BB-8 to Add to the ANA Star Wars Collection

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Back when we lived in California, I saw the Star Wars 787 from All Nippon come in to San Jose.  That is the topic of this blog post.  There are a couple of other Star Wars planes that ANA painted up.  One is a 767 and it tends to fly around Asia so I doubt I will get a chance to see it any time soon.  The other was a 777-330ER painted up like BB-8.  I few of my friends have seen it come in to Chicago but I had not seen it up close.  They didn’t operate in to where I was.  (I had shot it overflying me at high altitude once though.)

Then I caught a break.  I didn’t realize this at the time but it was operating to Los Angeles the day I was shooting over the airport.  I knew an ANA 777 was on its way in but I had not paid too much attention to which aircraft it was.  As I was hanging over the airport, I picked the jet out of the murky skies as it came down the approach and, as it got closer, I realized which jet it was.  I have to admit, I was rather surprised and a bit excited when I saw it.

The Benefits of Lens Compression

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The stormy waves coming ashore in Yachats were providing some great splashes as they broke on the shore.  They would crash into the rocks and send spray high into the air.  If you were further along the shore and looked back at the people closer to the rocks, they would occasionally be silhouetted against the plume of spray.  The cool thing about shooting this with a long lens is that it looks as if they are almost being overwhelmed by the waves.  Get a bit closer and they are clearly a long way from the water and in no danger of getting wet (except for a bit of the mist if you are downwind of the impact point).

NOAA Gulfstream

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The appearance of a Gulfstream GIV is not something that would normally be sufficiently unusual to justify a trip out.  However, this GIV was a bit unusual.  It belongs to NOAA and they use it for tracking weather systems.  It was operating out of Paine Field and I only got to see it once.  It would launch and head out over the Pacific for six or seven hours before coming back. The return was always in the evening after dark so never an opportunity to get a shot.  The rear radar installation is pretty conspicuous.  However, the nose radar is also a modification.  The radome is a different shape and the additional air data sensors around the radome may either be because of the change of shape or could be related to its mission.

Sadly, it departed to Florida before I could get a chance to see it on the ground.  It would have been nice to see it close up (or even in halfway decent weather – not something I was given this time around) but that was not to be on this occasion.

What Are These Stretches of Concrete

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I had a lot of time to look around while I was at Rainbow Canyon.  As the day wore on and the sun came around, I started to have a clearer view to the south.  In the morning, it had been quite foggy in that direction but that was burning off and I could see the above view.  It looked a bit like there was a runway out there but it was so far away, I couldn’t be sure.  When I got home, I looked on Google Maps.  Sure enough, there are some long stretches of what looks like concrete but no indication of what there are.  Do any of you know?  The place is called Millspaugh if you want to look it up.

Volga Dnepr Arrives and Departs in the Crummy Weather

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The presence of the IL-76 in the Pacific Northwest showed up in a previous post of mine here.  I wasn’t aware of one being back here until I was up at Paine Field and one was parked up at the Boeing facility.  It had come in during the night and didn’t go back out again until I was at work.  I actually saw it fly by my window as it headed out.  I figured it was done but I was wrong.

The message got out that it was due back in to Paine Field during the weekend.  The weather forecast was not great (again) but it was too good a chance to pass up.  I was not the only one either.  A lot of people had shown up to see it come in.  The cloud base was pretty low and the plane was quite close in before it popped out of the murk.  As it came down the approach, it was easy to see.  Aside from the plane itself, the trailing vortices from the flap system were streaming behind the aircraft with the moist atmosphere making them very conspicuous.

As they floated across the threshold, the vortices were still very conspicuous and they floated a good way down the runway streaming all the way.  In fact, even after touchdown, the vortices were still visible.  They taxied back in to the north entrance to the Boeing ramp where the waiting committee were ready.  That will be work another post of its own.

A day later the departure was scheduled.  Of course, the weather was still pretty crappy.  Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to pass it up.  The flight was only a short one though.  They were heading to Dallas and I don’t think they were carrying much.  Consequently, they were lightly loaded and got off the ground quickly.  The climb was steep and they were up into the cloud base before too long.  Still, I managed to get a few shots of them as they went off.  I wonder if I will get to see an IL-76 in the sun at some point?

Hangar Structure Remnants

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Tillamook in Oregon is well known as a home of cheese production.  It is also home to an airfield that was once a base for naval airship operations.  Two massive hangars were built to house the huge airships in the days before they went out of favor as a patrol vehicle.  One of them remains and is the home of a museum amongst other things.  The other hangar is long gone.  However, traces of it remain.

The structure of these large hangars was predominantly wood but there were some concrete elements.  Each end of the hangar had huge rolling doors and the posts to support that system were large concrete structures.  Meanwhile, the arches along the length of the hangar were rooted in concrete bases.  While the wood from the hangar has been taken away, the concrete sections remain.  Whether they were too difficult to remove or just not worth the cost, I don’t know.  What I do know is that they are still there and other things have moved in to operate within their footprint, in this case a lumber yard.

I include a picture of the remaining hangar for reference so you can see where the various structural elements exist within the finished building in case it is not immediately apparent.  When we first passed by this location on a trip about ten years ago, it took me some time to work out what these strange items were.

Forgotten F-22 Pass

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There are a lot of air shows that I have been to over the years.  You think you remember them well and then something shows up in your archive of images that you have completely forgotten about.  I am a member of a Facebook group that has a different challenge each week and, when I get the next challenge, I work through my catalog to see what I have that might contribute.  It is an interesting exercise in finding stuff that I had forgotten about.

This wasn’t one of those challenges but I was looking for something else when I came across this shot of an F-22 pulling vapor and shockwaves as it did a fast pass at the Rockford Air Show.  Rockford was a great show that I used to go to when I lived in Chicago.  They always got great static displays and performers for the flying display.  The only limitation was that you were pretty much shooting in to the sun.

This F-22 made a fast pass and was clearly pulling a lot of vapor as it went.  I don’t know why I forgot about this sequence but apparently I did.  I had a go at processing them again to see what I could make of the shots this time compared to my technique in 2009.  Not an easy shot to make work but the plane is dramatic enough to make it worthwhile I think.

Rainbow Canyon Earns its Name in the Afternoon Light

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Many of the aviation people reading this will immediately know what Rainbow Canyon is.  For the rest of you, it is a canyon in Death Valley.  It is part of a low flying route used for military training and it is a popular spot for photographers to get shots of low flying jets either at eye level or below you in the canyon.  Today it is not going to be pictures of the jets though.  The canyon earned its name because there are many layers of rock in the walls that are of different colors.

I was there in winter so the sun angles never got too high.  This avoided washing out the colors of the rocks quite effectively.  Even so, as the day wore on, the angle of the sun certainly improved from the point of view of getting the color out of the rocks.  There was plenty of time with nothing flying so I was able to enjoy the views around the canyon a lot.

One thing that you struggle to appreciate at a place like this is the scale.  I read about the Spanish first arriving at the Grand Canyon and totally failing to appreciate the scale because there was nothing to give them a reference.  Rainbow Canyon, while a lot smaller than the Grand Canyon (obviously), still is deceptive.  The distance across felt very small until a jet flew through and you realized how far away it still was and it was not even close to the other side.  A quick look on Google Maps with the scale showing makes you realize it is actually a long way across.

Sure, Wait for the Storm

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When the weather starts to turn, you can assume that whatever you are waiting for is likely to show up just after it gets bad.  In this case, a KC-46 Pegasus was on its way back to Boeing Field and the clouds were rolling in.  Things were getting darker and it looked like the clouds would open.  Meanwhile, the KC-46 was still a distance away.

Sure enough, the skies opened.  By the time the jet was on final approach, the light had disappeared and the rain was belting down.  I got some shots of it but, even with a bunch of exposure compensation, the jet was more of a silhouette than anything else.  A little post processing help brought out the detail but this was not an ideal shooting situation.  A dark grey jet in dying light is just what you want!

Thor’s Well

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The stretch of coastline in Oregon that we visited had plenty to do.  We had to scratch a few of the things we had thought about in order to do other things given the time available.  One of the things we didn’t get close to was Thor’s Well.  This is a hole in the rocks along the shore where the water can rush up from underneath.  You can get close to the hole but you have to be careful as this is the sort of thing that can overwhelm you if you are not careful.

We only got to watch this from the overlook along the highway.  The surf was running in quite strongly while we were there and the tides combined with it to provide a fair bit of action at the well.  Even so, from this distance, you didn’t get much of a sense of the power of the water.  If we go back, I will take the trail down there to get a closer look.