While waiting for the UPS 747, there was a bit of light aircraft traffic in to Paine Field. With nice low sun, I wasn’t going to ignore them. They all looked nice enough but I was particularly impressed with a Cirrus that came in sporting a custom paint finish. It looked particularly nice.
For my birthday, Nancy took me on a trip to Jackson Hole. Part of the trip was a journey in to Yellowstone National park in a snowcoach. The snowcoaches are modified vehicles to handle to snowy terrain. They come in two main forms. One is the tracked vehicle and the other is based on monster truck tires. The one we took was tracked. It was a pretty standard van design with four wheel drive but the wheels had been removed and replaced with triangular track arrangements called Mattracks. These can deal with pretty much any snow. The only downside is that they are a bit noisy, not too fast and boy do they guzzle fuel. One our trip we stopped for fuel twice and were pretty low by the time we got back.
We also saw some of the other vehicles out and about. The monster truck tired vehicles can attain better speeds and efficiency (plus the maintenance is so much lower) but they are not as reliable in dealing with the worst of the conditions. However, they do seem to be the way that everyone is going. Our guide told us the tracked vehicles are gradually being replaced. It should be noted that, after the winter, the tracks are taken off and they revert to normal road use.
My effort to shoot an arriving A350 at SeaTac provided a secondary benefit. The majority of arriving aircraft land on the outer runway. This is further away and also has a threshold further up the field. This means the aircraft are higher up on the approach. On a clear winter’s day, the planes have the backdrop of the snow covered Olympic mountain range. They were a bit far away but did provide a rather scenic view.
This is a throwback to a trip long ago. We went to Italy and started our trip out up in Milan. We made a day trip to Lake Como and I was delighted to see hydrofoils on the lake. As a kid in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, the hydrofoils were a part of life. They made the quick crossing to Southampton – half the time of the ferry. It cost a bit more but it was so much easier. When we lived on the waterfront, I got so used to the hydrofoils humming in and out of the harbor. They were built in Italy and one of the ones I saw on Lake Como seemed to be an identical design. They are long gone from the Solent but clearly were still plying Lake Como when we were there. I wonder if they still are?
There will be much online about the retirement of the Tornado from RAF service. Global Aviation Resource has been putting together some great information on the history of the jet in service and I would recommend you take a look there if you are interested. I am not going to repeat the information about the history of its service. However, I do have a history with the jet. It was entering service just as I was getting very in to aviation. Then I ended up working on the program undertaking handling clearances for different configurations and clearing urgent changes that were implemented for the first Gulf War.
I figured I would share a few pictures of Tornados. These are all the IDS version of the jet be they GR1 or GR4. I haven’t included the ADV jets since they went away a while back. Some of these shots are scans of old negatives and aren’t the greatest quality but they are part of the early life of the jet. Some others are more recent.
I will always have a soft spot for the Tornado. It remains in service in Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia but for the RAF, the service that drove the aircraft to be a more complex jet than the other partners initially wanted, it is now history.
I had finished up a shoot and was driving back towards home but decided to divert to Kenmore. The evening light was looking good and I thought some floatplanes might be returning to base. By the time I got to Kenmore, it must have too late as I didn’t see any planes. However, there was a cormorant sitting on one of the posts near the end of the jetty. As the sun set, he was stretching out his wings to gather maximum warmth. How could I resist yet another cormorant shot?
A sunny and cold winter day provides nice light and an afternoon arrival of a jet at Paine Field from the paint facility in Portland was enough to tempt me out. UPS is the primary recipient of 747-8F jets these days and it was another of their getting close to delivery. It was approaching from the south so I was at the windsock with a few other locals. They flew a touch and go before making a full stop landing so I was able to try two different positions to get the landing. Conditions were really nice for getting a shot of a shiny new plane.
In previous posts I have described my efforts at scanning old negatives using a digital camera, macro lens and a light table. I have had mixed success with the process for converting the negatives into positives with some films responding better than others. I was okay with the output but thought things could be better. A YouTube video showed up on my page that was about scanning negatives with a digital camera and I decided to watch to see if they did anything different to me. The technique for shooting the negatives was similar enough but they introduced me to a Lightroom plugin called Negative Lab Pro.
I downloaded a trial of the software and gave it a go. I was sufficiently impressed with the output that I stumped up the cash for the full version. It isn’t cheap but, given that I can now use it on several thousand images, I figured it was worth the investment. The plugin requires a small amount of effort. I revert the images back to a normal San without any of my previous edits and conversions. The first thing to do after that is to take a white balance reading from some of the visible edge of the film to neutralize any color shift. Then you crop in on the image. Apparently, it is important to avoid getting any unexposed edges in shot as this messes with the algorithm.
Then you open up the dialog box. It analyses the image and does a conversion. You then get some basic sliders to tweak the settings such as exposure and color balance. There are some auto setting check boxes but I haven’t found them to be too helpful so far. Then you click okay and the image is ready to do further editing in Lightroom. You can also do batch conversions of images if you want although I think it is probably better to focus on individual processing. I have been playing with this on a range of images so far and I like the results. My old negatives are not that great and this is not going to suddenly make them amazing but I am impressed how much more I can get out of some of the scans using this software.
My Renton visit also allowed me to have a look around the production aircraft out on the flight line or in the factory areas. The shortage of engines has been a concern which I wrote about last year and which was supposed to be fixed by the year end. Judging by how many of these planes are still carrying ballast rather than engines, I guess things are still a bit behind schedule. Then again, with what has happened since, maybe the cost of accepting some engines is not something Boeing wants…
I have biked along the Sammammish River trail on a number of occasions and it seemed like it would be a good place to take a walk and enjoy the scenery at a more leisurely pace. A sunny Sunday afternoon provided the perfect time so we headed out. We clearly were not the only ones with such an idea as the weather had attracted tons of people to the river. Fortunately, it is a big trail so it wasn’t too crowded even if it was popular.
It is a nice stretch of river and sufficiently far from the road in most areas to provide a quiet environment to stroll along. All of the people mean it is a bit less peaceful but it is still a nice place to be. The river is heading pretty directly from Redmond to Woodinville but it does have some gentle bends to provide a little variety in the scene. Just walk along and look for wildlife – more of which will come soon!
