Tag Archives: washington

How Desperate Do You Get in Quarantine? A Garbage Truck?

Being quarantined at home and working from home means you have limited things to shoot. It also means you get to see things that happen during the day which you normally miss by breaking at work. I put the trash out on Monday evenings but would not normally see it being collected during the day on Tuesday. Now I see that. Also, I get to enjoy the engineering of modern trash collection and the skill of the operator sweeping in to pick up each can in turn. These little thins amuse the engineer in me although I guess I am probably a long way from the rest of the populous in this. For a small percentage of you, here is some video I put together of our trash guy. Let’s hope we get to go out again soon and I will look for more exciting subjects!

Misty 330s

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While at Boeing Field, you get a steady stream of traffic for SeaTac overhead. With Delta’s substantial presence at Seattle, the right time of day can mean a few widebodies. The A330 is a big part of their operations and we currently get the old and the new with the -300s and the -900 neos. The conditions looked pretty clear above me but there must have been a lot of moisture around because the jets seemed to be pulling a bit of vapor with them and going in and out of clouds that they seemed to hard to see without them there.

I played around with the processing a bit to see what I could do to show up the moisture more effectively. It gets a little more interest out of a shot that would otherwise not be worthy of any note.

Geese Washing Themselves in the Sammamish

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I’ve been catching up on some video editing while stuck indoors. During the Christmas break, mum and I took a walk along the Sammamish River. There were lots of geese floating downstream and they were busy washing themselves. This involved a lot of flapping and inverting themselves in the river. Of course, when I got close, they stopped doing it while their buddies further downstream seemed to be busy washing. I did finally get some footage of it so here is a short video of geese! Bet that’s just what you wanted to see today!

Waiting Around Gets You a Herc!

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I was at BFI one day looking to get some other interesting visitors and I had got what I came for. I was just contemplating whether to go home or do something else before returning when I saw something on the approach at the other end of the field. It looked big, smoky and a prop so I thought I should wait a little longer. A look through the long lens told me it was a C-130! It was a Linden Air Cargo airframe, sadly unpainted in their colors which are very nice. I was most glad that I hadn’t been in a hurry to get on my way!

Last Exotics of the Year

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It is around this time of year that the Exotics@RTC should be starting up again. Of course, with everything on lock-down, that is not happening at this point. Consequently, I thought I might go back to the last meeting of 2019 which I paid a visit to. It wasn’t a big gathering but, with it being the last one to take place (I think weather scrubbed some later meets), it was the final run out to Redmond for some of the cars and their owners. Here is a selection of shots of the fine machines that showed up.

A Saudi F-15SA in the PNW

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A Boeing F-15SA development airframe has been in the PNW. The F-15SA is a development of the Strike Eagle family specifically for the Royal Saudi Air Force. They are buying new jets as well as updating the F-15S jets they bought years ago. Production jets have been delivered for a while now but testing activities continue. I had heard that a jet was at Boeing Field for a while and had even seen the tails parked on the ramp as I drove by but I hadn’t seen it moving.

Military jets don’t usually show up on the mainstream flight tracking apps (but this one had when it traveled cross country) so I didn’t know it was airborne. However, I heard it call up on approach so stopped what I was doing and grabbed the camera. Sure enough, it came zipping down the approach. A few quick shots and then it was down. Apparently I was rather lucky. A couple of days later it headed back across country.

Another Star Wars Jet – At Last

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When a new Star Wars movie is released, it seems to be the thing to arrange a tie in with an airline and have them paint jets in special Star Wars themed liveries. ANA was a part of this and I have shot a variety of their special paint scheme jets which you can see here and here. For the most recent movie, The Rise of Skywalker, United got in on the game and painted a 737 in a black livery with special marking including one side with a blue lightsaber and one with a red. I had not seen the jet before. It has been to SeaTac a few times but never when I could get there (or when it was daylight). Finally it showed up one evening when the weather was great so nice light. Only one side to see of course but here it is!

Rowing Crews In Training

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It was a nice evening after work and Nancy was on a trip that meant she would be home later than me so I figured I would go and hang out at Log Boom Park and see what was going on at the top of Lake Washington. It might be wildlife and it might be floatplanes so I have a chance of something. I actually ended up seeing a bunch of crews in training. I don’t know whether they are from the university or a local club but there were plenty of them.

They appeared one time in the distance and then paused before heading back down the lake. A while later they reappeared and did the same thing again. They were a fair distance away although I did wonder whether they would be in the path of the floatplanes that were taking off. However, they were probably too far for them to be in conflict. I will have to check out when the regattas are due to take place as I would like to see it with more planning unlike last year when we saw some races by accident.

The Second Batch of Indian P-8s Commences

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This P-8 is the first jet for a second batch ordered by the Indian government. I have to admit that I didn’t know that they had ordered more jets. I could tell it was different because the earlier jets had ARK written on the fin and this one has DAB. Maybe that is a squadron thing? The P-8I for the Indians has a number of changes from the USN standard of jet. It has a different radar mounted on the fuselage and also includes a MAD which was not part of the USN spec. Here are some shots of the two jets to show the differences between them.

Sunrise and Moonset

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I had to travel up to Blaine for an immigration interview early one morning. The sun was just coming up as I headed north and the nearly full moon was setting on the other horizon. The moon was sitting just above the mountains of the Olympics and looked stunning. Sadly, I was on the interstate so no option to get a photo. I did eventually manage to find a spot to pull off near Mt Vernon and was able to get some photos. The angle of elevation made it look a little higher in the sky and this far north there were some clouds on the horizon obscuring the mountains so it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. However, it still looked rather nice.