Tag Archives: airplane

Above SFO

This blog has had plenty of pictures that have been taken at SFO. Most of them have been of the planes flying into and out of the airport. Not many have been of the airport itself. If you find yourself on the left side of a plane out of Oakland heading south, you will get a pretty good view of the airport on the other side of the bay as you climb out. That includes a view along the departure runways as you head towards the city and then a turn that takes you close to over the top.

You climb quickly so start to end up a bit high for good shots but it still is a pretty neat view. The aircraft windows provide their usual problems but moving the camera around gets a better chance of a reasonable shot. I also have been experimenting with using a smaller aperture. I used to think shooting wide open would be best to avoid showing the scratches and any other blemishes on the windows. However, since the distortion in the windows is quite variable, shooting with a narrower aperture might restrict the light to a smaller part of the window and increase the chances of getting the clear area for the whole shot. Who knows? Individual aircraft vary so much, it is hard to tell at this point.

It would have been cool to have more traffic at SFO as we flew over but the planes were pretty small anyway so that may not have made any difference in the end.

Centurion Freighter

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I was in the vicinity of SeaTac when I saw on Flightaware that a freighter operated by Centurion Cargo was inbound. This was not an operator I had seen much of and, since I had a few minutes before I was heading to my next appointment, i thought I would try to catch it. Getting arrivals at SeaTac in the afternoon when they are coming from the north restricts the options for shooting. however, there was a place I had been before for departures that I thought I would try.

I got there with a few minutes to spare so was able to get an idea of what was possible with some other arrivals. The location was not ideal with a lot of trees in the vicinity which, even though it was winter, tended to obscure things a bit. There was a view through the trees up the approach and then along a road as they passed by. Neither was very good. I got a British Airways 777 which gave me a clue as to where the Centurion jet would appear and how much free space there would be. Not much as it turned out. However, I did get a brief view which will have to do for now.

Two New 737s

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Boeing Field not only is the home of development flight test activities for the commercial aircraft business but it is also where the production flight testing for the 737s is done. After the first flight from Renton, the jets come to Boeing Field for acceptance testing and delivery to the customers. Therefore, you can see 737s that you are unlikely to see again once they get into service. I had three customer aircraft on test flights at various times while I was there on one trip.

One of them is not such a surprise for anyone in Europe. A Ryanair 737 landed just as the sun was setting. That is a sight that many European travelers will have seen although we don’t get to see them over here. However, the other two were slightly more interesting to me. One was an Aeroflot jet and the other was from Iraqi Airways. I got the Aeroflot jet twice as it happened. It departed when I was passing through on my way to a meeting and it happened to come back late that day when I was coming back.

The Iraqi jet was one I had seen parked up as I drove by but I didn’t see it leave. However, it was due to return at the end of the day and actually came in not long before the Aeroflot jet. It was clearly going to be in before the sun went down. Aeroflot was a bit of a closer call. We knew it was coming but were watching the shadows stretch across the field and some clouds drift in. Fortunately, the cloud passed just in time and the sun was still just above the horizon so we ended up with some lovely light.

B-58 Hustler

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A few people I know recently had pictures up on Facebook of the B-58 Hustler bomber. This was a supersonic bomber from the cold war era. It was a beast of an aircraft and one that I would love to have seen in action. Sadly, they were all withdrawn from service long before I had a chance to see one. However, there are a few of them scattered around museums and I have seen them in person, even if it is not quite the same. I thought I would throw in a few shots of my own of these outstanding looking jets.

Thunderbirds and the Missing Pylon

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A discussion on Facebook between a few people I know recently turned to a discussion about the USAF display team, the Thunderbirds. While I can’t now remember how ended up the way they did, at some point, there was discussion about the time the Thunderbirds touched in mid-air with one aircraft losing part of the wing tip missile rail. This occurred at the Chicago Air and Water Show and I was there that day.

At the time, not many people knew anything had happened. Indeed, for a while they flew on before pulling out of the display routine and orbiting overhead and then eventually returning to Gary to land. No-one on the ground had any idea what was going on. I did not capture the contact between the jets. However, when I looked through my shots afterwards, I realized I had a shot of the four ship formation with one aircraft missing the rail and another showing some signs of damage on the tailplane where the rail had impacted. Below is one shot to prove they started out intact!

Some T-38s Sneak By

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A trip to the beach can only be improved on by one thing. Fast jets! A four ship of T-38s flew over while we were walking on the beach. What more can I ask for?

Scimitar Tips

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Aviation Partners Boeing has been very effective over the years in getting their technology into mainline airline service. The winglets they developed for the Boeing 737 have been very widely adopted with installations on 300 Series, 700 Series, 800 Series and 900 Series jets around the world. The BBJs have also had them extensively. I don’t think any new 737s are delivered without them. The programs for the 757 and 767 have also been well adopted.

The 737 Max is going to have a new winglet design that Boeing have created. However, it is a way from flying. Meanwhile, APB has not stood still and they have created a new winglet design that has a downward portion mated to an updated winglet under the name scimitar. This is now making an appearance on a lot of jets as a retrofit. Southwest, United and Alaska have all started rolling the installation out.

I like the look of the new design. The tip seems to be a bit of a styling effort. The downward facing portion is well aligned to avoid creating a drag inducing choke area at the root. The configuration is actually quite reminiscent of the original winglet designs in the paper Richard Whitcomb wrote when first proposing the concept. I suspect we shall be seeing a lot more of them in the future.

V-22s But No Air Force One

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The President was visiting the Bay Area for a couple of days recently. This meant the arrival of Air Force One, the VH-3D helicopters, the C-17s to transport them and the V-22s that support the VH-3Ds. What more could an aviation guy want? I took a look at the temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) listed online to see when the airspace was going to be shut down. When the president flies, the airspace around him is shut down for security purposes. These closures are published (otherwise, how would the other pilots know not to fly) so it means we know when to expect things to happen.

Sadly, the arrival was on a day I was at work and was timed to come in to SFO around sunset so, even if I could be there, there was a chance that the light would have gone. (As it was, the arrival was just before the light went completely and a friend of mine did get some good shots.) The departure, on the other hand, was scheduled for Saturday morning. That I could manage. I figured that getting there early would be wise since I would not be the only one trying this so getting somewhere to park might be tricky. Plus, if they went early in the slot, I wanted to be ready.

I checked the TFR the night before and got up early the next morning. I had some breakfast and headed out. I arrived in plenty of time but did need to park quite a distance away. I got to the bayshore trail and found a few other guys with cameras. However, word quickly reached me that he had gone. I bumped into a friend of mine and he told me that he had checked the TFR earlier that morning and saw that it had been brought forward. He rushed out and got there just in time. I arrived about 20 minutes after they took off. Curiously, as I had been driving across the San Mateo bridge, I had seen a large jet airborne near the airport and wondered. Now I knew.

There was a silver lining to this disappointment. With Air Force One safely on its way, the V-22s were free to head out. The three of them took off in close succession and turned in our direction to head off down the peninsula. They didn’t come terribly close but I did get my first shots of them since they replaced the CH-46s that used to provide support. (Many moons ago I did see the CH-53Es that used to be undertake this role. They looked fantastic!)

SFO Night Time Lapse Take 2

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Last summer my friend Paul had been across and we had hatched a plan to shot some time lapse and night streak shots of SFO from a hill that overlooks the airport. The plan seemed like a good one but it was thwarted by two things. First, there was some cloud in the area which obscured some fo the view. Second, it doesn’t get dark until late in the summer and Paul was on UK time so was pretty worn out by the time we could do anything.

Instead, we concluded that a second attempt would be made when he was over during the winter. So it was that we found ourselves back up on the hill. We had come well prepared this time with sturdy tripods and good cable releases. The only thing I had forgotten was the chairs since you have a lot of time to hang around on a dark hillside taking shots like this. I took a long sequence of shots that would be edited into the time lapse. When I got home, some quick work in LRTimelapse and the video was together as you can see below. I also decided to see how well the sequence would blend together to get a streak image. I have never tried to work with quite so many layers in Photoshop before. It certainly struggled with it but it did work. Unfortunately, there must have been some very slight movement on the tripod because the ground lights did not exactly align which made for a blurry foreground when using the Lighten blend mode. To counter this, I duplicated one of the base layers and masked that back in to give the ground a clearer image. The blended version is the one at the top of the post.

My First Poseidon

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The Boeing P-8 Poseidon is not a new plane. In fact, it first flew in 2009. Why is it, then, that I have never seen one in flight before? I have seen them on the ground at various times. This has included air shows and seeing them on the flightline at Boeing Field. I have come close a number of times there including some of the Indian Navy Ark variants that have been undergoing testing. Despite all of this, I had not seen one fly.

Fortunately, I have finally overcome this shortcoming, if only briefly. I found myself at Boeing Field on a recent trip to Seattle where I was eating my lunch between landing from a flight and heading off to a meeting. A pretty narrow window in which to hope to get anything interesting but, this time, I was lucky. The P-8 taxied out shortly after I got there and lined up. He wasn’t going for a takeoff at first. A surge of power and acceleration down the runway followed by an application of the brakes and the rejected takeoff test was done. This meant a trip back down the taxiway and right past me to get back to the threshold.

The second time was supposed to be the full takeoff and the lightly loaded jet was promptly airborne and heading off to carry out its tests. It would be gone for a few hours so I wasn’t going to catch its return but it was great to finally see one moving and flying.