In my previous visits to Tucson International, I have never seen jets taking off or landing as pairs. It has always been single jets. This time I had a couple of times when section takeoffs were carried out. There also appeared to be some arrivals in pairs too. Nothing too dramatic but a bit of a change from what I have seen there before.
The layout of SFO with the two pairs of cross runways makes for some operations that are quite specific to this airport. At peak times, parallel approaches are made to the 28 runways from along the bay shore. These approaches require the following plane to make sure it does not overtake the leading plane. I don’t know for sure but I imagine the choice of which side leads is based on the wind direction so the wake turbulence doesn’t affect the downwind plane.
Getting them close together is the goal as a photographer. Often they end up being separated by a lot more than you thought. When further out things look like they are close but then the approach turns out to be more offset than you expect and you don’t get a good shot when they come in to land.
Arrivals aren’t the only parallels though. The departures are sent of the 01s from both sides. The clearances are usually offset and the thresholds are slightly different so the planes often get airborne well apart. However, that is not always the case and sometimes you get what amounts to a formation takeoff. Once airborne, the planes turn to increase their separation. Getting a shot of them close together is something to try for if you can. They are too far away when they take off to be a great shot individually but getting both in frame certainly makes for a more unusual shot than is the case for most departure procedures for big airliners.
When I previously wrote you can see all sorts of thing at Santa Cruz, I wasn’t joking. As we walked back along the shore, a woman was walking a rope strung between two sections of fence. Unfortunately, she hopped off the rope just at the time we arrived so I didn’t get to see how good she was. However, she was with a group of people who turned out to be quite skilled.
There were two pairs of people working on some balance routines. It was not clear whether they were acrobats or practitioners of some form of yoga. Whatever it may be, the guys were acting as a support while the women were balancing on them. They used hands and feet to hold them up while the positions changed. They were obviously pretty good at this stuff and confident enough to do this in front of a lot of people on a sunny weekend day at the shore. There was never a shortage of people watching them at work.
Things like this impress me a lot. Someone doing something well that I have no idea how to do (or innate talent for) is bound to get me to pay attention. If you know the definition of what they were doing, please let me know.
