While waiting for the arrival of some jets, we were treated to a little bit of wildlife spotting. A hawk had been hunting over the fields in our vicinity, but it started to head our way and I grabbed a bunch of shots as it came by out of habit. One of the group checked his pictures out while we continued to wait and noticed that the hawk was carrying its next meal. It appears a rabbit had been caught out in the open and was now no more. The nature of life in the wild, I guess.
The traffic at Eloy was mainly light aircraft on training flights or jump ships for the sky diving operation. As one of the Twin Otters was lining up to depart, we saw a crop-dusting aircraft approaching the field. He seemed intent on landing from the opposite direction to that which the Twotter was going to use. We wondered how this would play out but they clearly had done this before. The jump ship got swiftly airborne and then turned left and directly towards us. This gave it separation from the inbound plane which then landed quite happily on the now vacated runway. It also meant we got some different angles on the departing plane which was welcome.
On our first night in Nanaimo, Nancy had identified a possible venue for dinner. The Dinghy Dock Pub is on Protection Island or, to be more accurate, is on a floating jetty attached to Protection Island. There is a small boat that takes people to the island and a good chunk of those people were heading to the pub when we went.
You disembark and are basically at the entrance to the pub so no need to go on to the island at all if you don’t want to. If we had been there at a different time, it would have been nice to stroll around the island, but we only got there in time to eat and, after we had finished, time was moving on a touch. You can sit inside or outside and, since the weather was lovely, outside it was!
The food was nice (it’s a pub, not a gourmet restaurant) and sitting outside as the sun gradually went down was so relaxing. We did have to keep a thought about the return boat since it only goes hourly. If you miss it, you have a long wait. Of course, if you are in a pub, what could you possibly do to pass the time? We timed things quite well and the boat was not long after we had finished so we took the pleasant ride back across the harbor to Nanaimo.
The Italian Air Force recently retired their AMX fleet. I remember seeing early AMX demonstration flights at Farnborough, so this is another one of those moments when you realize you are old enough to have seen the entire life cycle of an aircraft. The “joys” of aging, I guess. Anyway, I figured that, while I hadn’t seen a lot of AMXs over their time, I would reflect the few encounters that I had with them.
A short jaunt to Redmond on a Saturday morning for Exotics@RTC did not yield a huge number of vehicles. Being between two feature days, it seemed to be quite a low-key event. There were still plenty of nice cars to be seen but it was a bit of a surprise to come across a Ferrari Enzo sitting out in the lot. Maybe someone had used it to run out to the shops for a while but, since the event was not as heavily attended, it wasn’t quite as swamped with viewers as might otherwise be the case.
It is quite a cool looking vehicle although some of the styling cues are not my favorite. Even so, standing around such a valuable vehicle was rather fun. I was chatting to a couple of guys that wanted to know exactly what type of Ferrari it was and, when I mentioned what they sell for, they were quite taken aback. We agreed that, at those prices, we would keep our own Enzos at home most of the time!
This HondaJet had come from outside the US, so it had to clear customs at BFI after landing. That put it right in front of me while I was waiting for something else (although I can’t remember what it was). I find the jet very interesting although I am frustrated by the way in which all the ones I see have the same paint scheme with only a change in what color is used. Since this one parked up near me, I got to look at it from a variety of angles and that is a good way to appreciate the unusual shapes the airframe has.
The pylons are cambered and the way in which the nacelles sit on the wing is more easily appreciated from behind. It is great to have something different. I look forward to seeing the big brother when it makes it into service. A shame that Honda seems to have given up on their own engines but not a massive surprise.
Mum and I took a trip down to Juanita Bay to see what sort of wildlife was out and about. There was plenty of activity with both eagles and ospreys flying over the water looking for their next meal. At one stage, an eagle had caught a small fish and took it to a log in the water to enjoy. It seems that one of the ospreys decided that this could not stand and that the eagle should give up its catch. The osprey swooped down repeatedly at the eagle trying to get it spooked and to maybe leave the fish behind. The eagle was definitely annoyed by the osprey but was not inclined to move. This went on for a while but eventually the osprey realized it was futile and moved on.
I may have worked on the Typhoon/EF2000 in my younger days and have a strong affinity for that plane, but I have always appreciated its competitor from next door, the Dassault Rafale. The Rafale is a very elegant-looking airframe, and it has recently started to sell very well on the export market. One of those customers is India and the Indian Air Force brought some of its jets to Alaska for an exercise. They routed across the US with an overnight stop at McChord AFB (JBLM) before continuing on to Alaska.
I went out with a bunch of friends to see them arrive. They came in two waves and the first arrived in some quite poor conditions. This resulted in them making straight in approaches to the field. This was a bit of grey jets and a grey sky, but it was still worthwhile. There was a fair time between them showing up and the second wave and, by that time, the weather had improved considerably. This allowed them to do a run in and break to landing. Four jets came in but one was clearly offset – presumably getting some shots of the others. They tightened up before the break, though.
The final turns varied in how tight they were but, since the earlier jets had allowed me to get some more standard side-on shots, I decided to get closer to their approach path. I moved in a way for the first jet and then proceeded to sprint closer between each arrival in order to try and vary the angles a bit. If there had been more jets or time, I might have gone for directly on the centerline to get a head on shot but that wasn’t possible. What fun catching something very different to the norm for this area.
While walking through Richmond, we came along a street of older houses in what seemed like quite a desirable neighborhood. The dominant feature of most of these houses was the preponderance of wisteria on their frontages. Some of the plants were confined to one house while others seemed to span whatever property that they felt like. The purple blooms were most impressive, and it seemed like they were competing to see which house could be more purple than the next. I don’t know how long wisteria blooms for so did we get lucky with our timing, or could we have been there at a wider range of times?
Allegiant currently flies a bunch of A319 and A320 jets, but its most recent order was for some 737 Max8-200s. The first of these have been flying at Boeing Field. Unfortunately, my first encounter was with an unpainted jet, but I have since caught them looking a lot more like the finished article. It got me thinking of what I have seen of their jets over the years so I thought I would scan the archive. Plenty of the A320 family jets but I have also got their 757s and MD-80s so here are a few shots.
