Tag Archives: photo

Japanese Government Comes to Town

I was sitting at the gate waiting to board a flight when the sound of a heavy jet reversing thrust outside caught my attention. It was a Japanese 747-400. JAL retired their 747s a few years ago and that made an appearance on the blog here. That meant this was a Japanese Government 747. I was really annoyed to have only seen it at the last minute. However, I was on the right side of the plane on takeoff to try and get a look. I did get a shot but looking through the camera made me lose the wider view. The Japanese 747s tend to travel as a pair. Sure enough, a second jet was parked up and I didn’t spot it was there until too late.

Puffins

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In the UK, the puffin is a well recognized bird. The small body and large bill are easily identified and the coloring is pretty bright. I am struggling to think whether I have ever seen one in the wild as they live in some pretty remote places. I might have but I don’t recall it. The aquarium in Newport OR had a bunch of them though. While the coloring was a lot more subdued, there was no doubt that they were puffins given their shape.

Whether birds really have personality or not, you can imagine it with puffins. They seem to be very fussy in the way they move which is probably just a function of being quite a small bird. As they paddled around the pool and flapped their wings, we got a good look at their mannerisms. The enclosure was pretty compact so you were very close to them which allowed some good opportunities to get some shots. Seeing them out in the wild would be cooler but I don’t tend to hang around on cliff faces too often.

Aer Lingus 757 at Newark

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In the UK, I have seen plenty of Aer Lingus A320 family jets. In the Midwest and on the west coast I have seen their A330s a lot too. One type of theirs that I have not seen before is the 757. These seem to be used for the shorter transatlantic runs. While taxiing out at Newark for a flight back to Seattle, a Shamrock 757 taxied out too and departed ahead of us. I have to admit I was quite surprised. I guess I knew they had 757s but this was the first one I had seen.

Cotton Bowl

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I have heard about the Cotton Bowl a lot over the years. There are so many Bowl games these days that I kind of forgot that some of them are actually the names of stadiums. I didn’t even know where it was. Turns out it is Dallas and it is right by the approach to Love Field. I happened to have the camera in hand as we came down final approach and got a few shots of the stadium and the surrounding facilities. It looked a bit quieter on this day than is sometimes the case.

Ice Emphasis to Structure of the A330

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An Aeroflot Airbus A330 landed at LAX while I was shooting there. On plenty of occasions, I have seen ice on the underside of the wings of landing aircraft where the cold fuel remaining in the tanks has caused condensation and freezing in the warmer damp air lower down. However, I haven’t ever noticed it on the fuselage structure. On this jet, though, I could see ice on the surface and the patterns of ice reflected the underlying fuselage structure. Maybe this is there more often and it was just the paint finish that made it show up this time.

Gull Wing Mercedes

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Here is one for those of you that know your vintage cars. How much is a Gull Wing Mercedes worth? This one is kept in the Lyon Air Museum in California. It seems to be in great condition and I assume it is worth quite a bit but I have no idea how much. It was tucked in amongst lots of valuable aircraft so is not the most expensive thing on display. Since the planes are generally airworthy, I would guess this is a runner too.

Max7 Test Aircraft

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The 737 Max8 and Max9 Jets are both certificated and in service. Next to come along is the Max7. It is a lower priority as a result of a far lower level of orders combined with a redesign it underwent to make it larger than originally intended. It is now flying though. I saw one aircraft on the ramp at Renton when passing by and also saw the first test aircraft landing at Boeing Field. I actually saw it take off as I drove in to the city heading to a meeting and it returned at the end of the day. Neither the Max7 nor the A319neo has sold well so it will be interesting to see how many of these enter service.

Geometry in Housing or is it Monopoly

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A quick trip to Dallas for work was necessary and I took the little camera along for the trip. As we came in towards Love Field, we flew over ares that are in the process of being built up or have recently been so. Seeing plots of land with the street layout showing but the plots not yet built up showed what had been there before in the areas that were now populated. A closer look showed that the houses did have a variety of styles but, from above, the roofs all seemed to be very similar and they were close together. It was almost like someone had grabbed a bunch of houses from a Monopoly set and lined them up next to each other. On the ground it probably looks nice but from above it was very uniform.

Smoking the Nosewheel of the A380

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Touchdown of an airliner almost always results in a big cloud of smoke as the rubber burns off the tires when they spin up to speed after first contacting the runway. Lots of tires can mean even more smoke and the 20 main tires on an A380 should mean a lot of smoke. Less often noticed is that the same thing happens when the nose gear touches down. As I shot this A380 landing at LAX, I happened to catch the smoke from the nose gear as it hit the ground.

Clouds Over the Valley

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My trip to Rainbow Canyon gave me plenty of time to enjoy the scenery as the jets only showed up infrequently. It was a cool and clear day on the whole but there were some times when clouds moved in. This caused me some concern since I didn’t want to wait for a long time and then have jets show up when the valley was socked in!

Fortunately, the clouds did not get in the way of the main focus of the trip. We did get some clouds drifting over the valley far below us. We also got little puffs of cloud working their way up the canyon. One bank of cloud rose out of the canyon and across the ridge on the opposite side from me. I watched it drift across the surface gradually obscuring areas that had been clear a moment before.

Another small cloud formation drifted up the canyon towards me. It was an isolated little cloud and it drifted in my direction and floated up over the edge of the ridge and to one side of where I was standing before it dissipated. Then it was all clear again and I could go back to waiting for the jets.