Tag Archives: corporate

The Avanti Just Fails to Catch the Light

I was having a really lucky day.  I had caught a few really cool photo subjects and the lighting had been really good.  I was about to pack up and go when my friend reminded me of something I had forgotten.  An Avanti was scheduled in at the end of the afternoon and I had figured I would have been gone so had let it slip to the back of my mind.  Since a couple of other movements had got delayed, I was there later than expected and now the Avanti was on the approach.

The light was looking amazing, but it was still some distance out.  The Avanti is pretty fast, but I was watching the hillside beyond the field start to lose the sun and I knew that it wasn’t going to last long enough for my Avanti.  Sure enough, as it came into sight, the light was gone.  We had a gloomy look to things as it buzzed past.  Not as it could have been just three minutes earlier, but its an Avanti and it rounded out an excellent day nicely.

Comparison of Two Globals

When Bombardier launched the Global 7500, I was quite keen to see them.  My friend was the engineering director on the project and, despite me giving him crap at every opportunity, I think he probably did a good job on this one.  Sadly, I haven’t shot as many 7500s as I would have liked.  Global 6000s, on the other hand, I have shot plenty of.  There have been a few, though, so I decided to see what the obvious visual differences would be.

With some bizjets, counting windows is the way to know.  That rarely helps me out as I can never remember what the appropriate numbers are.  For the 7500, though, I think the windows look very different.  They seem to be a lot larger and squarer.  That is a bit of a giveaway.  Then there is the fin top.  The 7500 has a more angular top to it which actually looks a bit like some of the CRJ versions.  Last, there are the flaps.  The 7500 flap system seems to be more complex than that of the 6000.  I have included images of NetJets and VistaJet examples of both types at similar angles for comparison.  See what other differences you spot.

The Sun Arrives for the Falcon 20

Autumnal weather can make for unpredictable conditions when photographing anything but especially planes.  I was up at Paine Field for the NASA flying but was pleased to see that a Falcon 20 was also due to make a stop.  This was an IFL Group aircraft making a short stop before heading off again.  The clouds had been rolling through, but they parted just before the Falcon showed up.  We had great light on it as it landed.

Conditions didn’t stay great and, by the time it taxied back out to depart, it was not so good.  Not terrible by any standards but certainly not the lovely light we had for the arrival.  It’s rare that I see a Falcon 20 being used for personal transport these days but the fact that they still have a good role for freight usage means we get to see them around still which is welcome.

Other Sunny Sunday Bizjets

One Sunday earlier in the year, I was up at Boeing Field for the arrival of an old Gulfstream.  That proved to be a successful encounter and has been on this blog already.  However, that was not the only bizjet traffic that day.  I ended up with a variety of corporate aircraft movements.

There was a Canadian Challenger as well as some NetJets examples.  A Falcon 7X was on the move which is a cool looking aircraft.  There was also a Falcon 50 parked near the road alongside a Hawker.  An Excel came through which isn’t that special but then we got an Eclipse which certainly is.  It was a fun time to be out photographing with a lot in a short space of time.  Here are some shots of those planes.

Where Have All These Learjet 60s Come From?

A while back, I had a spate of photographing Lear 60s at Boeing Field.  The Lear 60 is not a rare jet but nor is it particularly common so seeing a few in a short space of time, caught my attention back then.  The 60 was Learjet’s effort to stretch as much as they could from what they already had.  They took the existing wing and added a bigger fuselage.  This was possibly the limit of what could be done with that wing.

I think it is a slightly disproportionate looking aircraft.  The fuselage looks a bit chunky, the wing seems small for the fuselage, the undercarriage appears to have been carried over so the wheels look particularly small for the overall size.  It is a bit of an odd one.  Even so, I still like it when they show up. Since they have been out of production for a while, they will start to disappear.  They will be around for a while but will progressively become less common.  I wonder how many times I shall have so many encounters in a short space of time.

Wandering Around an Avanti

The Avantis that had been operating at Paine Field have relocated their base to Arlington instead.  I think they are getting maintained there and so it is the new base of operations.  One of them arrived while I was up that way and it parked up on the main ramp.  I wandered out and chatted to the owner as he put the plane away for the evening and then, once he had gone, I continued to get some shots.  The airframe is a selection of interesting shapes so I was trying to find good ways to shoot it.

The fuselage shape tapers aggressively, there is the front wing, the main wing and the tailplane and then there are the engines and their props.  Lots to try and work with.  The engines are interesting in that the exhaust from the PT-6s blows right on to the roots of the props.  This heat must be a form of deicing but it also must require something of the blade construction to manage the heat.  There is some sign of the particles in the exhaust in the dirt patterns that form across the blade roots.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The Avanti is an amazing looking aircraft.  The combination of cabin size and performance is unmatched by turboprops (and a lot of jets too).  I wish it was more successful.  Lots of people focus on its noise but that doesn’t bother me.  However, having looked at those props in more detail, I can’t help but wonder how much of that noise is from the exhaust interacting with the blades rather than just the blades themselves.

Playing With the Bizjets to Experiment

I have been messing around with low shutter speeds for traffic at Boeing Field a lot this year.  Some of those shots have made their way into posts on here.  One sunny afternoon, I was at the field and there was a lot of business jet traffic but nothing terribly special.  This provides a good opportunity to try different things.  I had the polarizer and a neutral density filter.  The polarizer is good on sunny days for taking down the glare and it also cuts the light.  However, the neutral density can really pull the shutter speed down.

Since I didn’t care if the shots were a failure, I was willing to just keep bringing the shutter speed down and down.  I compensated by cranking up the frame rate in order to increase the probability of getting a sharp one.  This is an interesting challenge.  Normally I spend a bit of time culling out shots that just aren’t sharp but, when playing with silly shutter speeds, you need to re-calibrate just how sharp things should be.  What is a little off when zoomed in might be of no concern when looking at the full image.  That is not an excuse to let plainly bad shots through though.

Here are some of the results that weren’t too bad.  Even an average Challenger can look a little more interesting with a very blurry background!

Someone Forgot to Close the Gas Cap

Talon Air’s Hawker 4000 came to Boeing Field and my shots of its arrival have already had their own post.  However, while I was reviewing the shots when I got home, something seemed a little odd between the shots.  Something seemed to be flapping around on the lower rear fuselage.  I zoomed in to the shots and there was an access panel that was unsecured.  Its angle was changing between shots, so it was clearly moving around in the airflow.  From what I can gather, this is probably where the fueling port is located.  These doors are tough, so it was probably fine, but I wonder whether any damage was done on a long flight.

Woohoo! – Another Hawker 4000

A few times a year, Boeing Field is treated to the arrival of a Hawker 4000.  This was not a successful jet for Hawker and so they are far from common.  I have shot them on occasions, and they have probably got blog posts when I did.  I saw this one coming in one weekend so headed over to see it.  When I looked up the operator, Talon Air, I was interested to see on their website that they have quite the collection of 4000s.  I guess owning a bunch of them makes supporting them a little easier.  Annoyingly, another one was at BFI while I was there and got towed near me before I realized what it was.  It didn’t fly while I was there unfortunately.

Black Gulfstreams in the Rain

Previous posts have shown that I like a bizjet that isn’t painted like all of the others and being painted black is even better.  It won’t surprise regular readers, therefore, that when I got to see not one but two black Gulfstreams on one afternoon at Boeing Field, I was quite a happy chappy.  The weather was not great, though.  It was raining pretty steadily which doesn’t make for ideal conditions.  However, it isn’t all bad.  Sunny days with black jets can produce some harsh contrast conditions while overcast light is more even and soft so it might not be all bad.

Rain in the shots is still going to be an issue though.  Depending on the shutter speed you choose, you may well end up with the raindrops being visible in the images.  A bit of tweaking of the settings when processing can boost the contrast a little, but those raindrops are not disappearing.  Still, the subject is an interesting one to me and that’s what counts.