Tag Archives: tanker

Metrea Defeats Me Again – Sort Of

I was heading to a meeting south of Seattle when I got a message from the person I was joining that they were running late. I stopped off at Boeing Field to wait for their call and to see if anything cool was around. One of the Metrea KC-135Rs was on the Modern ramp. It was the nicest of their paint schemes and the winter light was lovely. Naturally I grabbed a shot as I waited. They were looking ready to go and I hoped that they would take off before the call came through. I was to be disappointed. I heard from my contact that he was en route, so I left. About ten minutes after I did so, the jet took off. I can only imagine how good it looked in that light.

A few days later, I was back in Georgetown to meet some friends, and I saw that the jet was out again on a mission. It was due back shortly before sunset so I hoped I might get lucky with the light clearing up. It certainly wasn’t as nice as it had been previously, but you never know. As it turned on to the approach, conditions were getting better but not what I was hoping for. Despite that, the jet still looked okay as it came into land. It could definitely have been better but not a total bust.

Refueling the Hornet

Two quite different versions of the same thing here. The Comox Air Show this year included demonstrations are aerial refueling with the RCAF Hornet. The first of these was perfectly sensible because it was the Hornet formating on the C-130 Hercules fitted with refueling pods. The Hornet took up station behind the drogue units to demonstrate how refueling would be done.

Later in the show, there was a slightly odder version of things. A USAF KC-135R Stratotanker (which was carrying Kadena tailcodes which might be a first for me) was airborne and the Hornet formated on this too. Some KC-135s do carry hose drogue units on the wings or a drogue adaptor on the end of the boom but this was not one of them. Instead, they simulated the boom refueling. The Hornet can’t refuel from the boom but, since it was just an airshow, I doubt too many people were bothered by this.

IL-78s to Support the Rafales

A little while ago, I posted some images of the Indian Air Force Rafales that transited through JBLM on their way to Alaska.  They didn’t come alone, though.  They had some support aircraft with them including some tanking resources.  I’ve seen the occasional IL-78 in the past, so this wasn’t a first for me, but they are still a relatively rare occurrence so catching this was a nice result and the light showed up enough to make the images a bit nicer.

At Last, a Japanese Pegasus Airborne

Japan is one of the few countries to order the KC-46 Pegasus tankers for its Air Force.  Their initial four jets have been coming through the production line at Everett and I had seen the occasional one when it was on the ground being prepared.  However, I had never seen one fly.  I finally broke that duck a while back.  I was at Everett not only for the departure but the return of a Japanese jet.  I thought I was going to miss it taking off because it was lined up when I was getting close to the airfield.

Fortunately, it was doing a high-speed taxi first and then backtracked for the real departure by which time I had arrived.  The return was a lot more relaxed from my point of view and I was pleased to finally get one airborne.  I doubt I shall have many opportunities to see them once they are delivered.

The Marines Show Up

I could easily have missed this, but my friend messaged me that a Herc was coming in.  I was working on some other stuff and would have been unaware until too late.  It was not where I was, and I wasn’t moving but the roll out and taxiing back was in lovely light so I wasn’t missing out.  They taxied to the terminal and kept the engines running so I wondered if they were going straight back out but it wasn’t to be.  They then taxied to a parking spot and shut down.  Maybe they were clearing customs?  Apparently they stayed for the night but were gone when I came by the following day.

My First Polaris – Just In Time

The Royal Canadian Air Force will soon be getting new tanker transport aircraft.  They are going to buy some Airbus A330 MRTTs to replace their CC-150 Polaris jets.  These are based on the A310 and I have never seen one before.  Fortunately, there was one on static display at Abbotsford for the air show.  It was in the grey scheme rather than the brightly painted version but that was fine by me.  I was just glad to get one before they are replaced.  It would be good to see one flying but I suspect the chances of that are diminishing.  You never know, though.

Private KC-135s Look Best Without Barbed Wire

When the Singaporean Air Force wanted to add tanker capabilities a few years ago, they bought some surplus KC-135Rs from the US to operate.  More recently, they acquired some A330 tankers from Airbus and the KC-135s were, again, surplus.  This time they were picked up by a company called Meta Aerospace that bid on refueling work for the US Navy.  I think Meta has changed its name to Metrea – presumably to avoid being confused with the Facebook parent.

Whatever the name, they brought one of the aircraft to Seattle for a little over a week for work that was being undertaken over the Pacific off the coast of Washington.  They have their tankers painted in a rather nice livery with the company logos and I was hoping to catch one.  As it happened, one was up one afternoon and there was a chance of getting there after work to get it.  I headed down thinking I had some time in hand.  I was wrong.  They came back a little earlier than expected, the airport changed runways which meant I had to go further and traffic on that extra section was backed up.  I got to the fence just as it was coming over the threshold and I managed a few weak shots with sections of barbed wire cutting through the airframe in most.

I wondered whether I had missed my only good opportunity but, thankfully, they were around for longer than expected and one of the flights again gave me a chance to get there after work.  This time I was there with a bit more time in hand and was able to get some shots without the added benefit of wire foregrounds!  The plane was on the ground at other times but, at this time of year, the heat haze at Boeing Field is pretty bad.  Only on a crummy Saturday when my friend Chris was in town, was it possible to get a reasonably clear shot of it parked up.  I wonder if we will see it back here at some point in the future.

Tanker Dwarfs the Ferry

The Guemes Island ferry was busy operating across the strait between the mainland and the island while I was there.  Just as it was readying to depart for another crossing, a tanker was making its way up the strait towards Anacortes.  I was wondering whether the ferry would make a quick dash across before it got there but they decided the discretion was better than valor and instead headed up the strait to turn and cross behind the tanker.

The closer that they got to the tanker, the more apparent the difference in scale between the two vessels became.  When you see large ships at a distance, it is easy to lose track of just how large they are.  Put something you can appreciate the scale of close to them, though, and you rapidly see that they are really big.  This isn’t even a big tanker by the scale of tankers.  The biggest vessels are truly enormous.  I remember as a kid that one of the largest tankers was berthed in Southampton for a few years when it wasn’t in demand.  That thing was massive!

Aussie Tanker on Show

The KC-46 will end up being a big selling tanker because the USAF will buy loads and a few export customers will follow suit.  However, where open competitions have been held, the Airbus A330 MRTT has been most successful.  It is developing a wide customer base and one of those customer is the Royal Australian Air Force.  They have brought their tankers, known as KC30, to the US on exercises but I had not seen one in person until I got to the Antelope Valley Air Show at Edwards AFB.  The tanker was sitting on the ramp in the static area.  It was looking particularly clean for a military jet and was configured with both the boom and the underwing pods for probe and rogue refueling.  Fitting in a big jet in a busy ramp is tricky so a pano can help out making a shot possible.  Now I just need to see one actually airborne!

How Dark Can This Thing Shoot

Every once in a while, I really test the high ISO capability of the cameras I have.  The R3 got an early test when I was at Red Flag,  I went out on two evenings to shoot some night departures and experimented with the ability of the camera to perform in those conditions.  The high ISO capability of cameras has not moved on too much to be honest.  The max ISO I used on my 1DXII was 51,200 and the R3 is still the same.  It does appear to be a bit cleaner but they have possibly hit a bit of a limit.  What I had not tried out before was an electronic viewfinder in such conditions.

The first night, I went out into the dunes to be ready for the B-1 departures.  As it turned out, they didn’t launch that night.  I did get some fighters coming out my way for a while before I concluded that this was a bust and I was heading back to the hotel.  I tried shooting a few of the jets but I discovered the limitations of the camera pretty rapidly.  When there is no light, the electronic viewfinder really struggles.  The frame rate of the viewfinder drops like a stone and tracking a subject becomes pretty problematic.  The frames per second drop too so the chances of a result are slim.  With an optical viewfinder, this is not an issue but the chances of a good shot are also slim.

I returned to the hotel feeling pretty dispirited by this result.  I wondered whether this was a real problem for adopting the R3.  The following night, I went out again with the B-1s again being my main target.  This time I had some tankers heading out before the B-1s launched.  It was a very different evening.  Sure, the lack of light still makes the chances of getting a good shot pretty low but the camera seemed to have no problem tracking the subjects and keeping the viewfinder frame rate up to a perfectly acceptable level.  If I had only gone from the previous night, I would have concluded that it was unusable.

The embedded images in the RAW files looked pretty good but the Lightroom edits required a lot more work.  DPP might be the answer or DxO PrimeRAW could do a good job.  However, that is not the issue.  Will the camera allow me to shoot at night with very dark subjects.  Apparently, the answer is yes.  It can handle it.  However, it can’t track an almost black subject with a couple of navigation lights like an optical viewfinder can.  That is a limitation that I may have to live with.