Tag Archives: cessna

Skydiving

Part of the entertainment at the Sonoma Skypark Family Fun Day was some skydiving. Some lines were marked out on the grass and Joey jumped from the Cessna flown by Trevor and targeted the landing zone. People could guess which line he would hit with a prize for the closest guess each time. Skydiving looks so cool to me so getting some shots of Joey seemed like a good plan.

He was great fun to hang out with as were the rest of the guys. His first jump came in a bit hot and he landed a little long compared to the marked area. That was not a competition jump, though, so no-one lost out. After that, he was on target for the remaining jumps. I started out staying well back but, as I built confidence in him and he knew I wasn’t going to do anything stupid, I was able to get in a better position to show him coming in. It is a quick transition from a long lens for the aerial shots to a wide one for the touchdown. He is coming in pretty fast. With a few jumps, you can try a different approach each time.

Once on the ground, Joey certainly knew how to keep the crowd happy. He stopped off to chat with people on his way back to repacking the chute and the kids seemed to love talking to him. I need to get more shots of these guys. They were fun and they look cool too. A couple of the group are also in to paragliding so now I have something else I want to check out. I also created a few animations of Joey’s departure from the Cessna so they are included below.

Floatplanes But No Water

Interesting Landing Technique

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This guy landed at Half Moon Bay while we were there. I have to admit I thought I was taking pictures for the accident investigation at first. However, he maintained this pose all along the runway until he turned off and apparently had done it earlier. I guess he had a lot of elevator authority. However, whether it is a good idea is a very different question.

San Jose Biz Jets

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San Jose is not an airport I had even shot at before. Paul and I decided to try it out on our way back to Dublin. There appeared to be a parking area near the threshold so we figured that was worth a shot and put it in to the GPS. As we drove there, Paul checked out Flightaware to see whether there was much due in. A few airliners and a couple of corporate jets were on the system but nothing too dramatic.

We got to the location and, sure enough, there was a good parking area with a pretty clear view of the approach if you avoided some trees. As we pulled in and sat in the car, a Global Express flew by. I was a touch bummed by this since, if we had missed a cool movement, would there be anything else. As it turned out, I was wrong to worry. San Jose seems to have a steady flow of corporate jet movements. Many of them are blocked on Flightaware, hence us not knowing they were coming. We didn’t have long before we had to be somewhere else but, in that time, we got a lot of biz jet traffic.

San Jose is convenient for a lot of high tech companies so they base their aircraft there. We got the Apple G650 in the short time we spent. I have to say, I thought Apple would have made it look a bit cooler but there you go. Maybe they want to be inconspicuous. One of the local guys told us which ones were regulars based on the field. He was less bothered by them but we were interested as first timers.