A trip to Whidbey Island for me and Paul was aimed at seeing whatever we could get there on a random weekday.  In truth, though, what we really wanted was P-3s.  With the Orions rapidly being replaced by P-8s, they are getting harder to find and will soon be a memory.  Consequently, our fingers were crossed for some of Lockheed’s aging subhunters.  It turned out we were lucky.

It wasn’t a busy day for the turboprops but we did get to see a few.  A departure early on meant we were pleased to have had some success.  We also got arrival traffic later which certainly was pleasing.  Our only disappointment was that one of the planes was operating with a rare canoe under the fuselage.  We saw it in the distance (when the shots are horribly distorted by heat haze) but it was operating off a different runway from that which we were near, and we never were in the right place.  However, we did get some of its buddies so a successful day out.