737-500

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Spending a lot of time traveling on Southwest flights means I am pretty familiar with their fleet. Normally I get a 700 series jet which means decent sized bins and wifi. Occasionally, I get lucky and have an 800 series which has a nicer interior (although the window spacing is wider which isn’t so good). If my luck is not so good, it will be a 300 series. There are still plenty of these in the fleet. Some have had the bins expanded but many still have smaller bin space. Definitely no wifi on these guys.

The other week, I had something I have not had for a while. A 500 series jet! These are smaller than the rest of the fleet and are disappearing fast. The interior is certainly not modern with old style seats and small bins. Not an ideal interior for a busy flight. I should be disappointed to get one. However, they are going away quite quickly so this might be the last time I get to ride in one. If so, I’m glad I got one last shot but I certainly won’t miss them.

NAS Alameda

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NAS Alameda was once a busy naval air station. Of course, as is the way with these things, they get closed down long before I end up living in an area. How cool it would have been to be near a station when it was operating such a variety of types as were there at its peak. Now it is more famous for being the location that Mythbusters have used for a number of their driving related exploits. Big runways with little use provide a great playground.

The climb out of Oakland International takes you directly towards Alameda and you get a far better view of the runways than is otherwise possible. The hangars are now getting used for other tasks and the area is not deserted but it is nice to image ramps full of jets and maritime patrol aircraft. Oh well.

Caves Above Rydal

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As we turned back towards Grasmere from Rydal, the path took us up the hill to the overlook of Rydal Water. At the top of the hill was a large cave. I have no idea whether it is natural or the result of some quarrying or extraction activity. It doesn’t really matter. It was a pretty large cave with plenty of water covering a lot of the floor.

Getting shots of the cave made for a challenge. It was pretty large and way too big for the lens I was carrying for the hike. Therefore, I went with a pano stitch to cover the full thing. However, this brought in the other limitation of the shot. The range of light between the sky and the entrance to the cave was way too large for a raw conversion to cope with. Going with HDR combined with such a large pano stitch seemed like more hassle than I wanted to deal with for what was really just a vacation snap shot.

I did head in to the entrance of the cave a short distance to see how far it went back. My cameras may be rather old and left in the dust by the modern bodies when it comes to high ISO shooting but they can still do a reasonable job of picking out the detail in a very dingy environment.

Hainan 787

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The San Jose trip also gave me a chance to catch another jet that had been of interest. Hainan Airlines is a Chinese operator. I have seen their jets around at various times but have never had a chance to shoot them close up. I really like the brightness of their livery and had wanted to see one. Unfortunately, my late arrival at San Jose meant their jet had just touched down when I got there. However, it did depart at a convenient time so I managed to get one at last.

Cartmel

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Cartmel is a small town at the south end of the Lake District. There is a food shop there that specializes in something Nancy wanted to take home which was why we were there in the first place. Of course, we had to take a look around while we were there. Apart from the center of the town and the Priory (of which more in another post), the town is particularly well known for having a race course. We weren’t there during a meet but we did park in an area that involved driving over the end of the race course itself.

As you walk across the track, so can see up to the starting locations and the finishing straight with the grandstand. The grass was in excellent condition. It appeared to be a course that included flat racing and hurdles although I have never been there during a meet so don’t know which type of racing is most common. Looking up the straight, you could imagine a bunch of horse thundering towards you with the crowds cheering and hoping for a big win.

Bell 430

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If you watched Airwolf many years ago, you would be familiar with the Bell 222 helicopter. It is a sleek looking machine and one that gave the impression of being powerful. Consequently, I have always been pleased to see one. Bell have taken the airframe and made some updates. The result is the Bell 430 and I saw one recently at San Jose. The addition of a four blade rotor to replace the two blade system is a good change. While it doesn’t have the thwack sound of the old rotor, it provides a cool sound of its own.

The replacement of the retractable gear with the skids, though, it’s not a cool update. The retractable gear helped make the airframe look so purposeful and the skids really hurt the lines. For me, it is a combination of a hit and a miss with these changes. No doubt there are many more subtle improvements that have been made but, overall, I still think the 222 is cooler.

Waterspouts

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San Francisco Bay is a large body of water and you can get some interesting weather effects that will develop. I was down by the bay when the wind was whipping around. It was causing some little columns of spray to form out in the open water. Rather than a real waterspout, they were more like a dust devil – just water instead of dust! They would form up and then disappear. However, it would not be long before a replacement would form. These are funny looking effects and it would have been nice to be a bit closer to see them in more detail.

A380 Gathering

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Heathrow is an airport that was probably at the heart of the thinking of the Airbus team when they conceived of the A380. A busy international airport with tight constraints on movements, it is the sort of place that requires higher capacity aircraft for some routes. Therefore, it is of no surprise to find that plenty of the A380 operators bring their aircraft to London. I wasn’t hanging around at Heathrow on our trip to the UK but we were there waiting to head home. Also, at various times we were around the city and its surroundings so arriving and departing jets passed overhead.

Consequently, I got to see a few different operators’ jets while we were there. I wasn’t always well prepared for them. Wandering along the south bank of the Thames, I was not carrying a long lens and was caught out by one coming over the top turning on to final approach. Other times I was a bit better prepared. These images are some of the jets we saw while we were there.

Yet More on the 100-400

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Here is the latest update on the 100-400 saga. As reported here, I got the 100-400 back from Canon and they had indeed found something wrong with it. This was, as I noted then, a relief as I wasn’t imagining things or just not being able to use it properly (although that is still a real issue with my photography as a whole!). However, until I had been able to get out and about and given the lens some significant use, I didn’t know whether I would really see the difference.

Now the jury is in. I went out over the weekend and shot a lot of stuff in some nice conditions. Over the last couple of days I have been going through the images from the shoot. Let’s just say I have a very big grin on my face. The problem I was seeing before is gone and now I am seeing some really nice image quality all across the frame when shooting wide open. This is great news. After having the lens for a year and feeling less than happy, it is like I have got something new to use. I am a happy camper! Expect some of the shots from this shoot to make their way on to here over the coming weeks.

San Jose for R2-D2 Boeing 787

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The arrival of a new Star Wars movie is not really a secret. There are more promotional efforts associated with the film by businesses of all types than I can remember for any other release. All Nippon got in on the game quite early and announced that a number of their jets would be carrying Star Wars markings. The first to break cover was a 787-9 with markings to represent R2-D2. My friend Hayman and I made it to San Jose a while back to catch it arriving.

The story of finding it made it to a blog post for GAR which is here. Therefore, I won’t repeat the whole story of how I nearly missed the arrival. If you want to see that, click on the link and you can read the whole thing. After the arrival, we hung around and then headed to the departure end of the field to be ready for its return journey to Tokyo. It is a pretty cool scheme that they have implemented. I will now have to keep an eye out for the other two that they are doing.