Helio Courier

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There are a few planes that showed up at the Concrete Fly In that I particularly liked and one of those was a Helio Courier.  This is a beast of a plane but one that has some impressive field performance.  The example that showed up was completely unpainted which made it look even better (plus shaved some pounds off to improve that performance even more).  However, I was a little troubled by some of the flying.  The pilot took it up for a flight while we were there, and they climbed up above the field.  From the ground it is always hard to judge accurately what is happening so I will caveat all of this by saying it is how it appeared to me.

I don’t know what the winds were like aloft, but they seemed to be doing some slow flight above the field.  There also seemed to be a bit of wing rocking going on as they maneuvered, and I did wonder just how close to the stall they were flying.  Things might have been perfectly safe, but it did look odd from the ground.  Then there was the landing.  I don’t know whether they intended to land on the grass beside the runway but, as far as I am aware, that is not a designated operating area.  I think it is used for taxiing.  Anyway, they landed off the side of the runway and ran out on this area of grass.  Was that intentional?  Sort of didn’t look like it but I can’t say for certain.  Was it a good idea?  Probably not.

Let’s put all of that aside for now.  The aircraft is a fine machine, it carries a decent payload, it can get in and out of short strips and it is not so common so all of that adds up to a cool aircraft to see up close – thankfully not too close!

Some Heavy Construction Equipment

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In a previous post, I showed some construction work underway on a project I am involved with.  This involves building a long span concrete bridge and the first steps are drilling the shafts into which the concrete will be poured to form the base for the columns upon which the bridge will ultimately rest.  Watching this from a distance, you don’t quite get the scale of what is involved.  However, when on site, you really get close to the heavy machinery that is necessary for this type of project.  I thought I would share some shots of this serious gear since I was able to get access to it.

Retro Saudia Jet Compared to the Original

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While the 787-10 was never built at Everett, there have been a few that have come here for completion before delivery to their airlines.  One such jet was for Saudia or Saudi Arabians Airlines.  It was painted in a scheme that was a close resemblance to their livery from the 80s and 90s.  I had thought that it was a retro effort on their part, but I have since heard that this might actually be the livery for the fleet going forwards.

Whether that is the case or not, I did take me back to a shot I got in 1988.  I was working for the CAA in the UK on noise measuring duties and got to spend a week inside the fence at Heathrow taking readings of departing aircraft.  One of these was a 747-300 of Saudia.  I had my camera with me that week and was able to get photos between taking readings.  I thought it might be interesting to compare the old Saudia livery with the newer version.

One for Fans of Big Cat Diary

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When I was a lot younger, I watched wildlife programs on the BBC.  There was a film maker that was on my local BBC region called Simon King.  He graduated to working in the Maasai Mara where he was on with another photographer and film maker who had been there for many years.  His name is Jonathan Scott.  He still lives in Kenya and, with his wife Angela who is also a photographer, can be seen out and about in the Mara covering the animals.  I was really pleased when we came across the pair of them.  He was driving their Land Rover with his wife in the back shooting out the side.  He had a camera mounted close but too.  I waved at him at one point and he smiled and waved back.  Had a bit of a fanboy moment!

FOD Walk – The Sequel

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A couple of years ago, I took part in the FOD walk that King County Airport (aka Boeing Field) held.  They did it again last year, but I didn’t know about it until after it happened.  This year I saw advance notice again, so I signed up to have another visit.  The first time I did this, I wasn’t sure what was allowable so took a small camera with me.  I needn’t have worried so, this time, I took better gear with me.  I also recognized that the FOD walk is totally unimportant and that it is just a community engagement effort so, this time, I didn’t really make much effort to look for FOD (although I did keep an eye out as I walked just in case).  Instead, I spent more time enjoying the unusual opportunity to walk down the middle of a 10,000’ runway.

This year I started at the south end rather than the north.  This meant down by the Boeing military ramp which is considered off limits for photos while taking part.  Everything else is fair game, though.  We walk half the length of the runway and meet the other half of the group as they have come from the other end.  Then we had a photo opportunity in the middle of the field with some fire trucks as background.

The short runway remains in use while all of this goes on, so you do get some opportunities to get some shots of moving planes every once in a while.  We had a couple of PC-12s depart along with a Caravan.  I also got a good look at some of the aircraft parked at the FBO.  An Air Canada A320 was there, as was a Marine Corps Hornet.  Plenty of other jets too and, on the other side, the usual line up of 737s undergoing pre-delivery tests prior to heading to their airlines.  The airport management team was keeping an eye on us as people were taking their various selfies.  I’ll probably do this again if I can.

Filming Crews and Their Serious Gear

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We came upon a few filming crews while we were in the Maasai Mara.  There were professional photographers but more of the video teams.  National Geographic had a crew out working and there were others filming too.  You would sometimes find vehicles that were scouting crews for the filming.  The thing I found funny was that they often had signs saying that they were filming crews and not to follow them.  I might never have paid attention to them until I knew that they were filming crews and might well have good intel about where animals were!

Modified vehicles which allow the camera operator to sit outside the vehicle and shoot looked like just the sort of thing I would like to have.  They weren’t always in use, though.  I did see one operator sitting inside the vehicle with his feet up while checking stuff on his phone.  Looking at the very pricey lenses attached to the camera rigs was almost as fun as looking at the animals.  Nat Geo also had a vehicle with a gimbal mount out on the front of the vehicle.  It would have been fun to see that in use!

One thing that occurred to me as I watched these teams at work was the volume of material that they would collect that would be culled down to make a TV show.  Sure, this would be a vast amount of data to store and sort but how different this must be from the days of wet film.  Those crews shooting things like the early Big Cat Diaries must have been carrying a ton of stock and then had to manage all of it through processing and cataloging.  That must have been a very time consuming and expensive proposition.

Calibrating the Drones Perhaps?

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During the Abbotsford Air Show, we could see a bunch of people out on the airfield.  It wasn’t obvious what they were doing but I took some shots with the longest lens I had to see if I might later work out what was going in.  My friend Mark thought it might be related to the drone display that was due to take place after dark.  I think he might have been right.  Looking at the shots, they seem to be waving the drones around above themselves.  Maybe this is part of a calibration routine or something to do with activating them and having them communicate.  I don’t know.  If anyone is familiar with all of this, please do let me know in the comments.

Strange Little Isolated Tree

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Sometimes you just don’t have the right gear with you.  I had gone to Juanita Bay after work and was only carrying one camera with the 500mm on it.  Looking down in to the water to one side of me, I was quite taken by a stump in the water that had a new growth of a small tree coming from the top of it.  It was too far away to get a decent shot with the phone so the 500mm was the only option.  I took a sequence of shots to stitch together later on.  I quite like the separation that you get with using such a long lens for a shot like this.  I wonder how large the tree will ultimately grow to be given the limitations of its home!

Another 727 But This One Has Winglets

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I had been talking with some friends at Boeing Field about the Kalitta 727s that we had seen recently and we got on to the subject of winglets on the 727 and that the jets we had seen didn’t have them.  Little would I know that I would address this a short while later.  Kalitta Charters II was bringing another 727 in to Paine Field on a weekend evening and it was a different airframe to the ones I had photographed to that point.

It was also fitted with winglets!  I am not sure how good the winglet design is on the 727.  It looks like a pretty basic design and doesn’t seem to be very well integrated in the way that later winglet designs are.  However, it must provide some benefit because they have sold a fair few of them.  I clearly made the trip up to Everett to catch its arrival and I wasn’t alone.  One more 727 in a time when they are not very abundant and a different configuration to boot.

London Before Sunrise

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Our return flight home included a layover in London.  Our flight in arrived before sunrise and brought us up from the south over to the east end and then back across Docklands, south of Westminster and in to Heathrow.  I fortunately had a window seat although I was a bit far from the window itself so there was a certain amount of shooting while reaching across.  Trying to pan appropriately for the movement of the aircraft was a touch tricky but I managed to exploit the low light capabilities of the camera to get some okay shots.

We flew across Biggin Hill and I was able to shoot almost straight down on the runway and ramp areas.  Then we came up towards Woolwich and I could see the ferries and London City Airport.  From there it was not far to the Thames Barrier and then the O2 arena.  The high rises of Docklands were next.  On to Tower Bridge with the Shard and London Bridge Station.  Next stop was The Palace of Westminster with the London Eye and Waterloo alongside.  Last was Buckingham Palace and Knightsbridge.  Some fun sights to see.  In daylight, I can navigate this area easily but, when it is dark, you have to work from key references.