Pacific Coast Trail in Ucluelet

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A while back I posted about the Amphitrite Lighthouse in Ucluelet on Vancouver Island.  We saw it while walking on the Pacific Coast Trail.  At the time of that post, I said I would post more from the rest of the trail.  I guess I have finally got around to doing so.  The beginning of the trail took us past the lighthouse but it was a bit backlit.  As we walked further around the coastline, the light came to be behind us more and the view of the various inlets and islands got to be very nice.

It was such a tranquil spot.  I suspect November is not the busiest time of year and the trails might be a lot more crowded in peak season but the sun was out and it was really lovely to be there.  The rocky coastline looks like it is something that you need to know your way around carefully if you are in a boat.  The presence of a lighthouse tells you that plenty have come to grief in the past.  On a day like the one we had, though, it couldn’t have seemed more appealing.

Heathrow From a While Back

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When we first lived in Chicago, I was working for a UK based company.  I used to make regular trips to London to check in with the mother ship.  For the return journey, I would usually take the morning flight back to O’Hare from Heathrow.  In those days, BA operated from Terminal 4 and there was a Hilton hotel attached to the terminal.  This made the whole process very easy.  Get up, walk across the bridge to the terminal and check in.  It also meant I could get the occasional shots of operations.

There was a fire escape on the side of the hotel that provided a view to the east and to a bit of the airfield itself.  It was a bit restricted as views go but it was not bad.  I could get some shots of the operations if the direction of the flow was right.  I would also get up early sometimes to see the arrivals coming in as the sun was coming up.  Here are some of the shots I got from there.

When You are Locked Down, It’s Got to be Macro Time

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Not being able to go anywhere means you can only photograph things close to home.  Why not dig out the macro lens.  I have no doubt that many photographers have been doing the same thing when stuck at home too.  I initially didn’t have any obvious plan for this.  I just decided to photograph anything around me to see what it looked like when seen up very close.  Textures on the surface become apparent in a way that aren’t normally.  I also discovered just how much dust on on somethings that I never noticed until looking at the images.

Edwards Storage Yard

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I had a recent post of some shots from the USAF museum at Edwards AFB.  It reminded me of my first visit to Edwards in 1990.  On that trip I saw both the USAF side of things and the NASA side.  The NASA hangars were great and there were lots of amazing types being used for testing purposes.  I didn’t see everything I was hoping for there but it was still fantastic.  One thing that really excited me was the storage lot.  There were some interesting airframes parked up there.  An F-8 Crusader that had been used for supercritical wing testing was there.  I think that has since been taken care of and is now restored.  The fly by wire testbed was also there.

There was also a weird hybrid airframe.  I think it was called RSRA which stood for rotor systems research aircraft.  This was a hybrid of rotor and fixed wing technologies.  One of them was modified for the X-Wing program which was canceled before it could fly.  Not sure which one I saw but I think it was the unmodified one.  These things could have A-10/S-3 engines fitted to them for higher speed research work.  Oh, to have seen one in action.  This lot would have been definitely worth some time looking around if it had been possible.

Spider Hiding Out

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My effort at shooting macro images of bees in our front yard (this post) also yielded a surprised.  While I was waiting on a flower for the bee to come to me, I noticed the flower already had a resident.  A little white spider was hanging out in there.  I am not sure what its intended prey was.  It seemed a bit small to take on a bee but I have no idea if that could happen.  Maybe it wanted something smaller.  I got a couple of shots of it that interested me.  The prime shots show its “face” in detail.  Macro shots have a very shallow depth of field so I missed with plenty of shots but one or two had the end of the legs in focus.  The detail of the hairs on the legs was so cool so I include that too even if it looks like I missed focus on the shot (which obviously I did!).

Fort Worth F-16s

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Ahead of an ISAP symposium many years ago, my friend Richard had arranged a visit to JRB Carswell at Fort Worth.  As well as being the home of the Lockheed Martin assembly plant, it also hosts the 301st FW of the USAF Reserve with their F-16s.  They were great hosts and we got to spend a bunch of time around the base.  On their ramp space, we had a lot of freedom to shoot them prepping for missions and heading out.

We also got to go to the EOR and see them come in after their missions and have the jets safed prior to taxiing back to the ramp.  Being close to the jets while they are doing real work is such a different experience to seeing them at an air show when things are all a bit more contrived.  This was a new experience for me at the time and so I was following the example of a few of the other guys when looking to see what sort of things to get shots of.  It was a great learning experience and a bunch of fun too!

Building a Tower Crane

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Tower cranes are ubiquitous in big cities.  The only way to construct tall buildings, there are the sign of a prosperous city when there are lots of them.  They can be a nuisance when you are taking photos of a skyline of course since they interrupt the flow of a cityscape.  You seen them all the time but you don’t often get to see how one is assembled.  When we were watching the tower construction across from our building in Chicago, we got to see the cranes being put together.

The first thing that is needed is a big crane!  Got to have a crane to make a crane!  The base was put in place and then the cab was lifted into place.  From this, the elements of both booms were lifted and attached.  Then the counterbalance weights could be added along with the machinery to do the lifting work.  It was fun to watch it all go together and to see the guys walking around on the structure once it was in place including all of the bracing elements.  Once the crane is complete, there is a sleeve section that allows the inner section to be slide up and a new section to be inserted.

Two cranes were built for this project.  They were both within the footprint of the building so it grew around them and they grew above it.  There was never terribly much of the crane exposed above the building so it was well supported.  One of the crane operators on this project used to take his camera up.  He had a great selection of images from up there with all sorts of things going on a round him and some incredibly variable weather.  I will have to see whether those images are still available online.

American West

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In the saga of mergers that have characterized the US airline industry over the decades, plenty of airlines have disappeared – subsumed into a larger merger partner.  One such airline is American West.  I was looking for some old shots for another project and came across a bunch of shots of this airline.  It merged with USAir and then ultimately into American Airlines.  It had a more interesting color scheme than is usually the case these days so I figured I would pop a few shots of their jets into a post.

I believe one of these jets is a retro scheme as part of the American Airlines retro jet program.  The rest, though, are from the days when the airline was an active competitor.  A search on the registrations of some of these jets would have, until recently shown them as still active in the American Airlines fleet.  Now, with most of the fleets on the ground and given the age of some of these jets, I suspect a lot of them won’t be making it back in to service.

Ferraris on State Street

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There have been plenty of posts about sports cars from our time in California and Washington.  However, when we lived in Chicago, there were always a ton of exotic cars around the city.  These would be in regular use rather than part of organized gatherings.  However, one weekend, there was a gathering of Ferraris on North State Street.  I had completely forgotten about this until recently working through some old shots.

There was a combination of new cars with some older but no less exotics examples.  An F40 was there along with Testarossas.  Having this on a busy street in the center of the city seems pretty odd now but it was definitely cool at the time.  Here are some of the nice motors that were on show that day.

The Edwards Museum

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Edwards AFB has been the home to an amazing range of interesting aircraft types.  Many of them have found their way to prominent museums around the country given the significance of what they achieved.  Others never found interest and got disposed of.  Some never lasted long enough to be preserved given the hazardous nature of what they did.  However, there was a storage program for the rest and Edwards has a museum of some of these preserved airframes.

I haven’t been to Edwards for a long time so I don’t know what the current situation is with the collection but I did get to check it out on a previous visit.  The collection was mainly front line types that had been used for testing purposes.  (This is the USAF side of things rather than the NASA collection.)  There are some types there that I didn’t see which I would like to have done like the YA-7F.  However, there was a test A-7D with an air data boom.  Here are some of the shots I got that day.  I also shot a couple of other jets that were away from the rest but these were only with my phone and phone quality in those days was not what it is now.