Category Archives: civil

G600 Has the Usual Gulfstream Flaps

This G600 was coming into land at Farnborough while I was visiting. The conditions were far from ideal for photographing anything flying but I am not going to pass one up if the chance presents itself. I was close to the approach path so had an almost head on position. Not ideal but it would be fine. However, what struck me as I looked at the images afterwards was the flaps. Gulfstream has never impressed me with their wing designs. They always seem to have just gone with a larger wing to achieve whatever performance was needed and the flaps on all of their jets seem to be barn doors rather than some advanced design. It seems that the current generation of jets is no different. I guess it doesn’t matter enough to their sales so why bother?

The Ramp Action at Barcelona

Leave a Reply

When I made a trip to Spain for work, my route took me through Barcelona. Not a city I have visited before, but I do plan to return. I hadn’t brought a main camera with me since it was a brief work trip, and I was travelling light but I did take my old M6 along with me. Going to a new location can mean some different airlines. However, these days the airlines across Europe are usually the same ones. Ryanair is everywhere of course. There were some converted freighters sitting on the opposite side of the airfield from my terminal. I grabbed a few shots in the brief time I had which wasn’t long given that the schedule was pretty tight.

Virgin Atlantic Names of Planes

Leave a Reply

Since they first started flying, Virgin Atlantic has been naming their planes with slightly quirky titles. Many airlines have names on their planes, but they are more often something like cities, rivers, castles etc. Features of the country that the airline is based in. Virgin has a different approach, and they do like a good amount of pun activity in their names. This can also be reflected in the registration of the aircraft with the letter combination sometimes tied to the name.

I have seen this naming over the years and never really given it much thought. However, on a visit to Heathrow a while back that was aiming for something specific, I naturally got to see a bunch of Virgin jets arriving. I decided to get a few close-up shots of the names at the front and then decided to check out what other names I had come across. This is not a comprehensive list of the different planes, nor do I plan on making it a goal to get them all, but it is a fun look at some of the names that they have gone with.

United Eco Liveries

Leave a Reply

While I was shooting from a distance, I did get a shot of a United 767 heading into Heathrow. This jet is painted in the sustainable aviation fuel livery. I reminded me of a 737 I had seen from them in an Eco livery. Add to that there is the Max 10 that was involved in the fuel trials with NASA and I have a few of the United special liveries. Here are those planes.

Seeing a Kodiak Again

Leave a Reply

The Pacific Northwest was a great place to see Daher Kodiaks. They were built over in Idaho and there were plenty of them in the Seattle area. Even so, I was still keen to see them as there is something about their chunky functionality that appealed to me. When I came back to the UK, I wasn’t expecting to see them around. Consequently, when I got to the FAST museum at Farnborough, I was pleasantly surprised to see that one was inbound shortly from Guernsey. It was really overcast with the base very low. The instrument approach would result in popping out of the clouds quite late. I went with my preferred technique for shooting in such conditions with a couple of stops of overexposure with the goal of having enough light on the airframe and then post processing to bring the sky back down to something sensible.

I wasn’t exactly sure what the angle on the plane would be from the area outside the museum and where the plane would come into view, but it wasn’t too bad as it worked out. I had a reasonable sighting line and enough time to react. Having a dark grey aircraft in such dreary light was not helping but I think I got something reasonable from it.

Thinking Back to LAX and Old Favourites

Leave a Reply

I’m not sure what it was that got me to these pictures. I was working on something other project and then found myself looking at some shots from a visit to LAX a long time ago. Two planes jumped out at me from that day. One was a Lufthansa A340-300 and the other was a British Airways 747-400. Both were taking off later in the day and the light was very nice. I decided both deserved a re-edit.

The backgrounds for both jets were a little busy and so I decided to try something similar to my processing for airborne shots but that I hadn’t done much on the ground. I used the smart masking tools to select the aircraft. Then I inverted the mask to select the background. This allowed me to take the lighting down for the background and also make things a little cooler with the white balance. Then I could warm up the plane a little more and brighten it up. This helps to separate the aircraft from the background and make it more the focus of the shots.

The BA fleet of 747s are long gone now and passenger 747s are definitely a rarity. The Lufthansa A340s are still operating but only because of the delays to new aircraft deliveries. It won’t be too long before they are heading to the desert. This will be a nice reminder of the fun stuff I used to be able to photograph.

FAST Museum at Farnborough

Leave a Reply

Farnborough sits at the centre of the history of aviation in the UK. From the first powered flight in the country, through the development of key aircraft in the First World War, through the research into aviation that took place in what was originally called the Royal Aircraft Establishment and then evolved through various names. (Oh yes, it also has a large trade airshow every two years.) Eventually the establishment was closed down as facilities got consolidated.

While there had been a museum on site, that collection got redistributed. However, a bunch of volunteers came together to create the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust (FAST). This museum is on one edge of what was once the airfield campus. They have many exhibits that document the varied work that was undertaken at Farnborough as well as the nearby Pyestock gas turbine research facility. Apparently, they have way more stuff than they can display so things get rotated in and out of the public space.

Some of the specific exhibits are worthy of their own posts so you will see more of this place in the future. I went one damp Saturday to take a look around. This was not optimal for the planes outside because the light was not great and most of the airframes had covers on their canopies. That didn’t stop me, though. There is a two seat Lightning sitting alongside the gate which is always a good start.

Within the museum grounds are some top types. The recent retirement of the Puma made me happy to see their example which was not built by Westland but was actually from Aerospatiale and provided to Westland to use as a pattern before it became a testbed at Farnborough. The raspberry ripple paint looks good on it.

There are a couple of Hunters including one that had been used for research into night flying using low light TV and infra-red sensors. A Gnat is there which is always fine. A Scout and a Lynx are part of the collection and a two seat Harrier T4 was a particular pleasure. There are also cockpits from other type including a Canberra and a Trident. The museum is free to visit although they do welcome voluntary contributions. If you are in the area, it is worth a visit. More to come…

I Guess It Is Farewell for UPS MD-11s

Leave a Reply

The crash of the UPS MD-11 when one of the engines separated at rotation resulted in a grounding of the entire fleet of DC-10s and MD-11s. The process for returning the fleets to service continues as I write this, but I recently heard that UPS has decided that they won’t bother to return their fleet and will accelerate a retirement process that was already being planned.

Since Boeing Field was somewhere I got to spend a lot of time and was a location that got regular visits from UPS MD-11s, I got to see them on a regular basis. I left before they did but now no one there will get to see this beefy jet in UPS colours again. Here are some of the shots I have got of them over the years. I do hope that other operators will still have a need for their examples and this won’t be the end of the road for this type.

Turning in on the Approach

Leave a Reply

I have posted some previous shots looking up the approach at Heathrow as the jets are lined up for landing. The reason I have chosen to post this is that there is a bit more of a dynamic element to it. I like the jet crossing in the background before it turns back in to align with the approach path. The combination of the spaced out planes and the view of the turn in seemed pretty cool to me.

BEA Gets a Reprieve

Leave a Reply

The British European Airways liveried Airbus that British Airways has been operating for a number of years was due to be disposed of. As new jets come into the fleet, the older jets are headed for parting out. However, the delivery rate from Airbus has apparently not been enough to meet the requirements of BA and they are having to send some older jets for major checks when they become due rather than park them. This will give them an extended life until the new jets can make it. This one was scheduled to go but has now been sent for a check. What I don’t know is whether it is due a repaint or not so we might or might not get to see it again.