A Beale AFB T-38 was parked over at the FBO when I was at Boeing Field. The canopies were up which gave me optimism but you never know whether they are just doing something to the jet or maybe haven’t long arrived. When the crew walked out to the jet, I realized it was good news. They taxied to the other end of the field and I waited. A nice low departure kept them below the skyline of the hill beyond the field and I was happy with a slightly unusual visitor being photographed.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been under construction for a while including the restoration of the B-52G, Midnight Express that spent many years outside at Paine Field. The opening ceremony took place over the Memorial Day weekend and I went along to check it out. I wrote an article for GAR about the ceremony and, if you want to read that, you can see it here.
The article includes most of the good images from the event so I won’t duplicate it all here but instead I shall just post a couple of shots that summarize what happened.
Boeing Field does occasionally get military transient traffic at weekend but recently it has had some heavies show up. I saw that a C-5 had been passing through which would have been really cool to see. I was heading down that way not long ago when I saw a KC-46 depart towards me as I drove shortly followed by a C-17. I was a bit disappointed to have missed both of them. I did not anticipate that the C-17 would return.
However, a while later, I heard something call up on final but it wasn’t showing up on FlightRadar24. I took a guess it might be military and moved to the arrival end and, sure enough, the C-17 was coming down the approach at a leisurely pace. It was a Travis jet. I was told that McChord is being resurfaced so that might explain why this jet ended up at Boeing Field rather than down there.
Sometimes you find the oddest things by the road. Just outside NAS Whidbey Island, there is a drop tank sitting by the road. I have no idea what it is doing there. It seems to be on someone’s yard. The shape was not something that looked like a Navy tank (which you might expect). I thought it looked like something from an F-111. Fortunately, It had a data plate which showed a serial that seems to suggest a Fort Worth General Dynamics product so I guess F-111 is probably it. Anyone know the story?
Departures over the Speedway are best when they flex. The straight out departures are fine but not that exciting and they often get pretty high pretty quickly. Those jets that flex seem to stay a bit lower and provide a more interesting shot. The later in the day it is, the better the light on a flexing jet. If they are doing an evening departure after the Flag participants are back, the conditions can be ideal.
Here is a selection of jets in both good and okay lighting. If a four ship goes out, you hope for the last jet to be more dramatic since it will be playing catch up with the others and shoot turn in a bit tighter. The fourth Saudi F-15SA was another story though since he went very early and then straightened up before having another go inside us. Not sure he had been paying attention at the brief!
My inability to see a Boeing T-33 jet in nice conditions continues. I was at Boeing Field when one of the T-33s was taking off in support of a Pegasus test mission. The weather was crappy with rain and a heavy overcast. I thought that this was not going to work well but sometimes bad weather provides good opportunities so I gave it a go. Besides, I don’t see them enough to pass it by. As it turned out, the flat conditions and the dampness made the jet show up nicely against the background when it was still low on climb out. Once it was against the sky, things weren’t so great but it turned out a lot better than I expected.
Boeing started delivering KC-46s to the USAF as I covered in this post. However, it didn’t take too long before the Air Force found various items of tooling in the aircraft that shouldn’t have been there and stopped taking delivery. Consequently, rather than delivering the backlog, it has continued to build. Paine Field had well over a dozen aircraft in various locations when we were there including three over by the Heritage Flight Foundation’s hangars. Here three were illuminated nicely by the sun as it rose across the field so a pano seemed in order.
I have shot KC-46s in bad conditions more often than would seem probable. I got one in conditions so dark it was like a night shoot. This time it was heavy rain. Of course that can mean vapor. The matte gray of fuselage actually looks better when it is wet. I had hoped the inlets would fog but that didn’t happen. However, the flat light helped the fuselage a bit which often gets too contrasts. Besides that it throws up a ton of spray behind it as it accelerates down the runway. Rotating in front of me meant I was rather happy with the result compared to what I expected.
The Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) was attending Red Flag 19-2 with some brand new F-15SA jets. These jets had come direct from delivery so had not yet even made it out of the US. I guess they had that new fighter smell. They did fly the first day we were there, despite the strong winds which was a pleasant surprise. They flew along with the rest of the jets on our second day. I have mentioned their slightly strange approach to flex departures before so I won’t go there any further but instead will share what I have of the jets from the two days I was there.
Speedway departures can be a mixed bag at Nellis. Flex departures with a pull over the Speedway are the best but it does depend on how high planes have got. Some climb out quite steeply and are way too high for a good shot by the time that they reach you. On my most recent Nellis trip, though, we were treated to a few departures by the locals that broke the mold. They got airborne and kept it nice and low as they accelerated towards us before breaking in to the flex departure routing.
The evening light combined with the great angles made for some good shots. It didn’t hurt that I had a lower shutter speed than usual so got some nice blur of the mountains behind the planes courtesy of them being nice and low. The Strike Eagles also gave it a go which was nice.
