Another 777-300ER Wheel Post?

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If you aren’t already bored with my quest for something definitive on the takeoff characteristics of the Boeing 777-300ER, here is something more on the topic. Rather than animation, this time it is a couple of still shots. The first is a 777-300ER rotating. The second is a 777F. You can clearly see that the truck is rigidly rotating on the 300ER while the freighter has all wheels firmly planted on the ground up into it gets airborne. Maybe I will call that it for now. I promise no more posts on this for a while!

Clipper

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A long weekend away was on the cards so we decided to head down the coast to San Diego. Just over an hour on the plane and you are there so it is a pretty easy trip for us to do. San Diego is a city with a lot of things to offer so you won’t be surprised to see a bunch of different posts showing up in the coming days that are from there. Far too much to put into one or even a couple of posts.

One afternoon we had a bit of spare time between things we had planned so we took a walk along the waterfront. This is an area designed to appeal to tourists (which, after all, we were) and it has a number of attractions playing on San Diego’s nautical heritage. One that caught Nancy’s attention was an old clipper style of ship. These were the speed demons of their age moving goods around the globe (at a pace that would now be considered impossibly slow). They were big square riggers and it was the rigging that was what impressed Nancy. The complexity of the ropes is quite something. In order to hold the high loads using the ropes of the era, they are multipled up on a pulley type of arrangement to provide the strength required. From a distance they look impossibly complex and even up close, they are still something to see.

Del Valle Regional Park

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Head south from Livermore and you get into some hilly territory beyond the vineyards. Climb over one of the ridges and you drop down into a valley flooded by a reservoir. The water is surrounded by a park that has lots of options for hiking, biking, boating and just hanging out. This is Del Valle Regional Park. We were keen to try and get some hiking in before the temperatures got too high so planned out a route that would take us up around the hills and back down to the lake.

While the park is very popular and a lot of people were along the water having picnics and swimming, it didn’t take long to get well away from everyone. To be fair, it wasn’t hard to see why. The route we took involved a very steep climb to start things off. Without having warmed up much, we were both suddenly very aware of how quickly (or not) we were going up. However, once we had reached the high point, we then had a far more relaxing path to take along the ridge. The view was fantastic and we were almost totally alone for the entire route.

Finally we dropped down to the water and had a gentle stroll back to our starting point. Meanwhile, plenty of people were enjoying the water. Kayaks and powered boats were all over the water. The edge of the water had a lot of people fishing. All in all, it seemed the image of relaxed sunny day.

USS Midway

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I was watching something on TV recently and there was some footage of the harbor in San Diego. The camera panned across the waterfront and right across the USS Midway. The Midway was a long lasting ship. She was originally built immediately after the end of WWII. A variety of upgrades and rebuilds meant that she served for nearly fifty years. She was a big ship but not as big as the Nimitz class ships in service today or Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes. Consequently, she could not operate F-14s and was the last carrier to operate Phantoms which were replaced by F/A-18s when the Phantoms were retired.

Upon retirement, she became a museum in San Diego where you can visit her today. I took a look around a few years ago when ISAP was holding it symposium in San Diego. I got there a day early to have a look around and a bunch of us went down to see the Midway.

The collection of aircraft on board is pretty cool. There are some unusual types on display and they are arranged about the ship. The deck and hangar space provides plenty of options for the displays given the size of the air wing she used to accommodate. The deck has been used for other events including launching Kirby Chambliss during the Red Bull Air Races one year and hosting a college basketball game.

One frustrating memory of my visit relates to something not on the Midway. I had been talking with my friends about how I wanted to shoot LCACs – the hovercraft the Marines use for coming ashore. While I was up on the deck, what should I hear but an LCAC. Unfortunately, I was at the wrong end of a long flight deck so only got a passing look at the LCAC as it went by. I did get a quick shot but not one that will ever win any awards!

Should you find yourself in San Diego and you have some free time, I heartily recommend a visit to the Midway. San Diego has a lot to offer but the ship is impressive enough on its own and the collection of aircraft onboard is an added bonus.

Gear Down and Locked

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There are some shots that it is just hard to get. They are possible but it depends on what you have available. One idea that I have been trying to come up with a solution for is getting good shots of airliners as they lower their gear. The sequence for lowering the gear is pretty cool and the outline of the plane when it has flaps deployed but no gear is of interest to me too. However, to get a shot like that, you need to be high up further out on the approach. Unless you are in another aircraft, that is tricky to do.

From the normal locations on the ground, the aircraft is just too far away to get a decent shot. Not only is it in the distance and, therefore, small but you also have to cope with atmospheric disturbances like heat haze and dust in the air. It doesn’t make for a compelling shot! Instead, I decided to try something different. I would shoot the sequence of shots of the approach and then animate them. This would mean that the reduced quality of an individual shot would be lost as the sequence would require a certain amount of motion blur anyway.

What I didn’t realize until I tried this on an A380 was that this jet has an unusual gear sequence. I was looking at trying a 747 or an A380 since they are large and have interesting wing configurations when approaching to land. As it turns out, the A380 lowers the outer two gear legs first before the two center body legs come down. I had not appreciated this before trying this shot. Animating the sequence really put the computer under some pressure. Creating a file with over 100 layers and then adjusting each layer to align properly took some time and really made the machine work hard. Ultimately, I got the sequence you can see above.

Stormy Raptor

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As is so often the case, I was looking through some images for a feature that someone else was preparing when I came across some other shots that had never made their way on to the blog. In this case, they are some old shots of the F-22 Raptor taken in the UK. I had made a quick trip across the pond to go to the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. I had joined up with my sister and my nephew for this trip – their first trip to RIAT and one that has resulted in them going every year since!

We made a two day visit out of it. The first was for the arrival day and the second was the first day of the show itself. The weather on arrivals day was not fantastic! We had a lot of cloud dueing the day and it ultimately turned into a torrential downpour. We huddled under umbrellas and aimed to avoid getting totally soaked while those around us did likewise. A couple of guys in a tent bailing themselves out provided some amusement as we got pelted with rain.

Earlier in the day, the F-22 practiced its routine. The Raptor had come the previous year and the weather had precluded it from getting a public display as the show got weathered out. This time it looked as if it might be more of the same. However, things got steadily better over the weekend. My favorite shots were taken on the practice day. The weather had not gone totally downhill at that point but the moisture was in the air. Lots of cloud and poor light plus clouds of moisture and highly visible vortices. What more can you ask for – other than nice weather?

Anyway, here are some of the shots from that day. All was not lost!

Sandhill Cranes

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It is funny who something you will be doing or watching will trigger a memory and then I find myself wondering whether it is something that has appeared on the blog or not. The longer the blog runs, the harder it is to remember whether it was going when something happened or whether I have had a previous time when I thought I should cover something older. The sandhill crane migration is one such event.

The first time I came across the cranes was when we were driving through Nebraska. The fields were full of birds although, for a while, we didn’t realize that was what they were. From the interstate as we zoomed along, there was obviously something in the fields but we couldn’t tell whether it was a plant or a creature. Then we saw a lot more of them flying and it became clear. We were making a lot of distance on that trip, though, so we didn’t stop to investigate.

I later saw individual cranes at various spots within reach of Chicago, often up in Wisconsin but sometimes in the northern edge of Illinois. However, these were usually one or two at a time. I was advised by my friends, though, of the big migration that comes through Indiana. The place to go is Jasper Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana. This was a couple of hours or so from home and you wanted to be there for sunrise so it was an early start.

The location is popular with the migrating birds and they hang out in the fields in huge numbers. As the sun comes up, they get more active and start to take to the wing. It is early in the morning so the light can be really good. Added to that is a viewing platform that is positioned so put you up sun from the birds. It can be a touch chilly and sometimes breezy so dressing warmly was a big deal but it was worth it.

You could either watch the individual birds as they flew or appreciate the huge numbers as they flocked together. They were everywhere. The noise was impressive too. Compared to visits that my friends have made, I think the birds were staying away a bit while I was there so a lot of this was long lens work. Even so, there were still quite a few that flew close to us. Forgetting the photography for a moment, the spectacle of some many large birds taking wing is something not to be missed if the opportunity presents itself.

DHS Citation with Radar

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A buddy of mine recently photographed a Cessna Citation in Texas which, at the time, he didn’t pay too much attention to. Later, when he looked at the pictures he realized it had an unusual fairing mounted on it which we thought might be a radar of some sort. This triggered a memory for me of a Citation that I saw at Andrews AFB. This was operated by Homeland Security and included a modified nose with an air intercept radar. I don’t know which types it was but I seem to recall it might be a variant of the F-16s radar. Anyway, thinking of that made me dig out the original shot and here is the aircraft in question.

Pacific Grove

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I have posted plenty of pictures of Monterey and the surrounding area in the past. As you head along the shore, you actually move from Monterey in to Pacific Grove. It is quite strange how you go from the tourist center of Monterey onto some beautiful shoreline in a very short space of time and the number of people plummets. That is not to say Pacific Grove is deserted but it is a far more tranquil spot to be. The path along the top of the cliffs is great for wandering along and seeing what the sea is doing and what wildlife is out.

The birds are a constant presence as you walk but looking down to the water you get to see whatever the abundant sea life of Monterey Bay has to offer. On this trip a few seals were resting on the rocks and some Sea Otters were going about their business close in to the ricks despite the waves crashing around them. Must be good food near there.

The other “marine life” we saw was a group of people swimming out into the bay. I assume it was a club of some sort since it seemed very organized. A lot of people of varying age and ability were swimming out to a marker buoy and back. They seemed to have a lot of fun although some seemed noticeably tired once they were out of the water. Since I would have had a very hard time doing what they were doing, I can certainly sympathize!

Northrop Grumman Testbeds

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Every once in a while I am looking for things to include in the blog from previous photographic outings. I was discussing an aircraft with an unusual radar installation which will now show up in an upcoming blog post as well. However, it triggered another thought about some radar testbed aircraft that I used to see quite regularly. For a number of years I was working in Washington DC on a regular basis and I would fly in to BWI airport. Aside from being a popular hub for Southwest, it is also the home of a Northrop Grumman radar plant.

They have a hangar on site which not only deals with their corporate aircraft but also their testbeds for the airborne radar programs. This hangar is located along a tree lined taxiway so everything is pretty obscured from view (unless you are airborne when you can see in a lot more clearly). The two testbeds that I saw quite frequently were a Sabreliner business jet and a BAC 1-11 airliner. The 1-11 was a regular sight when I was a lot younger but now they are almost all gone. Therefore, this was the one I was always pleased to see.

Sadly, I often saw them when I was without a camera or the camera was away. No electronics below 10,000’ in those days. However, I did catch them occasionally so these shots are a reminder of what was there. I suspect that the 1-11 is no longer in use. I imagine it was becoming a pain to maintain but I don’t know for sure whether it still is around. If you know, please do tell me.