from our trip to Kenya and Tanzania, I am going to go with the apex predator – the lions. When we saw our first lion, I was so excited. It was off in the distance that a bunch of lions from a pride were hanging out. A young cub was running around but everything was far away. However, this was just a taster. Before too long, we were right in amongst a pride of lions. They were youngsters one the whole and playing around. One was resting and it turned out to be nursing an injury.

From this point on, we just saw more and more lions. Sometimes they were far away but often they were very close. Usually they were doing nothing. Sleeping during the day is a regular occupation and hunting is something that they prefer to do at night. We came across a solo male (surprisingly close to the spot we had stopped for lunch) and he was quite injured after a battle of some sort. He could look either imposing or vulnerable depending on the moment.

We also came across mating pairs on a couple of occasions. One of these pairs was out on the grass on a sunny day with the light making the male look totally serene. Their lack of interest in us was hard to get used to. (Step out of the vehicle and things would change rapidly!). I liked getting shots of them sleeping too as they often looked like they were in uncomfortable positions. However, a quick opening of the eye would transform the shot.

It was easy to get a bit blasé about the lions after a while. We saw so many and in a variety of locations that it was easy to forget that these were lions for goodness sake! Don’t ever forget that. Now, as I look back through the shots, I am reminded of just how lucky I am and how amazing this was.

Concrete Fly In

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The time between me doing something and its appearance on the blog can vary wildly. Sometimes, I will aim to get something squeezed in here soon after it happens but that is the exception. Usually, I have stuff posted out quite far in advance. As I come up with new topics, they get added to the schedule and, if a topic doesn’t get written about promptly, it can really disappear into the distance. Such is the case with the Concrete fly in of 2023.

There will be several posts that make it on here from that event in the coming weeks. I have started writing them up but some of the specific topics will take a while to appear. However, I shall start things off with a more general post about the fly in. Held at Mears Field in the interestingly names town of Concrete, it is a popular gathering of planes from around the region. There is a single runway running east/west in the valley and the planes park up on either side of it. You are able to walk across the runway at a couple of locations (or further away from them if you want to avoid the air cadets) so just keep you head on a swivel. The wind seems to change midway through the day, so arrivals were from the west in the morning and the east in the afternoon.

We set up at a spot near the threshold on the eastern end of the field and it provides a good location to watch the landings and the takeoff rolls. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that you can walk around, and you find you have stayed in one place for ages getting similar shots. I did try and mix it up from time to time but it was rather sunny and warm and the shade under the wing of a 170 was pretty appealing.

Since I was shooting a lot of light aircraft, I decided to try and make the shots more interesting by keeping the shutter speed low to emphasize speed. The downside the this is that you are very close to the runway so the parallax effect is quite pronounced. You can also just miss a ton of shots but why not have some fun. Few of them are ones you can’t afford to miss. It does mean a sharp nose is probably combined with a blurry fin. This will really annoy some viewers and others will never notice. Since I am shooting for me, I’m the only one that has to care!

More to come of some specific planes and events from the day out with a regular crew of aviation loons.

Will Rolla Replace Zwift?

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Since I got a smart trainer for cycling, I have been using Zwift as my app for training rides. I have been very happy with the way it works and find it a great tool for training as I can do some pretty long rides on it without getting bored. I have done up to two hours which would have been inconceivable on older trainers. I did see a video recently of a new software tool that could provide similar functionality called Rolla. It is free for the time being, so I decided to try it out. Will it be a suitable replacement for Zwift?

One of the things I did like the look of was the graphics output. Zwift has a slightly cartoonish styling which doesn’t bother me at all – indeed, I quite like the odd things that they throw in like a bear falling out of a tree or a stag by the road – but having more realistic scenery was of interest. Rolla looked like it would be more like riding in real locations. As a new app, I knew it wouldn’t have extensive scenery databases yet, but they could be useful to try out.Having used it a few times, now, I have come across a bunch of things I didn’t like. First, the software doesn’t pick up my cadence from the trainer. I can come across the top of a climb and start speeding down the other side but my cadence on the trainer doesn’t change. It isn’t reading the cadence either so the data on screen and my data download has nothing of use. This is not helpful for training my cadence nor for having a realistic riding experience. I also had issues uploading to Strava. It now works but there is no way to get it to recognize rides already completed. The gradient is not connected so my trainer does not respond to changes in slope like it does on Zwift. That physical feedback of gradient change is very helpful, particularly as slope changes are not very visually obvious. The rider symbol looks weird too with an odd rolling motion of the hips. It’s not as bad as the runners I pass, though. They look like the T1000 from Terminator! Lastly, sometimes it just seems to have you riding off the side of the road for no obvious reason.All of this is to say it is a long way from being a replacement for Zwift. It is not going to be something I use for training for now but, with some time to develop it and implement new functionality (plus clean up some of the buggier elements) might make that change. I would also prefer to just use it on the iPad rather than having to have the phone app open along with the iPad to control things. We shall see. In the meantime, Zwift will remain my go to.