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DC-3 City of Tillamook

The Erickson collection did not used to be based in Madras. For many years the aircraft were part of the museum at Tillamook. The old airship hangars at Tillamook were their home. While most of the planes have now moved, one of them still bears a name indicative of its past. This is the Douglas DC-3 named City of Tillamook.

The aircraft sat on the ramp outside the museum hangar for the duration of my visit. The first evening we were there we had time to stroll around the ramp as the sun set. This resulted in some lovely lighting conditions. It was fun to see the DC-3 in close proximity to some later Douglas products. They shall be the subject of a later post.

Fire in the Hills

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The reason for the Airtanker activity at Redmond was the fire that was raging in the hills west of Madras. During the day the most obvious sign of the fire was the smoke that was hanging in the air and obscuring the view of the hills in the distance. However, as night fell, thing became quite different. The hillside where the fire was raging was suddenly very obvious. The red glow from the flames was visible even at the distance we were away.

You could see the fire was alive. The intensity and shape of the glow was varying all of the time. The ridges that were between our location and the fire sometimes almost completely obscured things but the glow was soon visible again. I have no idea how intense things were in the ground but I imagine it was very tough for those fighting it. Their bravery was recognized by all of us watching from a distance.

Redmond Airtanker Base

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My trip to Madras involved flying in to Redmond airport, about half an hour south of Madras. Hayman and I came in on the same flight and shared a ride to Madras. As we drove out of the airport, something interesting caught my eye on the other side of the field so we did a little exporting before heading off. Redmond has a base for Airtanker operations in support of firefighting. The aircraft that I had first seen was a DC-7 that had been converted for tanker operations and was painted up in Erickson colors. It looked immaculate and the activity suggested it might be preparing to depart. With fires in the surrounding hills, there was plenty of work.

While we waited for it to start up, a BAe146 tanker conversion landed and taxied in to the base. It was the first time I had seen one in person. Sadly the fencing around the base was rather touch to shoot through. Hayman made good use of the gap under the gates but my camera shape did not allow that. I had to make do with shooting through the fence where possible.

Shortly after the 146 came in, the DC-7 fired up and taxied out. With it gone, we figured it was time for us to continue on our way too.

A2AX Workshop

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About a year ago I saw a ton of cracking images showing up online from friends of mine that had attended the Madras A2AX workshop. At the time I figured I needed to start panning on being there for the next edition of the workshop. It is run by Scott Slocum and Lyle Jansma at the Erickson Air Museum’s facility and their aircraft provided the subjects for the photo flights. Scott and Lyle were joined by Paul Bowen. Paul was not instructing but he did provide his own perspective and guidance on what we were working on and also could be relied on to show up with his camera whenever you were looking at your goofiest and to tell some hilarious tales of his various exploits.

I met some familiar faces and made a whole bunch of new friends. Various hurdles were thrown in the way of the team due to weather and serviceability issues but they adapted well and the team were intent on having a good time whatever was going on. It was a fantastic weekend with some great learning opportunities and some beautiful aircraft to photograph. Here are a couple of samples of what we had to play with.

Haze Filter

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The Creative Cloud version of Lightroom drops new features in to the software when the updates are installed. This is a nice thing to have happen but, unless you are paying attention, you might not be aware of some of the new features. It took me a while after the last update to learn that a new filter had been added that was designed to take haze out of images. This is a great idea. I have experimented with trying to remove the effect of haze in shots before but, because the effect varies by distance, it can be quite tricky to get something that doesn’t look totally wrong.

I have not played with the filter a lot but I did decide to try it out on a shot I took at Crater Lake a few years back. Wildfires had resulted in smoke in the air which meant the usual clear view across the lake was obscured. I thought I would see how the filter worked out. Above are the before and after shots. It is an improvement but obviously isn’t going to rescue a totally messed up shot. I did try a more aggressive setting but that looked wrong itself so this was the one I went with. We shall see if this has other uses for me over time.

Spruce Goose Then and Now

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There is a fine line between being inspired by someone’s work and plagiarizing them. Today I shall tiptoe along that line. My friend Hayman Tam has recently posted some pictures of the Spruce Goose on his blog after a trip he had made to the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville OR. Go to Hayman’s blog at shutterspeedaero.wordpress.com to see that post and many others. In doing so, he reminded me of my own trip to the museum and photographing the Goose. However, that was not the first time I had seen it.

In 1990, during my first ever visit to the United States, I was in Long Beach with my Dad. We visited the Queen Mary and in those days, the Spruce Goose was inside the large dome that sits on the waterfront. I had my camera with me on that trip. It was my first Canon camera, an EOS600 (which was called the EOS630 in the US) and that camera got a lot of use over the years. I still have it. I didn’t take a huge number of pictures of the Spruce Goose but I did get a few.