Category Archives: aircraft

My First 737 Max (Sort Of)

Sometimes you take a shot when you know it is pointless. However, something inside you says take it anyway and delete it later. One such shot was a 737 I saw heading to SFO while I was over in Hayward. I don’t know why I bothered with the shot, maybe the colors looked unusual, but when I looked at it later, it appeared to be in Boeing house colors. It looked like one of the 737-8Max development aircraft. A quick check on Flightaware and indeed it was. This shot is useless for most purposes but it is my first shot of a 737Max!

Paraglide Pacifica

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Pacifica is a popular spot for paragliding. We were driving by when I saw some gliders up above the cliffs. We made a detour to try and find a good spot to see them from. A little trial and error and we found a place with a good overview of what was going on. The gliders were spread along the cost so, at some points, they were far off and at others they would suddenly be all around you.

From where I was, you could see where everyone was launching and recovering. I will head there at some point to see what things look like from up close. It might be good for some shots as they are beginning and ending their flights but might not be a great vantage point for in flight shots. A two man glider that allows me to focus on shots of other flyers would be cool.

Enfuse for HDR

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I am a little late to discovering the Enfuse plugin for working with HDR images. I started out many years ago using Photomatix. At the time, it was the go to software for creating HDR images. Then Adobe got a lot better with their HDR software within Photoshop and I started to use that. Even more recently, Adobe built HDR processing in to Lightroom and I didn’t need to go to Photoshop at all. The HDR software worked reasonably well so I stuck with it. I sometimes felt that it didn’t do as good a job of using the full range of the exposures but it was okay.

I wasn’t entirely satisfied though so have kept an eye on other options. Someone mentioned Enfuse to me so I decided to give it a go. It is a plugin for Lightroom and, in the free download, you can try it out but with a limitation on the output image size of 500 pixels. Obviously this isn’t useful for anything other than testing but that is the point.

The first thing I tried it on was a shot I made at Half Moon Bay looking up at a P-51 Mustang prop and directly into the sun. This is certainly as much of a range of exposures as you are likely to get. The perfect thing for an HDR trial. The results in the small scale file seemed pretty impressive so I decided to buy the package. There is no fixed price. You make a donation via PayPal and get a registration code. I am impressed by the quality of some of the work people put out so I am happy to donate for what they do. With the software activated, I reran the P-51 shots. Below is the version I got from Lightroom’s own HDR and following it the version from Enfuse.

I did have some issues initially. Lightroom was not reimporting the image after it was created. This turned out to be an issue with the way I named the file in the dialog and a tweak to that seemed to fix things. Strangely, it had been fine on the trial so I have no idea why it became an issue but it is done. I also played with a slightly less extreme case with an F-22 and, as above, the Lightroom version is first and the Enfuse version is second. I was really pleased with the result on this one with a very natural look to things. So far, I see Enfuse being a useful tool for my HDR going forward.

Why Am I Excited By a White Jet?

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I have mentioned A340s and their gradual demise a few times in the blog. Sometimes it has been that I have got ahead of myself. However, I recently was genuinely surprised. Apparently, during the summer, an A340 makes a single flight a week into Oakland from the Azores. I had no idea about this until I read something about it online. A direct flight from Oakland to an island in the middle of the Atlantic? Who would have thought it?

I managed to be in place for the arrival one time. The airline is HyFly. I am guessing you have never heard of them. The jet is chartered from another operator but the whole operation is Portuguese controlled. (The Azores are Portuguese if you didn’t know.). The aircraft is totally unbranded. An all white A340-300 sounds really dull. I guess it really is. However, the novelty certainly caught my attention and I am both pleased and annoyed that I had no idea it was a regular visitor so close to home.

A Surprise Private 757

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If you spend a day somewhere, you can get absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Alternatively, you can be somewhere for a short time and get a really lucky break. I was down in Hayward awaiting an unusual Airbus movement as I headed to something else and, in the short space of time I was there, someone else showed up. This was a Boeing 757 that has been converted for private charter use. I have actually come across this aircraft before but, when it showed up heading in to Oakland, I was rather pleased with my good fortune.

They Have Painted the HC-27J

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When I went up to McClellan for the firefighting conference, I got to see the HC-27J airframes that had been transferred to the Coast Guard. They will replace the C-130 airframes that they have been using. I posted about that airframe in this post. I was recently staying back up in the area so decided to see what was happening at the field. The Coast Guard has now started repainting the airframes so now they are showing up in their own colors rather than being in the grayness which they were transferred. There was also a C-130 parked up. It didn’t look too active. I assume it will be heading off for firefighting conversion soon.

Pakistani Block 50 F-16s

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I have made two short visits to Nellis for recent Red Flag exercises. The Pakistani Air Force attended RF16-4 but they showed up near the end of the preceding RF16-3 to allow them to familiarize themselves with operations before the next exercise kicked off. They weren’t supposed to be flying while we were that after their arrival but the F-16s that launched over us clearly had the conformal tanks and it turned out that they were up and flying ahead of the rumored times. Sadly, it was a brief opportunity and the lighting wasn’t great.

I did head back for RF16-4 and that trip will get a post of its own. Enough went on that week to easily fill another entry. However, staying on track, I did get to see the Pakistan jets as they launched and recovered. They are a recent build standard and, aside from the conformal tanks, they are also distinctive courtesy of a paint scheme that is different to the normal F-16s camouflage. I don’t know whether they had a productive time at Red Flag or not but I was glad to catch them while they were over.

Norwegian East Bay Arrivals

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Norwegian Airlines have been flying in to Oakland for quite a long time now. They started out with flights from Oslo but they now also have flights from London Gatwick. Despite them having been coming in for a long time, I have never got good shots of them. I have often seen the jets while standing on the BART platform at Bayfair but that is not a time to get a shot. I have also seen them across the bay from the SFO side. Finally I got to see one coming in from the right side of the bay and on the side of the jet that had light.

Norwegian has famous people from that country on the fins of the jets. This one was Edvard Munch. I don’t know how many different people they have on the jets but, with this being the first one I have shot, I don’t have what you would call a collection. It was nice to catch it later in the day as the sun was getting lower. Maybe I shall catch more in due course. However, there won’t be a lot because Oakland is a bit quiet unless you are after Southwest or FedEx jets so I won’t be there often.

Keeping the Huey In the Air

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Preserving military aircraft in an airworthy condition is no small undertaking. They were never designed to be easy to keep. They were designed to perform and, when there isn’t a long supply chain backing things up with big budgets, things can be a bit more tricky. One group that is keeping an old airframe alive to share its history is the Huey Vets group in Hayward. I first came across the helo when I was in Hayward and I saw it flying in he distance. It showed up in a post here when I got some shots of it.

I have since made a couple of visits to the group to see what they do. Their mission is to share the history of the EMU unit that was unique in providing emergency medical cover jointly between the US Army and the Australian Army. Not only do they keep the Huey flying but they have members with a history in the unit including one from Australia who makes frequent visits. They have many members of the organization and members are able to take flights in the aircraft. I went along to see one of the open house days. It was a hot day in Hayward and they had a number of flights lined up which gave me a chance to watch them in action from a variety of positions.

The Huey is an iconic airframe. The big two blade rotor beats the air into submission and you can hear it from a long way off as a result. Having the doors slid back to give access to the cabin and the gunner positions means you can see straight through the fuselage. It also means the occupants of the cabin get a good view of things outside. They transitioned from the hover outside the hangar along the taxiway before heading off for some local flying. Then they would return for a change or a break for lunch. Great fun to see them in action. Check the group out at their website, http://www.hueyvets.com.

Pinal Air Park

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Pinal Air Park is located northwest of Tucson. A number of business operate there. It used to be a location for Evergreen International. They carried out a number of programs of a spooky nature which meant there was strict security controlling access to the area. Evergreen have gone bust so now the airport is a lot less restricted. The hangars and ramp areas are still controlled but the roads around the field are now freely accessible.

The airport is used for active operators but also for storage of airframes. Some of these are planes that are clearly not going to be making it back into the air again. They are either old enough to not be in demand or of a type that has more value in the spare parts they contain than as a complete airframe. That isn’t the case for all of them though. Many of them are stored awaiting another operator finding a use for them. Consequently, you see a variety of aircraft from old TWA 747s to unmarked A330s.

While I was there, a Pratt and Whitney 747SP engine testbed was visible on one ramp while the Global Supertanker 747-400 was not far away. There were also some stored Grumman Goose aircraft (should that be Geese?) that looked like they weren’t moving for a while. A turbine Caribou was on the ramp obscured by a CASA 212. Plenty of variety. This would certainly be a fun place to tour with someone that has good access.