Derelict Antonov

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If you want a rugged workhorse with a substantial payload, you can do a lot worse than the Antonov AN-2. This bi-plane, powered by a substantial radial engine, has been a workhorse of many operators around the world – particularly in the old Soviet Bloc. It might look very dated – production started in 1947 – but some examples were still being assembled in 2001. However, the reliance on Avgas and the general age of the type means it is progressively disappearing from service.

There are still plenty about though and I came across one at Chino as the sun was setting. At first I thought it might be in good condition and possibly a flyer. Getting a bit closer, though, showed that the fabric on some of the control surfaces was coming apart and this one must have been sitting around in the California sun for a while. A shame since they are a mighty thing to see in action. I have no idea what the future is for this airframe but maybe it could rumble into life again.

Getting Some Air

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There seem to be quite a few posts on the blog of kite surfing. Whenever I come across someone out in the waves, I can’t help myself but spend some time watching them. Driving down the coast from Coronado, we stopped on the beach to eat our breakfast. As we sat on the wall looking across the sand at the waves, the kite surfer headed out a short distance away.

Of course, he never came up as far us us but he was still close enough to get a good view. He managed to get some good air at times, usually when I wasn’t trying to photograph him. The wind off the ocean was strong and steady so he was having a lot of fun with some reasonably sized waves to launch off periodically. I figured an animated GIF might be a good way to show him in motion. See what you think.

Anyone Seen a Cirrus?

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Most public airports have a variety of types scattered around. The heyday of US light aircraft manufacturing was decades ago and resulted in the production of Cessna, Pipers, Beeches et al in large number. These aircraft are still around but are now aging so the types parked up will often be showing their age. There are light aircraft still being produced today but the numbers are significantly lower. Moreover, they are not cheap so you don’t see so many new planes around. One of the higher end types is the Cirrus. With a nicely equipped example setting you back about half a million dollars, it isn’t a surprise that they are not abundant.

San Carlos, on the other hand, is positively swimming in the things. The peninsula is home to quite a lot of high net worth individuals so this is an area where people are more likely to be able to have a nice shiny Cirrus. Also, there is a distributor on the airfield (no coincidence there!) so the local buyers are likely to choose something they can see at home.

There are some SR20 models in use for training but more seem to be the higher end SR22 models. They are a nice looking plane and one that I would certainly be happy to have a go with. The combination of equipment, control layout and performance would be nice to try and to compare with types I have flown in the past. One day…

Hound Dog

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Sometimes you see something that just looks the right way. Tucked under the wing of the B-52 at Castle Air Museum is a Hound Dog missile. This was a nuclear armed stand off weapon carried by the B-52s for a number of years. It is a slim airframe with a jet mounted underneath. It is all points and sweep back. If anything looks like it should go fast, this thing is it. I have no idea whether it was a good design or effective. It was never required in anger thankfully. All I know is that you are left in no doubt what it is supposed to do!

Pegasus

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Some programs always seem to be trouble. Boeing’s efforts to turn the 767 into a tanker have not been smooth over the years. The original versions were a single boom tanker for Japan which was not too late. The three point version for Italy was a far more difficult affair and was several years late. When the USAF was after a new tanker, Boeing initially lost out to Airbus with their A330 based offer. A successful protest and s new competition followed and this time Boeing won.

Whether winning was good for them remains to be seen. The contract involves a cap on cost growth after which Boeing picks up all of the overrun. Supposedly they are already past that point so the split on overrun costs is now all theirs. Combine that with messing up the wiring and having to wire the flight test jets and you will see why the flight test program is behind schedule. The first of the four development jets flew last year in a civil configuration without the refueling equipment. It has since been on the ground at Boeing Field for further work. Very recently it took to the air again. Shortly before that, I passed by and saw it parked up on the Boeing ramp.

We shall see whether Boeing can pull back some of the delays and get the minimum number of jets into service by the contractual deadline. Whatever happens, I imagine these jets are going to become a lot more familiar in the coming years.

Experiences with Lightroom CC

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I have discussed some of the new functions of Lightroom CC here and here. Aside from those changes, how have things been with the program overall? To be honest, I am a bit underwhelmed by the new version. There have been a few minor functionality upgrades but nothing huge. I do like the ability to add images to a collection when importing them since that has saved a step for me. However, the presets do not seem happy remembering which collection it is so that is rather buggy. Many of the bugs in the previous version also exist so, if they have really recoded a lot, they have still reused a lot of the code.

The new version also seems to have a fair few bugs of its own. The crop tool seems to have developed some new quirks that result in it deciding you have finished selecting the area a short while after you actually do so, if you have moved the cursor away, you get some very odd effects. I still can’t get it to stop trying to create a backup copy of my files when I import new images. Nothing new was added for video which I think is daft. They give you the capability to import video and even trim and edit clips. However, with Photoshop having the ability to be a basic video editor (and now my default), there is no way to connect videos in Lightroom with Photoshop in the same way as you do for stills. That baffles me.

The big benefit is in processing speed. My workflow involves rendering 100% views to speed me through the culling process. The new version certainly renders them a lot faster. I did have to upgrade my graphics cards though. My vintage cards did not have the necessary version of OpenGL to let Lightroom take advantage of them. It also has lens profiles for two of my lenses that were not in the previous version which is nice to have.

Overall, I am okay but a bit underwhelmed. Since I pay for the subscription, I am paying for it but it does have the feel of being free so I am less concerned even if I can understand the truth. What I am hoping for is a bit more frequency in fixes to deal with the bugs and maybe bring some extra capabilities.

Dornier DO-228

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A recent arrival at San Carlos is a Dornier 228 that is apparently configured for aerial survey work. The guys mentioned that it had been active prior to my visit but it was not doing much the day I was there. However, it was parked close to the fence. It wasn’t easy to get a shot of it but a bit of reaching above the fence line meant I could at least get something. It is a cool looking plane so I hope I get a chance to see it in action at some point.

HDR Within Lightroom

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The changes in Lightroom CC that included the Photomerge also included a change to the processing of HDR images. Again, the functionality has been brought within Lightroom rather than requiring the move out to Photoshop and the output file is again a DNG file. This means a smaller file than the 32 bit TIF that I was previously getting. A while back I wrote about some of the odd experiences I was having with moving these high bit depth files between Photoshop and Lightroom so a new workflow is of interest.

According to some of the publicity at the time of roll out, the new processing approach does not require as many images to work with. I have been shooting five images for HDR to date. They say that only a couple are necessary. I have tried carrying out the processing with five and with two and there doesn’t appear to be an obvious difference in the output. There is a benefit in the time taken to process the images though so this does appear to be a good improvement.

You can either let the output be automatically toned using the normal Lightroom processing functions or do it yourself. I let it have a go at first but have not liked the choices it made so have reverted to carrying out the toning myself. It is not a time consuming process so seems worthwhile to me. While I felt that Photomerge was not as capable as using Photoshop, in to case I think it is a better solution and this will be part of my workflow. Now to reset the camera to shoot fewer bracketed images!

Islander Anniversary

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The Britten Norman Islander recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of the first flight. A group, based in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight – the home of the Islander – were involved in celebrating this event. BNAPS is the group and they have been restoring the first production aircraft. My mum is a part of this group so this one is close to home.

GAR covererd this topic via two articles produced by Bob Wealthy who is a key player in BNAPS. It was good working with Bob on these pieces and you can find them at the links below.

http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2015/06/13/aviation-history-britten-norman-islander-50th-anniversary/

http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2015/06/15/civilian-aviation-britten-norman-islander-g-avcn-restoration/

Lightroom’s New Panorama Feature

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Lightroom CC comes with a number of new features. High on the list is the new panorama feature. Previously, if you wanted to stitch a panorama, you would select the shots in Lightroom, make sure you had them synced up for any exposure edits and white balance corrections and then send them to Photoshop. Photoshop had a Photomerge function that you could use or you could open them as layers in a document and carry the merge out yourself with a bit more control. This was the approach I used and I wrote about the technique here a while back.

The new Photomerge in Lightroom CC is designed to do without Photoshop. It takes your original files and then makes a new DNG file which is the stitched panorama but, as a RAW format, it still allows you to edit the image using the normal editing tools. I had to give this a go so, how well does it work?

The answer is a mixed one. In many cases, it works just fine. It stitches together the shot nicely and you can go on your way. While the initial preview process takes up a little time, the processing of the final stitch is done in the background so you can get on with something else – something I find very handy. However, it does have some shortcomings.

First, it doesn’t always find the way to stitch the shots. I have had a couple of times when it couldn’t work out the alignment. When I tried the same shots in Photoshop, they worked just fine. Not sure why these didn’t work but the algorithms must have some limitations. Next, it doesn’t always deal well with curvy edges. I have had a couple of stitches that I tried where the aircraft fuselage, although a smooth curve, ended up with some kinks at the area where the stitch took place. Photoshop never caused me trouble with these either. Big panos also seem to make it unhappy with some very odd alignments being chosen (after a long time processing) so they may have to stay in Photoshop for now.

The last problem is cropping. You have the option to have the whole stitch or to have it crop in automatically (or you could crop manually afterwards). Cropping pulls you in to the shot more aggressively to get rid of any blank pixels. You can fix this by shooting a lot wider to have more to work with. However, having been used to being able to fill odd little gaps using Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop, not being able to do so in Lightroom is a limitation. I can, of course, open the file in Photoshop and do just that. However, if I do so, I might as well use Photoshop to do the merge in the first place.

Overall, it is pretty good. I suspect there will be some tweaks behind the scenes as CC gets updated progressively so I might not even know that Adobe have fixed some of the issues. The Fill issue will be more obvious though. I shall probably keep using it unless I feel the Photoshop is merited and it is a good addition but I hope they take it further so I don’t have to consider Photoshop in the future. We shall see because the new update of Photoshop is out and includes Content Aware Fill of the gaps in panos which might be enough to sway me back.