The arrival of Erickson in town to carry out a lift was described in a previous post which you can check out here. While I was predominantly shooting stills for this lift, I continue to grab some video footage when the opportunity presents itself. I have put together a short video of the lift and you can see it below.
Regular readers of this blog will know how much I enjoy shooting helicopter lift operations in the city. Midwest Helicopters are the local operator and a great bunch of people who have helped me out lots of times. This lift proved to be one of those times although it wasn’t them doing the job. They had finished a job in the city on a very snowy morning and I was exchanging messages with their Chief Pilot when he mentioned that Erickson were in town for a job.
Erickson specialize in lifting very heavy equipment. Midwest fly Sikorsky S-58T aircraft which are good for about 4,500lbs. Construction Helicopters in Michigan (who have made appearances on this blog too) have S-58T aircraft as well but tend to bring S-61Ns to Chicago since they have a higher capacity of up to 8,000lbs so can lift loads too heavy for the local guys. Erickson are a different story altogether. They build and operate the S-64 which can lift a whopping 25,000lbs. This is obviously way above the capabilities of the other operators and way more than most jobs can justify.
Consequently, an appearance by Erickson in town is not so common and is worthy of a look. Moreover, they were lifting just across the river from my home so how could I not go? I have worked on site with Erickson before and so contemplated calling to arrange to be there for this job. However, I was suffering with a bit of a cold and the weather forecast did not look promising so I decided to not try and be on site but to shoot from outside the safety perimeter. Since the lift was alongside the river, getting good shots should not prove to be difficult.
Come the morning of the lift, visibility was terrible and snow was falling hard. All this could be seen from my window so I didn’t need to be out on the ground. Instead, I got ready at a leisurely pace and grabbed a couple of cameras when the weather started to improve. The streets around the Hyatt Regency hotel (the location of the job) had been closed for a while which I found curious since they obviously weren’t going to start until the weather cleared. Lifting in poor conditions is tricky enough but getting to the site in the first place is more of a problem.
As the weather started to clear, I talked to one of the crews maiming the perimeter and he confirmed that they had launched and were on their way, Time to wait. The S-64 is a big beast and you don’t have any questions when it arrives. It’s sound travels well and you know it is coming. Fortunately, there were a bunch of loads to go up (and some to come down too), so there was plenty of opportunity to shoot at different locations. Moving across the river provided some alternative views of the lift. Meanwhile, the weather was continuing to improve until it was actually sunny. Sadly, the lifting location was always in shade but you can’t have everything. Watching the downwash blow the snow around both on the ground and on the roof was quite amusing.
The lift seemed to go well and I covered everything I was after. I also got some video which I shall share later.
I have been very fortunate to be on top of some of the largest buildings in the city of Chicago in recent years. Helicopter lifting operations take me to places that are off limits to many and that provide a great perspective on the city. However, until recently, the highest point in the city was not one I had been to. The top of the Sears Tower (I don’t know many that use its other name) had eluded me. The Skydeck doesn’t count of course!
This changed with the installation of the new TV antenna for ABC on top of the building. The good team at Construction Helicopters had been contracted to install the new antenna having helped removing the old one. We gathered early one Sunday morning for the job to commence. This is a location that is unmatched unless you are actually airborne. I will post some views from on high in upcoming posts. However, the first post is an aviation themed one – no great surprise for this blog!
The aircraft used was a Sikorsky S-61N. The aircraft was leased from a Canadian company and was actually on its last job with Construction before being returned. They have acquired a Super Puma which I hope to see in action at some point. The S-61N is an old design but regular upgrades have kept it as a very capable machine. It staged out of Midway and picked the loads from down at the bottom of the tower. The vertical climb is quite a long one but they did well, not only in placing the loads, but holding them for some time while they were secured. Good job to everyone involved.
It wasn’t long ago that I made a trip out to get some shots of the VH-3D helicopters that operate as presidential transports and are known as Marine One when the President is aboard. You can read about that here.
It turns out I was going to get a second chance. As I drove back up to DuPage airport after shooting Fifi on the approach, I noticed a selection of nice looking helicopters parked up between the hangars. A presidential movement was planned and the aircraft were operating from DuPage. With the TFR being published, we knew they would be heading out early in the afternoon.
Sure enough, in due course the helicopters came into view. There were the two VH-3Ds along with three CH-46s in support – two of which were in the glossy green finish and one in standard gray. They taxied out in line and lined up on the taxiway. Then they lifted in unison and departed towards the city. It was very cool to watch.
A while later I was off the field again shooting Fifi taking off when a couple of the CH-46s came back. I was pretty disappointed to miss their arrival but I got the shot I was there for. When I got back to the field, I was walking across the apron when I met one of the HMX-1 crew-members. I told him how disappointed I was to have missed their return. Not to worry. He told me two more would be back in about ten minutes. Sure enough, in they came. What a great break to get them when I had no idea that they would be there.
With the President being a Chicago resident, it is not uncommon for him to be in the city from time to time and a presidential movement means some unusual aircraft. Given all of this, it might be surprising that I have not got any pictures of Air Force One or Marine One since he has been president. Usually I am not aware of his movements until after the event and I can’t always drop everything to go out even if I did know.
Recently, he came home for the weekend. A few friends had mentioned the arrival and departure schedule for Air Force One so I did consider whether to head out. The arrival wasn’t practical but the departure was on a Sunday evening which I could manage. As it happened, I had been out earlier in the day and coming back into the city I saw how bad the traffic was heading out of town and decided that going to O’Hare was going to be no fun at all. Besides, you are always wondering what runway will be sued and might find yourself totally out of position anyway.
Instead, I decided to try and get some pictures of Marine One. It picks him up on the lake-shore south of the city to transfer to O’Hare so might provide an alternative opportunity. I headed down to a location I thought might be good. As I drove Through Grant Park, the two CH-46E Sea Knights that accompany him flew over shortly followed by the VH-3D. I was a bit miffed that I wasn’t a few minutes earlier so I could have got them arriving but never mind.
I found a parking place – no mean feat on a sunny Sunday by the lake – and wandered to the water to find a spot to wait. Then I waited – quite a long time. A temporary flight restriction (TFR) is issued when the President moves. I knew the times it was active but he can go any time in that range. This time it was later in the range. I watched the boats on the lake, the police helicopter checking us all out and the police boats stopping people getting where they weren’t supposed to be.
Finally, I saw the first of the two VH-3Ds take off. Followed by the second and then the Sea Knights, they took off to the south, away from me! This wasn’t promising. At least they might turn left and come back up the lake. No, they turned right and went inland. I was feeling a touch annoyed by this development. Then things got better. They continued their turn and headed right for me. They passed over the lake giving me a great view with the sun behind me. They are a bit shiny which is tricky with the sun but in the end I got the shot. It was worth the wait.
And so we progress to Part 2. Attentive readers will already be aware that the Unitrin sign had been removed. I was a lazy boy and watched from my living room. The following weekend the new sign was scheduled to go up. Fortunately, we had friends staying with us. Mark is a flight test engineer and a pilot so the suggestion that some aviation action could be added to the weekend was good for him. Since it was close to home, we wouldn’t be missed for a short while on a Sunday morning.
The replacement of the sign was pretty much the reverse of the previous week. The letters and the logo had been assembled on the street on the back of trucks. Two sides of the building had to be done and fortunately our side was to be first. The placement of the signs was a touch more tricky than the removal. Pulling them off meant getting them clear and dropping them down to the street. Lifting the new ones up was complicated by the way in which the letters – which are large but don’t weigh much – can catch the wind and start to rotate. The crews on the building have to catch the tag lines and then pull them steady before positioning them.
They soon got a good rhythm going and we watched the letters and the logo go up on the first side of the building. We then retreated to further away as the other side was dealt with, not least because a lot of it was out of sight from the better locations. Midwest did a great job as always and it was good to see the team. Thanks everyone and Mark certainly was glad to see one of these jobs in person.
This story comes in two parts (if the title didn’t give that away already!) and it is one that is a little bit of luck. Regular readers know that I do a lot of jobs with Midwest Helicopters. This was a job of theirs but not one that I was involved with. However, it just happened to take place outside my window so I got to watch anyway. There I was on a lazy Sunday morning (I was being lazy even if others obviously weren’t) catching up on a bit of TiVo viewing when a helicopter comes in to view out of my living room window. Familiar shape and colors but what were they up to?
Turns out a building across the river from me was due to have its name changed. The company had renamed from Unitrin to Kemper. Unitrin was plastered on two sides of the building in large illuminated letters so they needed to come down. The first week of the job was to take down the old letters. I could have hurried outside and grabbed some shots but this was a lazy day (did I mention that before?) and so I just grabbed a camera and shot through the windows.
It was about an hour’s work to get the letters from each side of the building and drop them down to the truck on the street. All of this from the comfort of my living room interspersed with a bit of Grand Prix watching! Of course, if something comes down, there is probably something to replace it? And so we shall progress to Part 2…
Over a year ago I shot a job that Midwest were undertaking on the Board of Trade building here in Chicago. The job was spread over three weekends and I was there for the first two. The job involved lifting a lot of steelwork and piping into location at the back of the building where the steelwork was then assembled using the helicopter to move the individual pieces into position.
All of this was a touch trickier since the assembly location was close to the building which is pretty high. Therefore, 300′ of lifting line had to be used which made the job of maneuvering the helicopter to position the loads just that bit harder! The final week involved the cooling towers being put in place but I could not be there for that.
I shot a bunch of stills but also got a fair amount of video which, at the time I did nothing with. While doing some work on my database recently, I realized just how much footage I had and decided to have a shot at editing it down to something a bit more digestible. Here is the result.
As I have mentioned in previous posts and my regular readers will know, I have been going through a process of culling old images that will never (and should never) see the light of day again. This is part of my desire to be a lot more efficient in keeping good images and ditching bad ones in part to reduce storage requirements but also to allow me to focus back on the good shots when I need something.
One of the things it has also done is remind me of just how many good projects I have been involved with. While many projects are one off jobs, there are quite a few regular clients that I shoot with on numerous occasions. I have my new workflow for going through those images and creating Smart Collections in Lightroom to help me manage them. I decided it would be helpful to go back and create similar collections for previous jobs before I changed the workflow.
I added a bunch of these collections from memory but then started going through all of the shots from the clients by searching on the keywords. It was really surprising to me to find some of the jobs we had done together a while back that I had quite forgotten about. I had a bunch more Smart Collections to create as a result but the outcome is that I now have better access to images from some regular clients in a more organized way than my previous searches based on keywords alone.
A second outcome of this is that I changed from using stars to identify good shots to using the Pick flag. Since I have a mix of methods, I will be going back and reassessing which are the better shots and marking them as Picks. Interestingly, some of the ones I had starred previously have not made it through my recent cull since a second look showed they were really not quite good enough. Often an adjacent shot is actually better so now I need to make my selections anew.
This is going to take a long time. I am well advanced in culling shots of civil aircraft but my military stuff has yet to be dealt with. I’m sure we shall have some crummy days ahead which I can put to good use. Of course, my rate of shooting is going to be going up so maybe I will be struggling to stay ahead of this for a while!
Today we have a bit of a flashback. Regular readers will know that I shoot a lot of helicopter operations. Midwest Helicopters is the large local operator so they do most of the work in the city. However, there other operators that undertake similar work and some of them will work in Chicago at times. This is often a function of the weight of the loads to be lifted. Construction Helicopters of Howell MI are one such operator and their S-61N aircraft can lift 10,000lbs – a big increase over the 4,500lbs of the S-58T. If you need even bigger things lifted, Erickson Aircrane are probably your people!
This piece, though, is not about the helicopter so much as the people it was working with. A few years ago, the Trump International Hotel and Tower was built here in the city – in fact just across the street from us. We had the best seats to watch the demolition of the old Sun Times building and the growth from a hole in the ground to 92 floors of building. It was fun to watch, even if it did take a chunk out of our view! The building was topped off with a spire. The parts for the spire were lifted to the roof by the construction cranes before they were assembled but it was going to be significantly higher than the rest of the building so those cranes were not suitable for assembling it. The pieces would be lifted into place by helicopter.
The first attempt at this was unsuccessful as the winds were so strong that keeping each piece in place long enough to secure it proved impossible. There was a long wait before the second attempt but the job finally went ahead. The heroes of this story are the guys on the tower. If you think that the tower itself is over a 1,000′ tall and the spire is a significant (and flexible) structure above that, you can see that this is quite an exposed location to be working. From talking to the team that assembled it, the most senior guys are the ones at the very top – they want to be there.
Three guys were on the spire at the top. As each section was brought into place, they grabbed the tag lines and pulled it into position. When they had located it, they would put in a bolt in each corner. Then, one would climb up the new piece to release the lifting line. The other two would follow while a second group came behind them to insert the additional bolts to finally secure the section. While they were finishing that off, the next piece was coming in.
To add to the fun of this, the spire narrows as it gets higher so the working space gets progressively more limited. All the time you are dealing with whatever wind conditions there are at this height combined with the not inconsiderable down-wash from the helicopter and trying to make sure you maintain your grip and don’t drop anything on the team below you!
The job ran a little long but they did finish it off and put the final cap in place. They seemed to do a great job but were so far away from anyone else, I suspect that very few people appreciate exactly what they had done. It was only recently as I was culling a bunch of old images that I looked again at them as saw exactly what they were doing. I feel guilty for paying more attention to the helicopter operations when I first shot the job so decided to give them a little publicity now. Well done everyone.