Category Archives: Bay Area

Who Do You Want to Rescue You?

Two rescue helicopters were on show at Heli Fest. The 129RQW from Moffett Field had brought along one of their Pave Hawk helicopters while head the other way up the peninsula and you get the Coast Guard based at SFO with their MH-65 Dolphins. If you find yourself in need of helicopter based assistance in the Bay Area, one of these units will probably be sent to help you. The Coast Guard unit will be the first to respond. However, if you are further offshore, the Pave Hawk may be the one tasked. If they are training nearby, they may just be the easiest ones to send.

Whichever unit and aircraft it is, you will, no doubt, be really pleased to see them. Both helicopters were popular with the visitors. They had long lines of people waiting to take a look and talk to the crews. I was chatting with the Coast Guard guys about their planned departure time. They were way too optimistic. The line of people was still big when they originally planned to go. Eventually, they had to put someone in place to mark the end of the line. They were still turning people away but they needed to clean up, check the airframe and get going at some point!

The Pave Hawk did a nice job of taxiing out of the confined space in which it had been parked. Both of them made nice passes prior to heading off. The Dolphin is a sleek looking airframe so it looked pretty cool as it made its pass. Good job by both crews for having dealt with so many visitors during the day.

Park at Your Own Risk

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Pacifica is a town built on cliffs that are not terribly resilient. The water progressively eats away at the base of the cliffs and, inevitably, things end up falling in to the ocean. I recently heard about a couple of apartment buildings that have been evacuated because of their proximity to the edge. I passed a building that had signs up in the parking lot advising you to go no further. As I got further around, I could see why. You can park there I guess but you might not have a car to come back to!

National Guard Chinook

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San Carlos Airport is home to the Hiller Aviation Museum. In times past they used to have an event called Vertical Challenge. It was a big gathering of all things rotary winged. Sadly, the challenge ended but the current team is trying to reestablish something similar. They have a smaller gathering called Heli Fest and I went along to shoot with the team for this year’s event. It was a normal day for admissions to the museum but the arrival of a lot of different airframes provided a lot more to see so the visitor numbers were significantly up.

The biggest visitor was a Boeing CH-47F Chinook for the National Guard unit at Stockton. They carried out a few passes before landing. Since the airframe is a little large and has quite a rotor diameter, they shut down on the ramp and were towed in to their parking spot. Once in place, they were open t visitors to come and look through the helicopter and talk to the crew.

No surprise that there was a steady stream of people checking out the Chinook during the course of the day. It is a great looking machine and the crew was busy answering questions throughout the day. When things were wrapping up, they taxied out and took off. A flyby was a necessity prior to going home. The Chinook is a very fast helicopter to the pass was pretty zippy!

: A US Army Boeing CH-47F Chinook taxis out for departure at San Carlos CA.

Lunge Feeding Humpbacks

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This seems to be a really good year for sea life. Having had a really successful trip out watching whales from Monterey Bay, the whales have decided to come closer. There have been sightings of humpbacks inside San Francisco Bay this year. More recently, my friend Roger has seen them feeding on the coast just south of the city. I joined him for a while. We could see a number of the humpbacks lunge feeding just off the beach. They were a little far from us but we still had a good view.

The whales start below the surface and surge upwards with their mouths open grabbing a mouth full of water and fish. They then spot out the water and eat the remnants. We found that the seagulls were the guide to where the whales would be next. They would mill around, awaiting the next feeding, hoping to get a spare fish in the process. As they spotted the whale coming to the surface, they would all converge and this would be the guide to where the whale would be next. Sometimes, the whale was just coming up for breath so you never knew which it would be. When there is only one whale, it tends to alternate although not always. With more than one, it is a guess.

A few days later, I was out with Nancy and we decided to see if there was any activity. The previous spot was not showing any sign of whales inshore. A couple of spouts further out but nothing feeding in the shallows. Instead we tried Pacifica where they sometimes come in near the pier. Again, nothing. We were just starting to drive off when I saw what appeared to be a spout inshore. I parked up and wandered over to see if there was anything. Nancy stayed in the car but knew something was up when she saw me turn and run back to the car. A whale was in the surf feeding.

We moved along the beach watching the whale burst to the surface and grab mouthfuls of water and fish. A lot of people quickly gathered to watch the feeding. The birds were still the clue but now we were down on the level of the waves so sometimes things got obscured by the water. Even so, we were right there to see what was going on. Soon the whale appeared to be full and moved offshore. It was still swimming around near the pier when we headed off. I don’t know whether this was a regular feature or we got lucky but it was very cool to watch.

Incomplete JetStar

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Regular readers will know I am partial to the Lockheed JetStar. I have previously posted about shooting one at Hayward when it was taking off and another that was at the airport as a source of spare parts. This spare aircraft has moved from the location I previously saw it and is now out on the ramp near the taxiway. While out working with the HueyVets guys, I ended up by the airframe waiting to shoot the Huey.

Up to this point, the airframe looked in good shape. However, recently, one of the engines was removed so I guess it will progressively become more obvious that this jet is not going to be flying again. For the time being, though, you can choose an angle to make the missing items no longer apparent. Then the jet still looks like a great airframe. I hope it lasts a bit longer and that its sacrifices are enough to keep the other jet airworthy.

A340 Season

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It may be that the A340 is in its twilight years but it is still a type that is in operation with a number of airlines. Having watched a few different types disappear from service recently, I am paying more attention to those planes that might not be around for too much longer. I figure the A340 is one of those types. SFO gets a number of them on a normal day from a variety of operators. Virgin Atlantic brings in an A340-600 most days. Meanwhile, the original version shows up with a couple of airlines. Swiss and SAS bring in the A340-300 as part of their services. Philippine Airlines has been known to bring them in too but they are currently using 777-300ERs on this route and the 340s are elsewhere.

I made the effort to get the visitors both arriving and departing. Arrival shots are not great at this time of year as the heat haze starts to become a problem. However, you can still get something reasonable if you get a little lucky. You can go further out on the approach to minimize haze but you lose the context a little.

Moving around to the departure end of the 28s means you can get the planes as they come over your head when taking off. Sadly, all of them went from 28L rather than 28R which means they are slightly backlit when they come by. However, this doesn’t hurt things too much. The shots of them retreating into the distance were not possible on this day though due to the cloud rolling in off the hills which they disappeared into pretty quickly. I guess they will be around for a little longer but it won’t be too long before the A340 is consigned to secondary operators and lower utilization.

When It All Goes Wrong on (or off) the Bull

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The first few of the bull riders at Rowell Ranch Rodeo seemed to do pretty well and make it for the full duration. It turns out that this was an aberration and the remainder of the riders seemed to have a lot of problems. Some still went the distance but a lot of them were thrown off. Getting thrown from a bull is a risky proposition.

Let’s put aside the problem with falling at speed from an animal. Instead, contemplate being on the ground and a little disoriented when you need to get out of the way of a seriously pissed off bull that weighs a lot! This is where the other people come in to play. Their role is to distract the attention of the bull away from the rider while someone helps him get to his feet. It is something that looks perilous and, I imagine, it is.

Riding the Bulls

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My visit to the Rowell Ranch Rodeo was the night of the bull riding. I had never seen this in person before and was curious to see how things went. It was an evening show and the clouds had rolled in so it was pretty dark, even early in the evening. They had floodlights but they were not doing too much for me so I was really testing the high ISO capabilities of the camera for the first time. I was often shooting at 51,200. I have to say that, while the shots are not super clean, they are not too bad at all.

The most dramatic moments seemed to be shortly after they came out of the chute. The bulls leap into the air and the rider hangs on like crazy. It seemed that, if they made it through the initial period, they often went the full time. If they were unsettled initially, they were struggling from then on. More to come of that…

Departure of Solar Impulse

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Having been to Moffett Field for the arrival of Solar Impulse and then made another visit to the hangar while they were there, I wasn’t going to miss the departure. This might not seem like a difficult decision to make but if I tell you I had been away in Southern California for the weekend and having driven back on Sunday and then finding out that departure was scheduled for 5am on Monday and we would be required to get there at 2am and I would need to be up at 1am, you can see why this was a bit tougher to do.

However, I was committed at this point (or should have been) so I slept in the spare room so as to not disturb Nancy. Off for an early run. Traffic was no problem at that time as your might imagine. Once there it was back to the same issues as we had faced with the arrival. It was very dark. Hayman did the stills and I went for video but got some stills as well. Unfortunately, they chose not to back-track the aircraft as had been briefed so it took off from ahead of us and went away. We still got some good shots and, while it got airborne very quickly, it got to a certain distance when it seemed like it had stopped moving.

Then, it was time to go. We wrapped up and got on our way. I actually was back at home a little ahead of my normal time to get up so I did my normal routine and headed in to the office. It would be fair to say that I was not at my most perky that day!

Our Local Rodeo

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Once a year, a rodeo is held a short distance from our house. I have never been to a rodeo before. Anyone who knows me would not think of me as a western kind of guy. Despite all of that, I was quite interested to see what it was like. I had missed the previous two events so thought I should make the effort this time. It was on over a Friday evening and all day Saturday and Sunday. I went on the Friday because it was less disruptive to the weekend and it included bull riding which I thought would be dramatic to see.

I got there a little early to have a look around. It turns out that I left more time than needed to check everything out so I found a seat in the bleachers to wait for things to start. I got a visit from the management since I obviously looked a little out of place. They guy asked me a few questions but I think he was struggling with my accent and gradually got bored. I thought it was rather empty but, just as the riding started, tons of people showed up and it was pretty full.

More posts will follow with some of the action shots.