With the grounding order rescinded but the FAA, Boeing was getting Max jets ready to go for customers that were in a position to take delivery – namely US airlines and those that use US registered aircraft. United has a bunch of Max 9 jets on order and one of them was making a test flight just before Christmas. I got to see it return from its test. It taxied back in the south entrance to their ramp past a bunch of other test airframes awaiting acceptance.
There were a few bald eagles hanging out on Camano Island during our trip there. There was one in a tree near the shore when we first got there. It didn’t seem in the least bit interested in us as we walked below it. If an eagle has recently eaten, it is quite likely to hang around for a long time doing nothing so we didn’t wait around to see what it did.
When we came back there were now two eagles in the area. I’ve no idea whether one was our original or if these two had come along since. A third flew past at one point getting the two quite agitated. If you have never heard the noise a bald eagle makes, you might be quite surprised. They have a high pitched squeak which doesn’t seem in keeping with their size. It is easy to identify though.
I wandered around trying to get the two of them in shot together. They were quite offset distance wise which meant getting them both in focus wasn’t practical. I did try and little Photoshop focus stacking when I got home though. It’s funny that bald eagles are so common in this part of the world but it is still exciting to see one and everyone seems to respond the same way.
I was working through some shots and came across a sequence a little before a bunch of shots I have used a lot in the past. It was of B-2s on approach to Nellis just before sunset. I had some clear shots of them in the distance including as the gear was traveling. Here is one of those shots. I just liked it and thought I would share it here.
With the new terminal open and operational at Mukilteo, the construction crews have turned their attention to the demolition of the old terminal facilities. The redevelopment of the waterfront includes returning this old space for new usage. The old terminal building was not a particularly impressive structure but now it looks very sad as everything is taken down.
Across the road, the old lanes for holding the cars prior to boarding are still visible but some of the area has already been cut through by the new access road construction for the terminal. One side of the old lot was briefly the home for one of the toll booths which looked rather feeble on its own. Next time I was there, it was gone.
The old span that connected to the berth has been lifted out. It was sitting on a barge on my last visit. A large floating crane had been brought in for the large lifts where a smaller crane had previously been in use. The structures were in the process of being removed. The concrete top to one side had been removed and the posts showed the damage from the cuts. The other side had a crew preparing the lifting lines to take that side off too.
It won’t be too long before all trace of the old terminal is gone and then it will be very hard to remember what it looked like at all.
In the run up to Christmas, online retail had clearly been very busy. UPS runs their Seattle flights to Boeing Field and, while I was there, the traffic levels were well above the norm. I have posted the Asia Pacific 757 freighter in a previous post but UPS’s own fleet were really moving. Arrivals and departures were pretty frequent. As soon as the jets were on the ramp, the team whirled into motion getting the containers off and loading up the outbound loads.
I watched a video on YouTube about a way to process shots taken in low light with high ISOs to improve the noise performance. I wasn’t particularly interested in the approach until I was down on the shore as the sun was going down and I was using a long lens. I figured this might be a good time to try it out. The approach is to shoot a lot of shots. You can’t have anything moving in the shots for this to work but, if it is a static scene, the approach can be used.
Shoot as many shots as you can. Then import them in to Photoshop as layers. Use the align function to make sure that they are all perfectly aligned and then use the statistics function to do a mean calculation of the image. You can do this a couple of ways in Photoshop. You can make a smart object and then process it or you can process through Statistics. The averaging function takes a lot of the noise out of the shot. If you have lots of images, you can make it effectively disappear. I wasn’t prepared to make that many shots but I tried it with a reasonable number of images. The whole image isn’t really of interest. Instead, I include one of the images cropped in and the processed image similarly cropped to allow you to compare.
While the Comet may have been the first jet airliner, it was a configuration that was not well suited to development. Boeing put together its development approach to the jet airliner through a project called the Dash 80. The shape of the airframe may look familiar but this was a one off. It was a hand built aircraft and undertook development that then migrated into two further airframes. One was what became the C-135 family while the other was enlarged and became the Boeing 707.
The Dash 80 get used for all sorts of things but finally ended being donated to the Smithsonian and ferried to the Udvar-Hazy facility at Dulles. That is where I got to see it on a visit there in the mid 2000s. I haven’t been back since and would love to check this place out again. Here are some old shots of this historic jet.
On the road from Anacortes to the ferry terminal, you have the water off to your right. As I glanced over, I realized that, what I thought was a spur of the land, was actually the wreck of a ship. The prow of the hull was the thing that first caught my attention so, when I came back, I stopped off to take a closer look.
The ship is a decent size – it reminded me of the old clipper hulls. It is a wooden hull and the shape of the bow is clearly very dated. It has been there so long that there are trees and plants that are well established on it. That was why I almost missed it. It just looks like part of the land. You could easily miss that it was a ship as I had done every time that I previously came this way. Now it is just part of the harbor wall. More to come on this.
Occasionally I will get aircraft heading in to Boeing Field come right by the house. Late Friday afternoon, two Boeing test jets were coming my way. One was the first 777X and the other was that first 737 Max7. The usual route brings them just slightly north of the house so I was ready. However, the Max was heading just slightly south of the normal track and looked like it might go the other side of the house. At the last minute, I realized it would and ran through the the other side.
I got the window open but didn’t have time to remove the screen. I thought it would take out some light but figured the large aperture of a big lens would just blur out the screen mesh since it was so close. Through the viewfinder, things look pretty good. However, when I downloaded the shots, I realized the shots were totally awful. The screens had caused shadowing of the images. The center image was there but I could see shadow versions about and below. Then I got to one with a beacon flashing and that showed exactly how the pattern of light was scattered. Based on what I see, I assume this is a diffraction effect. It is a useless shot but it is very interesting which is why I am sharing it.
The new ferry terminal at Mukilteo is located on the site of what was once an Air Force fuel tank farm. There is not much left to give that role away anymore but the shape of the tanks is still visible on the ground. One of them still seems to have some of the old tank material left over too. Not sure what the story is with cleaning up the site and removing the material but it isn’t cordoned off so I guess it has been decontaminated.
