Finally, The Aero 45 Is Airborne for Me

I have seen the Aero Vodochody designed and Let Kunovice built Aero 45 before at events.  However, it was always parked and never in motion.  I think it is such a cool looking like aircraft and reminds me of a mini Heinkel HE-111.  I really wanted to see it flying and I have had two opportunities this year to do so.  First it showed up at Concrete for the fly in.  This was great news as I got it landing from close proximity and then again when it took off.

It was not a lot later that the Arlington show was setting up.  I wasn’t going to be at the show but I was there the day before for some warbird flying and the Aero 45 was coming in to be on static.  (This was a repeat of the first time I saw it in person which was also at Arlington.). Not so close this time but another opportunity to catch it in flight.  What a cool looking plane.  Glad we have it up here in the PNW.

Parachute Smoke Trail Patterns

The Canadian Forces SkyHawks parachute display team opened the Abbotsford Air Show evening display.  One of the jumpers had a line of smoke canisters that hung beneath them as they descended under their canopy.  Some tight turns allowed the line to swing out and create some nice smoke trail patterns.  Here are some shots of the results.

Dreamlifters Are Still Here Occasionally

The end of production of Boeing 787s at Everett meant that there was no longer a need for the Dreamlifter operations to support Dreamliner production.  However, while the Dreamlifter base has closed, there are still some production activities at Everett on the 767/KC-46 line that require large structures to be delivered and the Dreamlifters are used for this sometimes.  I understand at least one of them is currently stored, but the others are active.

I only rarely find myself at Everett when the Dreamlifter is there, but it has happened a few times over the last few months.  Here are a few of the shots I have got since these things became a little bit rarer up this way.

Focus Stacking the Lily Pond

A walk in Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle took us by one of the ponds that is covered in lilies.  Unlike when I was in Juanita Bay, this pond allowed me to get down to water level.  This provided a far more interesting perspective across the pond to the trees behind.  It did put me very close to the foreground elements so I focused stacked some shots to provide a deeper focused range across the shot.  I far prefer the lower angle as it really emphasizes the foreground elements in a way that isn’t possible when higher up.

My Buddy Was Flying This

Getting a British Airways 777-200ER arriving at SEA would not normally be a priority unless the light was great and I was going to get Mt Rainier in the background.  If the weather was cloudy and it was arriving from the north, might not seem to be that much of a deal.  However, if it is being flown by someone I know, that is a different story.  My friend, Paul, was the skipper on this flight and I was meeting him to have some time around Seattle before he headed home the following day.

The clouds were a shame but the light wasn’t totally bad.  I figured it would need a bit of work in post to try and make the best of the shots but the lack of heat haze did help a bit.  I was able to grab a few shots of the jet as it came down the approach and then as it was over the threshold prior to touchdown.  Not the greatest shots Paul will have of him flying but, hopefully there are not too bad.

Beetle on the Acer

Walking through the backyard, I noticed a colorful looking beetle on one of the branches of our Japanese maple.  Did I shoo it off?  Of course not.  I ran to get the camera instead.  The bug flipped around the branch as I returned and was showing its underside instead which was not what I wanted.  I got a shot or two just in case and then waited to see if it would turn over again.  Thankfully, it did and I was able to get something closer to the shot that I had originally envisaged.

Typhoon Air Data System

Working through some older shots for another project, I ended up looking at some shots of an RAF Typhoon displaying.  As I was zoomed in on some of the shots, it was interesting to see the air data vanes on the underside of the front fuselage as the plane maneuvered.  There are several vanes around the underside of the front fuselage and the differences between them can tell yaw and pitch angles.  In one shot when the jet was climbing straight up, the vanes are all pointing in similar directions.  Shortly before this, as the jet was pulling hard, the angle of attack was higher and the flow up around the front fuselage results in some significant differences in vane angle.

This is the sort of thing that is very important when designing and clearing a flight control system.  We had a front fuselage wind tunnel model for the Typhoon during the development program.  This was used for intake design but also for air data system modeling.  The way in which the various vanes move is vital to understanding the control law requirements.  It is also important when considering failure modes.  If one vane should fail, how much it impacts the flight control behavior and how much the system detect the failure.  Will the aircraft be vulnerable to control loss in the interim?  The Tornado did not have as complex a flight control system, but it did have augmentation of the controls and, as it rolled, you would get quite different readings from the angle of attack probes on each side of the fuselage.  How much of a difference was normal versus what was a failure was an interesting analysis problem which I enjoyed working on.  My days on Typhoon were relatively limited and shortly before first flight so I never got involved with the results of the testing program, but I do enjoy looking at the resulting aircraft whenever I get the chance.

Molds for an Unlikely Airframe

I was up at Arlington airport to see some vintage planes one weekend and was a short distance away from the hangars that Eviation operates from.  This is where they built their Alice prototype.  A composite airframe, the Alice was molded on site by the look of things.  All I read suggests any production aircraft will be significantly different from the prototype so the molds are probably surplus at this point.

Whether that is the case or not, at least some of them appear to now be stored outside.  I took a few images of them because the shaping is quite interesting and the construction of the molds themselves is something I like to see.  Tooling for an airframe is not as elegant as the airframe it will produce and it needs to be rigid to allow it to produce what is needed.  Now it is no longer needed, I wonder what its future will be.

Wichita’s Finest is Everywhere in the Parks

Kenya and Tanzania have many small airstrips scattered around the countryside including in the national parks.  These provide quick transfers between locations if you are willing or able to pay and don’t want the long and bumpy road trips.  There are a variety of types that are used for these services and I shall show some others in upcoming posts.  However, one type does dominate.

The Cessna Grand Caravan is everywhere in the region.  It has the right size for many of the trips, it has sufficient capacity for luggage with the baggage pod beneath he fuselage, it is fine with the rough surface strips that are in most places and it is PT-6 powered so very reliable.  We saw tons of them during the trip and also got to experience a flight on one.  I was surprised to find it was a 1×2 configuration.  I had assumed that they were 1×1 but not in this case.  It got a lot of us in there but getting in and out was not an easy process.  The aisle was minimal!

I have no idea how many Grand Caravans there are in use in rural Africa but I imagine that Cessna has delivered a ton of aircraft from Wichita to the region.  I suspect that the best replacement is another Caravan.  The Islander might once have been this sort of workhorse but the efficiency and reliability of the Caravan must be what has made it so ubiquitous.

Granite Falls

I’m not sure what it was that led to this but I happened to see Granite Falls on Google Maps one day.  It is a small town about 45 minutes north of us which I will have seen the sign to on many occasions as I go up Route 9 but which I had never thought of previously.  Needless to say, there are waterfalls in Granite Falls.  I looked at some of the pictures on Google Maps and decided to check it out some time.  We headed up one weekend to have a look.

Since it was just the beginning of Fall, there hadn’t been much rain recently.  Consequently, the falls were not flowing very heavily.  However, looking at the shaping of the rocks around the water, it was clear that the level can be much higher and the force of the water, substantial.  The falls were in stages and, while there is a fish ladder alongside, some salmon were actually trying to leap up sections of the falls.  They were infrequent so I never managed to catch one airborne with the camera.

We walked along the trails that runs the length of the falls.  The cliffs on the other side are very steep and you are deep in a valley.  It was difficult to really capture the scale of the place.  However, I did resolve to wait for the weather to get worse and to have more run off from the mountains before making a return trip to see the falls in a more aggressive mood.