Category Archives: aircraft

The Lonely Life of the AWACS

The beginning and end of an exercise has a common theme. Long before the fighter start launching, an E-3 AWACS will lumber off the runway and head out towards the exercise area. It gets on station and sets up to direct the fight as the fast movers enter the range. It will support the whole mission and will guide the small guys back home at the conclusion of their missions. It will deal with any of the jets that have to change plans or abort. With everyone else back on the ground, the AWACS can finally come home. They are often the last jet back on the ground. Hopefully everyone outside will stay around for their recovery. You wouldn’t want them to feel neglected!

Air Berlin

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I wonder how long this plane will continue to show up at SFO. Air Berlin runs a service to San Francisco which is seasonal in nature. However, Air Berlin is currently in some difficulty and they are reorganizing the operations. Some of the services are moving in to Lufthansa control while the long haul stuff may be what remains. Consequently, they might still come to California but, for now, who knows. They aren’t a daily feature anyway so I haven’t seen the, very often. Here was a nice day when they did show up.

Backseat Cameraman

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One of the fun things about looking through my pictures from a shoot is spotting things I didn’t notice at the time. Often it is pilots waving or looking like they are doing something different. This time, I was surprised to see a couple of the backseat guys in the jets with their cameras out. One of the places you would really like to be as a photographer in in the backseat of one of the jets getting shots as things happen. I guess the crews are not a lot different. I assume they are pretty busy during the main part of the mission. The recovery is a different story and the front seater is dealing with everything that counts. Time for the Guy in the Back to take in the scenery and grab some shots of the approach.

The French Government Comes to Town

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Catching a cool bizjet is nice but coming across one that is a bit special is even better. I almost missed this one. I was focused on something else when I looked up and saw something on the approach. At first I thought it was a parallel approach but I lifted the camera up to my eye and saw it was a colorful fun that was getting my attention. It was a Dassault Falcon 7X. It was in French government colors. The fin was the French tricolor. This was a cool thing to catch and quite a surprise.

Spanish Fake Canopies

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When the Canadian Hornets first came into service, they introduced the fake canopy on the underside of the front fuselage. This was a painted outline of the canopy. The idea was that, on the heat of a dogfight, the opposing pilot might be confused about the orientation of the jet and think it was coming towards him rather than away as a result of seeing this canopy.

The US Hornets never had this on the fleet jets but it appears that the Spanish Air Force has adopted it for theirs (although not all of the jets are so painted). I heard a rumor that the Canadians have some rights on this and other users have to pay for it but I have no idea whether there is any truth to this or not. However, their jets certainly do have the canopies painted on the fuselage.

Aeromexico 787

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A little trip back to an earlier photo trip for this one. Aeromexico have lots of flights to the US but their LAX flight is obviously busy enough to justify a bigger jet. That is the 787. I got to see their 787 during my visit including some great views from the helicopter that we shot from over the airport. Above is a good angle to shoot the 787 from. The wing planform is pretty distinctive and so looking down you can see that most clearly.

The EC130 is a Nice Ride

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While on vacation on Big Island, I took a helicopter flight across the island. Other posts will include some of the shots from that flight. However, this is just to give credit to the helicopter itself. I flew with Sunshine Helicopters in one of their EC130s. I imagine the name has changed now that Eurocopter has gone through a couple of brand transitions under the Airbus umbrella.

This was my first ride in a 130. It is a popular airframe on the islands. Eurocopter took the Astar (Squirrel/Ecureuil) as a base and, given that tour operators were squeezing 6 passengers in, they came up with a fuselage that provided comfortable space and lots of window space so that the performance of the airframe could be matched with the level of comfort required. They succeeded in my experience. I should point out I was up front. There are two passenger seats up front alongside the pilot and four in the back. I felt like I had a ton of space to relax and the view was pretty impressive. Whether the middle of the back is as good, I don’t know but everyone seemed to have a really good time. It seems like an airframe designed with something specific in mind and it seems to fulfill the role really well.

Some Janet Airline Activity

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Any time at McCarran is likely to include some Janets. The use of the 737s to transport staff to the various locations in Nevada at which spooky things happen is well established and you can see the schedule online if you want. They have moved on from 737-200s to 737-600s but the service is much the same. They may be 737s but the spooky nature of the operations makes them more interesting than the average airline.

Another Go at 777-300ER Rotations

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Getting repetitive here. My never ending quest to capture and demonstrate the unusual gear articulation of the Boeing 777-300ER gets another outing. Similar animation of some stills as before. This time the light was good and the distortion was limited so here we go again. I won’t bother with the technique aspects this time. Instead, here is the animation with the rotation about the rear axle pretty easy to see.

Old Spirit Colors and the Brief Livery

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Changing the colors of an airline is usually something that happens infrequently. It always gets a lot of comment when it happens but brand continuity is often a big deal. This is where Spirit is different. They flew for a long time in their gray scheme that had a digital block pattern going on. They changed to have something that was far brighter with a white fuselage and a blue fin with some color accents. When I saw a yellow jet at Oakland, I thought it must be some special livery. It turns out that it wasn’t and that this was their new “new” scheme. I’m not sure what the problem was with the previous one but obviously it didn’t last. I wonder whether they even had time to repaint the fleet?