BNSF has a large maintenance yard in Seattle in the Interbay area. My bike ride took me past the yard and then up and over the tracks. On my return leg, I stopped to have a look at the facility. There is a space where a round house used to be which you can see on Google Maps. A couple of trains were on the lines and there were a bunch of locos elsewhere in the yard.
Late in the day in the PNW, you can get lucky with good lighting. It is not unusual to have a crappy day end with the sun, low on the horizon, cutting under the clouds and providing some briefly great conditions. With a Dornier 328Jet due in, I was hoping that the conditions might be just what I wanted. However, the plane was delayed from its planned time. At the scheduled arrival time, conditions were, in fact, rather good. I got something arriving then that looked pretty cool and will get its own post.
However, my 328Jet was running late. I kept my eye on the horizon, hoping the sun would make an appearance but the thick cloud layer hanging on the horizon told me that things were not going to work out. Sure enough, when the 328Jet showed up, the sky was decidedly dull. This was all the more annoying given that it had a really nice color scheme. They aren’t exactly rare but they are not common enough to ignore the chance to get one so this still counts as a plus for me.
The ferry to Orcas Island comes in to the town of Orcas. (I think it counts as a town but it is pretty small!). Right across from the ferry terminal is the Orcas Hotel. It is an old style hotel and has a café as well. Restrictions meant eating in the café was out of the question but we did get take out food from there one night and it was great. The south facing harbor gets some nice evening light in the winter. The first time I was out walking there, I figured I would get a shot after I visited the local shop. That was a mistake. When I came out, the lovely light was gone and everything was in shadow. I didn’t make the same mistake again.
Winter in the PNW does not mean reliable conditions for photographing planes. If the weather is bad, you might decide it isn’t worth going out. If it is raining and threatening to rain harder, there is a strong possibility you would skip a shot opportunity. However, 727s are getting pretty rare these days so that seems worthy of a trip out.
The weather was unpleasant when it made its approach but not as bad as it got a short while later. I went with my normal approach for shooting in really bad conditions by pushing the overexposure pretty high. I include a couple of edits. For the main image, I actually blended two different process versions in Photoshop to get the combination that most reflects how the shot looked through the view finder. The other edit is a straightforward Lightroom edit where the angle and the light suited it.
My main cameras have two card slots. One is a CFast and the other is Compact Flash. I use the CFast all the time but the Compact Flash is a handy backup. Occasionally, if I have the camera on with the CFast out of the slot, the camera reverts to the second slot and, if I don’t notice, it continues to use it when I next shoot. This isn’t a particular problem except when it comes to downloading. I have USB3 card readers for both CFast and Compact Flash. However, the speed of card technology has moved on dramatically. When I download the Compact Flash cards and import to Lightroom, I am reminded of just how slow they are. I used to do this all the time but, once I started using CFast, I got used to the better speed and now, when I revert to the old tech, it feels positively glacial!
While Boeing has delayed the entry to service date of the 777X, they have continued to produce airframes at Everett with the result being a number of stored airframes on the field. There are four jets in the test program and the rest are not going to fly until certification is close so, for now, they are finding spaces across the airport for them. Some are on the Boeing flight test ramp (with production of the other widebodies ramping down, space is more available I guess) while others are on the cross runway. This has been home to 787s and 737 Max jets over the years and now it is the turn of the 777X. Some of them are identifiable by the paint on the folded wing tips while others are unmarked for now.
On one of my days off – taken in order to get my PTO balance down – I headed out for some aviation exploration. The weather on this day was not great but, since I had struck it lucky on some of my other days off, I guess the odds were bound to swing the other way at some point. While it was cloudy in Seattle, looking south to Mt Rainier, the sun was out on the mountain. That didn’t mean it was cloud free, though. There was a lot of cloud forming over the summit as the wind blew through so I shot a few images to make a pano of the mountain. It would have been a great day to fly around the mountain but sadly that wasn’t to be.
For the second time this year, I was at Paine Field when an Omni Air International 767 showed up. I wrote about the first time in this post. On this occasion, it arrived in some quite blustery conditions but, as it was on final approach, a gap in the clouds opened up and provided some lovely light on the airframe while leaving the background dark and cloudy. It makes for a far more interesting shot that would otherwise be the case on a day like that.
The drive to Mt St. Helens takes you south passed Mt Rainier. The weather was pretty crummy as I headed south so I didn’t get any views of the mountain as a drove. However, the weather had improved markedly by the time I headed home and the sun angle had come around to illuminate my side of the mountain. Consequently, I stopped a couple of times on my way back north to take some pictures. I want to do some hiking on Mt Rainier at some point but this was as close as I have got – at least on the ground.
Aside from my two HondaJets and a little other traffic, things were not looking too busy at Boeing Field. I was contemplating my next move when I glanced at FlightRadar and saw a Douglas A-26 was flying over Seattle. This is one that is based at Renton and used as a personal transport by the owner. I have never seen it in action before. Consequently, I was quite excited. At first, I thought it looked like it was turning towards Boeing Field which would have been handy but then it headed north up towards the San Juan Islands.
I figured that, even if it was landing up there, it would be coming back to Renton later on so headed off in that direction to work out what flow the pattern was using. The A-26 had departed over the lake to the north but all of the movements now seemed to be from the north so I figured it would come in from that direction. No chance of shooting it from above at the overlook point at the south end but still plenty of options.
Unfortunately, they have closed off part of the park at the north end of the field and erected fencing. This takes away an area of higher ground which gives a good view of the threshold. However, with a couple of Cessnas bashing the circuit, I was able to see roughly what would be good and what wouldn’t. A check on FlightRadar showed that they had finished flying around the San Juans and were coming back over the city.
They followed the water from the coast in to Lake Washington and I thought would be coming straight for me. However, they continued over Bellevue instead. I wondered if they were off somewhere else but soon they had turned back and were heading for Renton. Looking up the lake, I could pick them out a long way out, long before they had even configured for landing. With the fall foliage still evident on some of the shorelines, it made for quite a nice shot – something that wouldn’t have been the case at the other end.
The A-26 is pretty speedy so they were soon on final approach and I grabbed a bunch of shots both tight and wider. Then they zipped by and behind the newly erected fencing! I packed up my stuff and headed off but, as I drove back south, I saw they were still on the ramp outside the hangar. I pulled in a watched them put the plane away. Only at the last minute did I realize that I could have got a closer shot from near the gate but I shouldn’t complain given how lucky I had been to see them out on my day off.
