Tag Archives: smoke

Parachute Smoke Trail Patterns

The Canadian Forces SkyHawks parachute display team opened the Abbotsford Air Show evening display.  One of the jumpers had a line of smoke canisters that hung beneath them as they descended under their canopy.  Some tight turns allowed the line to swing out and create some nice smoke trail patterns.  Here are some shots of the results.

Alaska 737 Touchdown At KPAE

I was up at Paine Field after work one day for the arrival of a DHL/Singapore Airlines 777F.  Before it was due in, an Alaska Airlines 737 was due in on one of the scheduled flights.  Alaska operations at Paine Field originally were just using the Embraers but, with the success of some of the routes, they have upgraded a number of the services to the 737.  I thought this would be a good opportunity to see whether the low shutter speed settings I was planning for the 777F would be okay.

I wasn’t going down to some crazy low shutter speed.  I wanted to make sure I got a good shot.  However, when you are close to the runway, as is the case at the windsock, you don’t need to be too low to get some blur.  I was only using the 24-105 at that range as things are very close.  The level of background blur I got was okay.  It would be good to get more but it was going to be fine for the 777F.  When playing with this approach, you know that a bunch of the shots will not be sharp enough.  Unfortunately, you never know whether the key moments will be the sharp ones.  Fortunately, one of the better shots was with a healthy dose of tire smoke as they touched down.  I was happy with the result.

Smoke In the Air

The wildfires that spread throughout the west in September resulted in some really bad air quality in our area.  It was hard to see too far on some occasions and you definitely weren’t supposed to exercise if you could avoid it.  At one point, I had thought a short bike ride might be okay but I didn’t do it and, when I went out to take some photos, I realized that even walking around the park was resulting in me feeling quite bad.  Serious exertion would have been a bad idea.

I wanted to get some photos that demonstrated how bad the air quality was.  However, I discovered that it was quite hard to compose a shot that showed how bad things are.  You can take pictures that show distant objects as obscured by the smoke particles (although post processing techniques can reduce or increase the obscuration if you wish) but the difficulty with that is that a photo doesn’t give a good idea for the viewer of how far away things really are.

A wide lens makes even things that are close look distant and a telephoto lens brings distant things in close so you struggle to make the viewer perceive things the way you actually saw them at the time.  I tried with these shots to have enough in the foreground to give some concept of how quickly the visibility fell off but I don’t think it really tells the story in the way that being there did.  However, this is a record of what it was like and maybe I will come back to these pictures to remember.

Smoking the Ukrainian Way

The regular AN124 visitors to Everett continue.  This time of year can often bring northerly winds which means a departure up past the Future of Flight building.  Having a heavy Ruslan depart that way can mean a nice angle to get on rotation as well as the climb out which, while a bit backlit, makes for a good change.  I was happy with the takeoff but, as the jet climbed away to the north, the smoky combustion of the old D-18 engines was clear to see.  The further that they climbed out, the less the plane was obvious and the more the smoke trail was.  A bit of mixing from the trailing vortices helped as well.  A lot of the people around me were commenting on how dirty it was.

Smoking the Nosewheel of the A380

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.

If You Can’t See Where You Are Going, It Is Your Fault!

We relocated to the other end of Boeing Field for the return of the Blue Angels.  They ran in across the field trailing white smoke.  Unfortunately, with little wind, this meant a pall of smoke was now hanging over the airport.  As they broke into the downwind and then turned onto final, it was sometimes hard to see them at all.  A healthy boosting of the contrast makes some of the shots a bit more visible but, in truth, the viz was really awful.  I only hope they had a slightly better view of the ground than we had of them since their being able to see was slightly more important.

Consequences of a Doolittle Style Takeoff

Grumpy got airborne using the Doolittle technique I posted about here.  During the takeoff, there were some puffs of smoke from one of the engines.  Initially I thought this might just be some oil blowing through but, as they climbed out, the output from the engine was clearly not as it should be and the one engine was clearly not healthy.  They cut short the flight (although not as short as it could have been) and brought the plane back down.  I saw Grumpy fly a few weeks later so I guess they dealt with whatever the issue was.

Icelandic Veteran With a Smoky Engine

Icelandair has made a good business of operating Boeing 757s on routes from Iceland to the US with Seattle being a regular destination for years.  There was a time when the 757 was a cutting-edge jet but these days they are getting up in years.  Similarly, the RB211-535E4 was once considered very advanced.  Now, it is dated.  It turns out that one of the engines on this flight is in a little better shape than the other.  As they cycled the power on the approach, the starboard engine was noticeably smokier.  Not a big deal but I guess it has been on the wing a little longer than its partner.

Smokey the E-8

A jet I don’t often get to see in action is the E-8 JSTARS.  There aren’t a huge number of them and they often fly at times that don’t suit photography so I have not previously got a lot of shots of them and certainly not too many in flight.  Based on the 707-300 airframe, they were pretty old when they were selected for conversion to the JSTARs mission.  They are definitely showing their age and the USAF is in the process of competing for a replacement program.  There are a few years left for the E-8 but they won’t be around for too much longer.

One feature of their age is the engines that they have.  The jets are fitted with old JT3D engines.  A program had been put in place to re-engine them with JT8Ds and a modified jet did fly.  However, the program was put on hold due to the potential for a replacement aircraft making the payback period unviable.  As a result, we got the old smoky jets.  It isn’t as bad as the old pure jet days of the KC-135s and B-52s but it still is easy to track the jet as it climbs out courtesy of the black trail it leaves behind.

Number Two is Cleaner

B11I1840.jpgThis United 747 was flying over the Bay during the Fleet Week display as I posted about in this post.  One thing that was very obvious as the aircraft was put through its paces by the crew was that the number two engine seemed to be burning a lot cleaner than the other three.  You wouldn’t pay much attention to the exhaust of a jet except when there is a clear discrepancy and, in this case, the number two was so obviously less smoky, I noticed.  Maybe it was fresh from overhaul.

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