Category Archives: Pacific Northwest

The Deferred German Car Day

I missed out on the beginning of the Exotics@RTC schedule this year. They had several delays due to weather and I was away when the first event finally went ahead. However, when it came to the German Car Day, the weather played to my favor. I would have missed the originally planned date for travel reasons but, when it did happen, I was able to make the trip.

I like the German Car Day. The Italian Day is always impressive but there are far too many people with tons of cash that just buy Ferraris and Lamborghinis, so you end up with a lot of similar stuff. German Day isn’t perfect, but it does seem to pull out a lot more serious enthusiasts. Sure, there are loads of Porsches and BMWs around, but the central area had a bunch of cool looking motors. Yes, you’ll get a modern exotic Mercedes thrown in from someone with an excess of disposable income, but it doesn’t detract from a nice gathering of cool cars. Here are some of those cars!

Local Pitts Has a Good Approach to Pattern Work

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It is not a regular occurrence, but several times I have been at Boeing Field when a local Pitts Special is doing pattern work. Most times I have been a long way from it so not able to try and get any useful shots. That changed a little while back when I was near the terminal building. The pilot flies patterns with a steep climb out, a downwind leg and a steep curving descent to land followed by powering up and flying low to gain speed before repeating the process. I decided to give some low shutter speeds a good to see how things looked.

Chinese Air Ambulance Quick Visit

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You see a fair few air ambulance operators through Boeing Field. There are often flights moving people to and from the city from Alaska and other parts of the state. The ones I am used to, though, tend to be older Learjets and US or Canadian registered. We do get the occasional one from overseas, but I was quite surprised to get a G550 from China showing up as an air ambulance. It seemed worthy of a look. It was a pretty brief stop for the jet before it headed across the Pacific. The naming seemed quite amusing – Happy Air!

A Hawk and a Rabbit – One Isn’t Happy

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While waiting for the arrival of some jets, we were treated to a little bit of wildlife spotting. A hawk had been hunting over the fields in our vicinity, but it started to head our way and I grabbed a bunch of shots as it came by out of habit. One of the group checked his pictures out while we continued to wait and noticed that the hawk was carrying its next meal. It appears a rabbit had been caught out in the open and was now no more. The nature of life in the wild, I guess.

Dinner on a Floating Pub

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On our first night in Nanaimo, Nancy had identified a possible venue for dinner. The Dinghy Dock Pub is on Protection Island or, to be more accurate, is on a floating jetty attached to Protection Island. There is a small boat that takes people to the island and a good chunk of those people were heading to the pub when we went.

You disembark and are basically at the entrance to the pub so no need to go on to the island at all if you don’t want to. If we had been there at a different time, it would have been nice to stroll around the island, but we only got there in time to eat and, after we had finished, time was moving on a touch. You can sit inside or outside and, since the weather was lovely, outside it was!

The food was nice (it’s a pub, not a gourmet restaurant) and sitting outside as the sun gradually went down was so relaxing. We did have to keep a thought about the return boat since it only goes hourly. If you miss it, you have a long wait. Of course, if you are in a pub, what could you possibly do to pass the time? We timed things quite well and the boat was not long after we had finished so we took the pleasant ride back across the harbor to Nanaimo.

An Enzo Out for Some Shopping

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A short jaunt to Redmond on a Saturday morning for Exotics@RTC did not yield a huge number of vehicles. Being between two feature days, it seemed to be quite a low-key event. There were still plenty of nice cars to be seen but it was a bit of a surprise to come across a Ferrari Enzo sitting out in the lot. Maybe someone had used it to run out to the shops for a while but, since the event was not as heavily attended, it wasn’t quite as swamped with viewers as might otherwise be the case.

It is quite a cool looking vehicle although some of the styling cues are not my favorite. Even so, standing around such a valuable vehicle was rather fun. I was chatting to a couple of guys that wanted to know exactly what type of Ferrari it was and, when I mentioned what they sell for, they were quite taken aback. We agreed that, at those prices, we would keep our own Enzos at home most of the time!

HondaJet Shapes Are Fascinating

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This HondaJet had come from outside the US, so it had to clear customs at BFI after landing. That put it right in front of me while I was waiting for something else (although I can’t remember what it was). I find the jet very interesting although I am frustrated by the way in which all the ones I see have the same paint scheme with only a change in what color is used. Since this one parked up near me, I got to look at it from a variety of angles and that is a good way to appreciate the unusual shapes the airframe has.

The pylons are cambered and the way in which the nacelles sit on the wing is more easily appreciated from behind. It is great to have something different. I look forward to seeing the big brother when it makes it into service. A shame that Honda seems to have given up on their own engines but not a massive surprise.

Eagle Bugged by An Annoying Osprey

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Mum and I took a trip down to Juanita Bay to see what sort of wildlife was out and about. There was plenty of activity with both eagles and ospreys flying over the water looking for their next meal. At one stage, an eagle had caught a small fish and took it to a log in the water to enjoy. It seems that one of the ospreys decided that this could not stand and that the eagle should give up its catch. The osprey swooped down repeatedly at the eagle trying to get it spooked and to maybe leave the fish behind. The eagle was definitely annoyed by the osprey but was not inclined to move. This went on for a while but eventually the osprey realized it was futile and moved on.

Indian Rafales Testing PNW Weather

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I may have worked on the Typhoon/EF2000 in my younger days and have a strong affinity for that plane, but I have always appreciated its competitor from next door, the Dassault Rafale. The Rafale is a very elegant-looking airframe, and it has recently started to sell very well on the export market. One of those customers is India and the Indian Air Force brought some of its jets to Alaska for an exercise. They routed across the US with an overnight stop at McChord AFB (JBLM) before continuing on to Alaska.

I went out with a bunch of friends to see them arrive. They came in two waves and the first arrived in some quite poor conditions. This resulted in them making straight in approaches to the field. This was a bit of grey jets and a grey sky, but it was still worthwhile. There was a fair time between them showing up and the second wave and, by that time, the weather had improved considerably. This allowed them to do a run in and break to landing. Four jets came in but one was clearly offset – presumably getting some shots of the others. They tightened up before the break, though.

The final turns varied in how tight they were but, since the earlier jets had allowed me to get some more standard side-on shots, I decided to get closer to their approach path. I moved in a way for the first jet and then proceeded to sprint closer between each arrival in order to try and vary the angles a bit. If there had been more jets or time, I might have gone for directly on the centerline to get a head on shot but that wasn’t possible. What fun catching something very different to the norm for this area.

Struggling with Bee Photography

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The flowers were out on some of the plants in our front yard and they were attracting the bees, so I decided to try again to get some bee shots. Rather than try and follow the bees around the flowers, I decided to see the camera up on a mount aligned with one flower and wait for the bees to come there. I used a cable release so I could sit back a bit and wait. This did require the plant to stay steady which, when the wind was blowing, was far from guaranteed.

I was sitting so still for a long time as I waited that a rabbit came walking across the yard to nibble some leaves that were by my feet. Since I wasn’t moving, it was totally oblivious to me. Rather than spook it by trying to get my phone out to photograph it, I let it eat in peace. It wandered off soon enough.

The bees dutifully showed up in my flower from time to time. I wasn’t sure how well the shots were coming out since I was just triggering with the cable release when things were in roughly the right place. I didn’t know whether the autofocus was going to choose the bee or part of the plant. There were plenty of misses, but we did get a few good shots where the bees were in shot, in focus and interesting enough. I was pleasantly surprised how many shots actually worked out. I had been quite pessimistic when taking the shots, so this was more successful than I had expected.