I was heading home from Arlington and passing Snohomish when it occurred to me that there might be an opportunity to shoot the Skydive Snohomish jump ship. They operate a Blackhawk conversion of the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. The conversion adds a more powerful engine which is useful for a jump ship that is focused on getting loads to altitude fast and then returning to do it all again. I turned off to the airport and saw that operations where on a southerly flow which means towards the road.
As I drove around, the plane took off directly over me, but I had no time to stop and get a shop. I parked up and watched it climbing above me and then disgorging its load of what my friend Bob calls meat bombs. The descent was pretty rapid, and the plane was landing as the jumpers were making their approaches. It pulled off the runway and then held on a taxiway for a while. It appeared that they waited until the next lift was ready to board at which point, they pulled up to the skydive facility and got everyone on board.
It was a short taxi to the hold point and then they were lined up and powering towards me. It is a short runway at Harvey Field, but they were rapidly airborne and climbing above me and on their way to the drop point. Once they were gone, I packed up my stuff and headed home.
One morning I drove up to the office and, as I pulled into the spot I usually use, I saw a bunch of deer on the grass in front of me. This area may be popular with wildlife, but I have never seen anything near the office other than crows! I was going to stay in the car to avoid spooking them but, there was a guy from a contractor loading up his truck and they didn’t seem bothered by him so I figured I could go indoors without them worrying. Sure enough, as I walked by, they looked at me but were unimpressed.
Once I was upstairs, I looked down on them chomping on some of the bushes and then they headed across the parking lot and away. I thought that would be it but, when I headed home, they were back and in the same place. I guess they found our shrubberies tasty. I have seen them once more since but they are clearly not a regular feature yet. I could imagine that this was a thing when the office was closed for the pandemic but to have them around now when things are busy again was a surprise.
It has been a long time since I last saw one of the Boeing T-38 chase jets. I don’t know whether they hadn’t flown for a long time or whether it is just I didn’t know anything about it. However, one of them started showing up a while back making a series of flights. The question was whether I would be able to be around on one of those occasions? Fortunately, the answer proved to be yes. I have not always been lucky with the light on the T-38s but, on this occasion, things were pretty good. When will I catch one or other of them next?
The area of Bristol known as Clifton sits on the top of the hill overlooking the Avon. To get from the water to Clifton is quite a climb. These days you would drive up there but, in the days, when vessels would be bringing passengers in by boat along the river, an alternative was required. The Clifton Rocks Railway was the solution. This was a funicular railway that ran in a tunnel from alongside the river up to near the suspension bridge.
Built in the 1890s, it operated until the 1930s when the decline in passenger numbers meant it was no longer viable. The tunnels were used as office space during the Second World War with the BBC being one of the tenants and they continued to use the space into the 1960s. There is now an effort to restore aspects of the tunnels although the railway will never operate again given the usage the tunnels have had since service ended. The station at the bottom is still visible but is now alongside a busy roadway so might easily be missed as you drive past.
While the CAF Reliant was refueling at Arlington, the unmistakable sound of a Huey could be made out. Snohomish County operates a Huey so my initial thought was this might be it. As it flew towards us, I realized it was one of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources Hueys that are used for firefighting operations. It flew low over the field and passed where we were. Then I got a lot more interested as it turned towards us. It was coming in for fuel and I was by the fuel tanks!
They turned in nice and close to us and I was able to get a bunch of shots. After shutting down, I chatted to some of the team and they explained they were heading north to relieve another helicopter that was up at a local firefighting base. With them preparing to depart, I figured I would try and get some video along with stills. I thought I had set up one camera on the ground to get the take off sequence but it turns out I had not hit the right button sequence and I ended up missing the majority of the departure. Oh well. I did still get to shoot the stills I was after.
As we were walking through Brandon Park, we saw this gull on the grass by the path. I don’t know for sure what it was up to, but I wondered whether its steps were designed to sound like rain falling to worms beneath the surface to encourage them to come up and then get eaten. Maybe it is something else but, whatever it is, it was pretty funny to watch. Needless to say, I thought it was worth getting some video.
This plane was teasing me. Ameristar has DC-9s in its fleet and they are clearly not young airframes, but it is nice when they get a fresh paint job. One was at Boeing Field in a shiny new looking livery. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going anywhere while I was near it. I got shots of it on the ramp and near the terminal building. I also got an overhead shot of it from up on the hill. None of these involved it doing anything other than sitting there though. Let’s hope I get lucky with it before too long.
I did a little filming on a bike ride with an old GoPro Hero 5 of mine. The current generation of action cameras has all sorts of clever tech built in which can deal with rotation of the camera and stabilizing the image. The Hero 5 doesn’t have any of that and I ended up spending a lot of time stabilizing the images in post processing to try and get something usable out of it. I was surprised how badly it came out and started thinking about an upgrade to incorporate all of the newer capabilities. It was at this point that I got a little silly. I had seen videos before about the Insta360 cameras and had found them intriguing but not so much that I wanted to get one. Now I was looking for a new camera, the capabilities that they have seemed like it could be a good step forward.
For those that haven’t seen one, the Insta360 in its current X3 form has two cameras on opposite sides of the body with fisheye lenses with over 180 degrees of coverage. The sensors are 5.7K resolution and the camera can stitch the two outputs together to give spherical coverage. It also has a stick on which you can mount it which the camera will recognize the location of and take both images to effectively remove the stick from the video. With the high resolution of the original files, you can then use their software – either on your phone or using the desktop app – to pan and zoom around the original files and generate video output of whatever you want.
What this means is that you don’t have to frame a shot when you are shooting. The only thing you have to do is have the camera in the right place. You can worry about where it is pointing later on which is great when you are already doing something else. The removal of the stick is very impressive, only slightly undermined but the fact your hand that is holding it now looks a little odd. Also, if the shadow of the stick is in shot, the software doesn’t know to do anything about that! (As an aside, there is a mode where you only shoot with one side like a normal action camera if you want.)
What is the downside to all of this? Big files! You are shooting a lot of data on two cameras simultaneously so you can fill up cards fast. You do also have to then review each clip and pick your angles for the shots, but you would have had to do that beforehand otherwise so no great loss. Other than that, not a lot to complain about. I have tried it on a few occasions so far. The length of the stick makes it seem like you have a drone flying above you if you put it up there. A cool result. I took it out on a bike ride to see how things came out and I have a short video below that shows you the result. No great cinematography here but an introduction to what can be done. Remember that each shot is only moving the camera around and the panning and zooming is all done back at home. Amazing tech!
Seattle is a place where you can get a fair bit of humidity at certain times of day. Earlier in the day, there might be a lot of cloud but it will burn off as the day goes on and you have some sunny afternoons and evenings. Watching the planes on approach to SEA on days like this can make for some rapidly changing conditions. I was watching a bunch of jets heading towards SEA as they came through the clouds and into clear air. They would be leaving trails in the cloud base behind them as they went but would be trailing their own little vapor fields behind them.
The conditions didn’t last long and soon the clouds were almost gone and the amount of vapor that they were pulling was minimizing. The vapor was clearly aligned with the flaps on the wings so you could see where the air was being worked the hardest. I did get some shots of them for this which I shall share later but the way in which the vapor puffs and dissipates is best seen in video, so I shot a bunch of that. Most planes were coming directly over me but a couple of the wide-bodies were going to the inner runway so were offset from my location.
In the outer area of Exotics@RTC I saw this EV Hummer. The move towards electric vehicles is a positive step to reducing our emissions and trying to address the climate change challenges we have but there was something about this behemoth that made me feel that we are missing the point. Sure, an EV Hummer is less polluting than the original Hummer, but this thing is huge and is surely not a good idea. Finding a way to have the most inefficient EV you can is kind of missing the point.
I was heading home from Arlington and passing Snohomish when it occurred to me that there might be an opportunity to shoot the Skydive Snohomish jump ship. They operate a Blackhawk conversion of the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. The conversion adds a more powerful engine which is useful for a jump ship that is focused on getting loads to altitude fast and then returning to do it all again. I turned off to the airport and saw that operations where on a southerly flow which means towards the road.
As I drove around, the plane took off directly over me, but I had no time to stop and get a shop. I parked up and watched it climbing above me and then disgorging its load of what my friend Bob calls meat bombs. The descent was pretty rapid, and the plane was landing as the jumpers were making their approaches. It pulled off the runway and then held on a taxiway for a while. It appeared that they waited until the next lift was ready to board at which point, they pulled up to the skydive facility and got everyone on board.
It was a short taxi to the hold point and then they were lined up and powering towards me. It is a short runway at Harvey Field, but they were rapidly airborne and climbing above me and on their way to the drop point. Once they were gone, I packed up my stuff and headed home.
