This is not a great shot but it is a rare airplane. I was out and about when I heard what sounded like a vintage aircraft engine rumbling nearby. I took some long shots and only checked them out when I got home. It turns out it is a Hamilton H-47 Metalplane. This aircraft used to operate on floats – that would have been good to see – but it now is on wheels. Apparently it lives someone in the area so I am going to try and track it down at some point.
The Tokaido Shinkansen service requires regular inspection of the track to ensure it is up to the high standards required of high speed service. JRC operates an inspection train called Doctor Yellow. It is a highly instrumented version of the current trains. I have seen the current Doctor Yellow when I was at one of JRC’s maintenance facilities. However, the original Doctor Yellow was based on the Series 0 trains. It is now preserved in the SC Maglev museum in Nagoya along with many of the other Shinkansen designs.
The British Army display of the WAH-64D Apache is one I have seen plenty of pictures of but I haven’t had much of a chance to shoot it myself. The majority of the display is pretty standard stuff with them maneuvering tightly in front of the crowd, much like the US army’s display of the similar type. They do use a little bit of pyro during the display but the finale is a wall of fire. I was a bit concerned about my position compared to theirs as they positioned for the big moment as the background looked like it might not be all fire. However, things turned out well enough and I got the sort of shot I was hoping for.
If you don’t like bugs, this post isn’t for you. While up in the Cascades, we saw this web full of caterpillars. I don’t know the purpose of them being together in these numbers. Perhaps they are all recently hatched (is that the right term for a caterpillar) and have yet to go on their way or maybe there is another reason. Either way, there were a lot of them in one place. If you are a caterpillar predator, I wonder why this was not seen as a buffet?
I was out one evening awaiting the arrival of something that currently escapes my memory. In the meantime, I was in position to get the arrival of a few widebodies. Since SeaTac tends to put the widebodies on the inner runway, they are the ones you can get from this park location while almost everything else (plus the occasional wide body!) goes to the outer runway behind you and through the trees.
On this evening, we had four widebodies come in. Condor brought their regular 767 flight. This were joined by an Air China Cargo Boeing 747-400F, a FedEx 777F and last but by no means least, a British Airways 747-400. The evening light was very favorable and this location is both easily accessible and pretty good for this approach.
It’s been a long time since I watched any hydroplane racing. The Kankakee event in Illinois was a fun one to attend, not least because the constraints of the river meant it was possible to get really close to the action. Racing is quite popular in the Pacific Northwest and one event was scheduled for Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. I decided to head along and see what it was like.
I was quite surprised how easy it was to attend. I found parking conveniently close and got a waterfront spot to set up with ease. Plenty of people came and went during the time I was there but it never felt terribly busy. The racing took place in the harbor and it was a bit distant for all of the spectators. The good spot to watch from would have been across the harbor but that was within the naval facility so out of bounds for the rest of us.
The course provided for some good angles on the boats as they made the first turn. The second turn was rather distant. The PA system was well away from me and the program seemed to be only vaguely related to what was happening so most of the time I was oblivious to the classes that were racing at any one time. The more powerful boats were staging from the pits near the crowd but many of the smaller boats would appear on course from the marina across the harbor. I would just watch them going around and try and figure things out from the flags on the course boats.
It was a sunny day so sitting next to the water and watching the occasional race was pleasant. Not knowing what was going on was a bit harder and the random feeling of when a race would occur left me a bit confused but I got to watch racing and get some photos so hardly a bad was to spend a Sunday afternoon.
The Helinet S-76s are something I am always looking out for. I have seen them many times although the shots have sometimes left me wanting something better. While I was last in Stanley Park, I got to see a lot of their movements. The best bit was that, on some occasions, they flew pretty close overhead me. I was able to get some shots I was pretty happy with.
I could watch them descend to the heliport on the other side of the harbor but that was a long way off. The climb outs sometimes came close but the arrivals were the best. I was quite surprised by the gear lowering sequence with the mains seeming to pop out like they were on springs. No slow and steady deployment for these guys.
Having had some success with the GoPro as discussed in a previous post, I decided to play with the slow motion capabilities of the camera to get some different shots. The nice thing with a GoPro is that you can put it almost anywhere to get different angles. While playing with this, some hummers came in to feed and, since I had my phone with me, I shot some video with that too. They really didn’t seem too bothered by my presence. Here is some more video results.
F-4 Phantoms are rapidly disappearing from service. They remain in a few countries but their replacements are lined up in most cases. The Turkish Air Force is still using them and brought some examples to RIAT. They made their way to the west end for us to get some shots. These jets had been planned for replacement by the F-35A Lightning II. However, with the political fall out of the Turkish acquisition of Russian missile systems, they have been blocked from the program. Maybe the F-4s will live on a little longer after all.
When I headed south out of the center of Nagoya to go to the museum, my route took me down to the docks area. A highway along the water obviously needed to clear the route for the larger ships so a pretty impressive bridge had been constructed. It is called the Meiko-Chuo Bridge. I could only get a good view of it from the train but it was in the background when you were at the museum. I thought it looked pretty spectacular.
