This plane was teasing me. Ameristar has DC-9s in its fleet and they are clearly not young airframes, but it is nice when they get a fresh paint job. One was at Boeing Field in a shiny new looking livery. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going anywhere while I was near it. I got shots of it on the ramp and near the terminal building. I also got an overhead shot of it from up on the hill. None of these involved it doing anything other than sitting there though. Let’s hope I get lucky with it before too long.
I did a little filming on a bike ride with an old GoPro Hero 5 of mine. The current generation of action cameras has all sorts of clever tech built in which can deal with rotation of the camera and stabilizing the image. The Hero 5 doesn’t have any of that and I ended up spending a lot of time stabilizing the images in post processing to try and get something usable out of it. I was surprised how badly it came out and started thinking about an upgrade to incorporate all of the newer capabilities. It was at this point that I got a little silly. I had seen videos before about the Insta360 cameras and had found them intriguing but not so much that I wanted to get one. Now I was looking for a new camera, the capabilities that they have seemed like it could be a good step forward.
For those that haven’t seen one, the Insta360 in its current X3 form has two cameras on opposite sides of the body with fisheye lenses with over 180 degrees of coverage. The sensors are 5.7K resolution and the camera can stitch the two outputs together to give spherical coverage. It also has a stick on which you can mount it which the camera will recognize the location of and take both images to effectively remove the stick from the video. With the high resolution of the original files, you can then use their software – either on your phone or using the desktop app – to pan and zoom around the original files and generate video output of whatever you want.
What this means is that you don’t have to frame a shot when you are shooting. The only thing you have to do is have the camera in the right place. You can worry about where it is pointing later on which is great when you are already doing something else. The removal of the stick is very impressive, only slightly undermined but the fact your hand that is holding it now looks a little odd. Also, if the shadow of the stick is in shot, the software doesn’t know to do anything about that! (As an aside, there is a mode where you only shoot with one side like a normal action camera if you want.)
What is the downside to all of this? Big files! You are shooting a lot of data on two cameras simultaneously so you can fill up cards fast. You do also have to then review each clip and pick your angles for the shots, but you would have had to do that beforehand otherwise so no great loss. Other than that, not a lot to complain about. I have tried it on a few occasions so far. The length of the stick makes it seem like you have a drone flying above you if you put it up there. A cool result. I took it out on a bike ride to see how things came out and I have a short video below that shows you the result. No great cinematography here but an introduction to what can be done. Remember that each shot is only moving the camera around and the panning and zooming is all done back at home. Amazing tech!
Seattle is a place where you can get a fair bit of humidity at certain times of day. Earlier in the day, there might be a lot of cloud but it will burn off as the day goes on and you have some sunny afternoons and evenings. Watching the planes on approach to SEA on days like this can make for some rapidly changing conditions. I was watching a bunch of jets heading towards SEA as they came through the clouds and into clear air. They would be leaving trails in the cloud base behind them as they went but would be trailing their own little vapor fields behind them.
The conditions didn’t last long and soon the clouds were almost gone and the amount of vapor that they were pulling was minimizing. The vapor was clearly aligned with the flaps on the wings so you could see where the air was being worked the hardest. I did get some shots of them for this which I shall share later but the way in which the vapor puffs and dissipates is best seen in video, so I shot a bunch of that. Most planes were coming directly over me but a couple of the wide-bodies were going to the inner runway so were offset from my location.
In the outer area of Exotics@RTC I saw this EV Hummer. The move towards electric vehicles is a positive step to reducing our emissions and trying to address the climate change challenges we have but there was something about this behemoth that made me feel that we are missing the point. Sure, an EV Hummer is less polluting than the original Hummer, but this thing is huge and is surely not a good idea. Finding a way to have the most inefficient EV you can is kind of missing the point.
The Memorial Day weekend included the visit to Boeing Field of four F/A-18 Hornets from the US Marine Corps. I had heard that they were in the area but wasn’t able to get out to see them until the Monday of the holiday weekend when they were due to head home. Weather was a bit overcast so not great for shooting a grey jet! Still, I wasn’t going to ignore them. When I got there, the crews were just beginning to look like they would be ready to go.
However, things were not going to be smooth. One of the jets was the color jet and I had heard that it had been leaking fuel during the stay. Sure enough, when they fueled it up for departure, it must have leaked again because a bunch of ground crew – presumably from the FBO – were suddenly out with absorbent pads and brooms to clean up whatever had spilled. This took quite a while to get done so the four pilots were hanging around the jets waiting to be clear to go.
Finally, everything was tidied up and they crewed in for departure. The sound of engines starting was a positive one but, as one jet fired up one of the engines, it definitely didn’t sound like it was spooling up at the same rate as the others. Sure enough, one jet shut down and the pilot hopped out of the cockpit, walked back down the fuselage and slid to the ground. I’m not sure what he did to the jet but he then retraced his steps, back up on the jet and strapped back in. This time, the start sequence went okay and they were all ready to taxi.
When I visit Anacortes, I almost always take a trip to the shipyard to see what sort of interesting things are up on the area near the road. Normally it is tugs or support vessels, but a recent trip provided something a little different. The Washington State Ferries vessel Chetzemoka was in for some work. Seeing a vessel of this size up close and from below is rather cool. The props had been removed and there were supports welded to the hull for the duration of the work. It was a slightly gloomy day, but I had my phone, so I got some shots. I wonder how long it will be before she is back in service.
My buddy, Mark, was heading through the region on his way south but he had a little time to kill. We agreed to meet up late in the afternoon to see what the traffic was like at Kenmore. He comes from Vancouver, so floatplanes are not a novelty for him, but a different operator is some variety I guess. I am always happy to watch floatplanes. I got there a little before him and got a couple of extra movements but there was still enough happening once he showed up. Log Boom Park provides a good spot to watch the planes from, but the summer can be trickier as it becomes a popular spot for the local kids to hang out and swim. Fortunately, the day was cooler, so we weren’t surrounded by kids.
Most of the planes approached from down the lake and came straight in but there was one Cessna that decided the southerly wind necessitated the approach over Kenmore. I would like more of those to be honest as they provide some interesting angles, but it was just the one this time.
I had to make a trip to Pittsburgh for a work conference. It has been nearly twenty years since I was last there, so I was keen to see how the city is. Pittsburgh has adapted to the post steel industry quite well and the downtown is not a bad place to visit. I did get out on my last day before I headed home and got some views of the area around the three rivers including shots from the convention center and some from the surrounding hills. Here are some of those shots.
The Cirrus SF50 Vision is a strange little jet. It might be jet powered, but it isn’t a particularly high performer. Sure, it is quicker than a piston aircraft, but it doesn’t compete with the jets that are a little larger than it and it certainly isn’t huge. However, it does fill a niche. There have been quite a few of them around her recently and, with its bulbous fuselage, V-tail and dorsal engine, it sure looks different. It also helps that they often get painted in interesting schemes so I’ll get shots whenever I can. Here are some I have seen recently.
Only my second visit of the year to Exotics@RTC and it was another special day. This time it was Classics which seems to be a rather generic term but does provide for a bunch of older cars or all sorts of origins to be included – particularly stuff that wouldn’t normally have its own day! A star of the show was this Bugatti 57. I had got there early to try and get some shots before the crowds built up and it arrived while I was walking around. I got some shots of it driving up and then once it was parked.
It rapidly got a lot of attention. Later on, when I was trying to get some shots of it from above, I realized that there was always such a throng of people in the vicinity that my usual technique of blending multiple shots would not work. I was glad to have been there early! I don’t know how these cars get valued. I looked up sale prices for these vehicles and there were some that went in the millions and others that were in the hundreds of thousands. Where this one sits in relation to all of those, I have no idea. I do know the owner was very happy to let people sit in it and have their picture taken which is the great thing about events like this.
This plane was teasing me. Ameristar has DC-9s in its fleet and they are clearly not young airframes, but it is nice when they get a fresh paint job. One was at Boeing Field in a shiny new looking livery. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going anywhere while I was near it. I got shots of it on the ramp and near the terminal building. I also got an overhead shot of it from up on the hill. None of these involved it doing anything other than sitting there though. Let’s hope I get lucky with it before too long.
