There is no shortage of DHC Beavers in the PNW, even of the turbine variety. Plenty of them are on floats, too, so even that doesn’t make it particularly special. However, when you haven’t been able to shoot much aviation for a long time, one is a welcome sight. Even better when it switches to the closer runway when on approach.
Boeing has been building and testing 737 Max jets throughout the grounding so having them flying is not a great surprise. However, with the grounding order lifted by the FAA, things are moving into a higher gear. United took delivery of a jet and American Airlines has indicated it will start service before the end of the year. Two jets were up on the same day which leads me to think that they have already undergone the mod programs and are being tested prior to delivery to the airline.
BNSF has a large maintenance yard in Seattle in the Interbay area. My bike ride took me past the yard and then up and over the tracks. On my return leg, I stopped to have a look at the facility. There is a space where a round house used to be which you can see on Google Maps. A couple of trains were on the lines and there were a bunch of locos elsewhere in the yard.
Late in the day in the PNW, you can get lucky with good lighting. It is not unusual to have a crappy day end with the sun, low on the horizon, cutting under the clouds and providing some briefly great conditions. With a Dornier 328Jet due in, I was hoping that the conditions might be just what I wanted. However, the plane was delayed from its planned time. At the scheduled arrival time, conditions were, in fact, rather good. I got something arriving then that looked pretty cool and will get its own post.
However, my 328Jet was running late. I kept my eye on the horizon, hoping the sun would make an appearance but the thick cloud layer hanging on the horizon told me that things were not going to work out. Sure enough, when the 328Jet showed up, the sky was decidedly dull. This was all the more annoying given that it had a really nice color scheme. They aren’t exactly rare but they are not common enough to ignore the chance to get one so this still counts as a plus for me.
Winter in the PNW does not mean reliable conditions for photographing planes. If the weather is bad, you might decide it isn’t worth going out. If it is raining and threatening to rain harder, there is a strong possibility you would skip a shot opportunity. However, 727s are getting pretty rare these days so that seems worthy of a trip out.
The weather was unpleasant when it made its approach but not as bad as it got a short while later. I went with my normal approach for shooting in really bad conditions by pushing the overexposure pretty high. I include a couple of edits. For the main image, I actually blended two different process versions in Photoshop to get the combination that most reflects how the shot looked through the view finder. The other edit is a straightforward Lightroom edit where the angle and the light suited it.
On one of my days off – taken in order to get my PTO balance down – I headed out for some aviation exploration. The weather on this day was not great but, since I had struck it lucky on some of my other days off, I guess the odds were bound to swing the other way at some point. While it was cloudy in Seattle, looking south to Mt Rainier, the sun was out on the mountain. That didn’t mean it was cloud free, though. There was a lot of cloud forming over the summit as the wind blew through so I shot a few images to make a pano of the mountain. It would have been a great day to fly around the mountain but sadly that wasn’t to be.
A sunny weekend day at this time of year is not to be wasted so I took a bike ride across to Seattle. I was heading for Discovery Park and one of the trails that made up my route took me passed a lot of the local shipyards. As I approached one of them, I saw what looked like a funnel. Then I realized it was a mock up of a whole ship. It even had a helicopter on a pad. One my return journey, I stopped to take a look. I realized that there was a lot of piping underneath the structure and it had a notice about a fire training facility. I guess they can simulate fires in different parts of the vessel and crews can be trained to handle them. I wonder what it is like on the trail when the training is underway.
I was pondering what to do with a day off. I was struggling to come up with a plan and the weather was not ideal for photography but I then saw that not one but two HondaJets were due in to Boeing Field within an hour of each other. I have only shot one flying before and it was very distant so I figured this would be the motivation to get me out.
The sky was very overcast with a grey background that made me hope for planes painted in an interesting color scheme. Unfortunately, both jets were in Honda schemes with grey as the main paint so they were hardly ideal for shooting in such conditions. However, I didn’t have much of a choice so I got both of them on the approach. If only one of them could have been a bit more colorful.
As I was heading off to my next stop, I drove past the Kenmore ramp and saw that one of them was parked up there. A quick diversion in and I added a ground shot of one of the jets. Not sure where the other one was parked but I would assume it was on Modern’s ramp.
In this recent post, I had an RAF Poseidon flying over the house. A little while later, I was at Boeing Field when the same jet came back from a test flight. Here are some shots of it as it rolled out after landing. It wasn’t long after this that the jet was delivered to the RAF and made the trip to its new home in Lossiemouth.
While at Boeing Field on a sunny day, I was pleased to see a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk flying along the runway. MH-65s are the local Coast Guard helicopters so a Jayhawk is a nice change. Having seen the MH-65s doing a fly through before, I was hoping that we would get the same but they actually pulled up and turned in the the FBO. However, once on the ramp, the kept rotors running so I knew they would be out again soon.
When they did come out, they actually back taxied to the far end of the field. I would have been a lot happier with them making an intersection departure closer to me but that wasn’t to be for some reason. Consequently, they had gained a fair bit of altitude by the time they came level with me. A belly shot was not what I was after but never mind. The underside view gives a good view on the three external tanks that the Jayhawk can carry. That gives some serious range when heading far offshore to rescue someone in need.
