Tag Archives: airplane

Back to Coupeville for a Day Off

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NOLF Coupeville was scheduled for FCLP training and strong winds from the Southeast were forecast which suggested the right runway would be in use.  I also had a day off scheduled.  While the rest of the weather was potentially not ideal, I figured I would make the trip.  Why. Not?  They were due to be flying from late morning but, as seems to be usual, it was just after noon by the time things started to look active.

I was worried about the low cloud base but it was actually not a problem.  The wind was really strong gusting 20-30 kts.  This was giving them some interesting flying.  Early on, there was a hint of sun sometimes which really helped the photos.  As they climbed out after each touchdown, the skies behind made from interesting backgrounds and showed off the heat haze from the exhausts as well as the streaming tip vortices courtesy of the damp conditions.

After a while, I got a visit from the Navy Police.  The young lad informed me I wasn’t allowed to photograph the jets. I pointed out I could be he was most insistent that I couldn’t.  Rather than have trouble I decided the stop shooting.  As it happened, the conditions got a bit worse anyway so I had got the best of what was on offer.  I just watched the rest of the flying which included quite a few bolsters and some sketchy touchdowns as the wind got stronger.

747s Over Kenmore

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A sunny but cool Sunday afternoon with a bit of spare time on my hands meant I headed over to Kenmore to see whether there was any floatplane activity.  The answer was not much.  However, I did get something a little larger overhead.  Traffic in to Paine Field was running on a northerly flow.  A Dreamlifter made an approach and was followed a little later by a 747-8F destined for UPS once test flying is complete.  They both turned on to approach overhead the north end of Lake Washington so I got shots of them both.

Turbine Bonanza

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Any airport in North America on any given day will have a reasonable chance of a Bonanza showing up.  Them come in all vintages, shapes and sizes but they usually come!  I’ve therefore shot tons of them over the years.  However, I think I may have had a first in that I recently shot a turbine Bonanza.  It was on the approach at Paine Field and it was obvious that there was something different about it.  The noise was clearly a turbine and the tip tanks had been fitted with winglets.  Given the location, I assume they are for drag reduction since they wouldn’t add much to directional stability.  Tip tanks are probably a must given the rate at which turbines burn fuel compared to pistons.  It was a smart looking thing with the revised nose shape looking quite graceful.  Sadly the landing wasn’t as graceful but floating is fine when you have 10,000’ ahead of you!

More of the RAF’s Poseidon Test Flying

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In this recent post, I had an RAF Poseidon flying over the house.  A little while later, I was at Boeing Field when the same jet came back from a test flight.  Here are some shots of it as it rolled out after landing.  It wasn’t long after this that the jet was delivered to the RAF and made the trip to its new home in Lossiemouth.

Blue Angels Legacy Hornet Retirement

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Recently, the Blue Angels made their last formation flight with the F/A-18 Hornet.  The team is transitioning to the Super Hornet ahead of 2021 and they have started working up with the new jets.  It has been a while since I last saw the Blue Angels demonstration so I thought a few shots with their aging legacy Hornets was in order.   They always got the oldest jets in the fleet so I hope they are happy to have some slightly newer airframes to work with.

More To Love A321 Shot for Work!

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I had a brief visit to Seattle Tacoma International to get some images for work.  These images were not of the aircraft but the configuration of the roadways in to the airport.  Not a great opportunity for photographing an aircraft.  However, you could just see some of the ramp area and, as the sun came out, the Alaska Airlines A321neo in the More To Love markings taxied in.  It was just visible above the terminal buildings so it would have been rude not to get a shot!

Royal Air Force P-8

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The RAF has been taking delivery of its new maritime patrol aircraft.  The retirement of the Nimrods left the RAF without a maritime aircraft for about a decade which is a strange choice to make.  Finally, the P-8 Poseidon was ordered to reinstate that capability.  They started coming off the line here in Seattle a while back.  The fourth aircraft has been undergoing testing ahead of its delivery.  It was returning from a test flight and was coming straight for our house.  It is not unusual for planes heading to Boeing Field to come our way so I grabbed the camera and got a couple of shots as it flew by.  It even turned slightly giving a slightly wing down view in one shot.

Under the American Max

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Production of 737 Max jets is underway again and that means some flight testing of new jets.  I was heading back from Boeing Field but stopped at the approach end to get a shot from the underside.  I almost didn’t get there in time so was not exactly where I wanted to be to take the shot but it still worked out reasonably well.  I do like a different angle every once in a while and underneath is certainly worth a go every once in a while.

Pegasus Heading Out and Back

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Boeing seems to have addressed a lot of the problems with the KC-46 Pegasus program (but not all of them yet) and so the Air Force is taking delivery of jets at a regular rate.  Since plenty have been built, there are enough to deliver.  I was at Paine Field a while back when one of the jets was heading out on a test flight.  I ended up being there for both the departure and the arrival since the flight was not that long.  The good summer light that Seattle gets but we don’t like people to know about meant I got some reasonable shots of it.

Kodiak Buzzing the Pattern at Paine

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Unusual visitors to an airport are obviously welcome and give you the chance to get something new.  However, that also means you want to make sure you get the shot so you don’t want to experiment too much with settings.  Having someone bashing the circuit for a long time and flying a variety of different approaches means that you can take as many shots as you like and try all sorts of different things.

My Sunday at Paine Field included a pretty smart looking Quest Kodiak doing some training flights.  Lots of approaches, some straight in and others curving.  All the opportunity I could want.  Wide shots, tight shots, how low will I dare go with the shutter speed?  I had the 1.4X teleconverter on the 500mm so shooting at 1/100th of a second at 700mm is going to have a pretty low success rate but I was pleasantly surprised how many came out nice and sharp.  Not bad to have a day of panning practice.

The Kodiak is an interesting looking plane.  Having a turbine means a nice high prop speed on approach which certainly helps but it is also something that can be thrown around easily so the training flight included a bunch of different approaches.  I appreciated the effort they made on our behalf.  Now to get the light on the prop to show it up nicely!