A quick post from my visit to RIAT. There are going to be plenty of things from my time at the show that will show up on the blog in the coming weeks but this is an intro even though it comes from the last day I was there. Departure day included some more energetic maneuvers from some of the participants including this M346 heading back to Italy. It waggled the wings to give us a nice top side view. Thanks chaps.
I was looking to get some midsummer shooting in at Vancouver. The day was a lovely one but the evening promised so overcast rolling in and that proved to be the case. However, I thought I would give things a go. The lack of the strong evening light was disappointing but it did actually make for some softer lighting conditions and things weren’t all bad. The evening culminated (at least for me) with three quick arrivals. An Edelweiss A340-300, a BA A380 and a China Airlines A350-900. I quite liked the conditions as they provided something slightly different. Clouds shouldn’t necessarily be a deterrent from an evening out shooting.
I’ve seen a few Korean Air 777s on test at Everett since we moved here. This one was heading out on a delivery flight on a Friday evening. The only reason it gets a post is that, from what I can discover, this is the last 777 that Korean Air has on order. They have a bunch of 787s to come in the coming years but this is their last 777-300ER. They haven’t ordered the 777X (which, given how many different widebody types they operate, is quite a surprise!).
My cloudy Vancouver shoot also gave me the chance to play around with some lower shutter speeds. I have done this for the turboprops before but this time I decided to play with some of the jets. A really low shuttle speed can blur out the background and give a nice impression of movement but it is a problematic shot to make. You don’t want to do it on something that you are keen to get in case you get nothing! It is also something that results in very small apertures if there is much light which can make for a lot of dust spotting in post! A cloudy evening is a good time to try and a bunch of boring regular jets are good targets for a trial!
Some visits to an airport can be a total loss. Nothing of interest happens and you come away with no shots worthy of note. On other occasions, you get a surfeit of riches. I had one such evening at Paine Field. It included a sortie by FHCAM’s Bf-109. I saw it taxiing out which looked good and then found myself being joined on the mound by Steve Hinton. Steve’s son, Stevo, was being checked out in the 109 that evening. He took of a flew a little general handling before returning for a few patterns. The 109 is a great looking plane, particularly with the right engine installed. Having someone like Steve alongside to discuss what was going on was icing on the cake.
A visit from my buddy Paul was a good reason for a day off and a trip to Whidbey Island. We had some ideas about what we wanted to see but anything was going to be good. The weather was nice so we were in luck. One thing we got a lot of that I was not expecting was C-40 Clipper traffic. Two of the jets were out and about. They weren’t just moving people around though. They were clearly getting some training in as they flew pattern work for a long time. We were able to get shots of them multiple times.
Summer evenings can be a good time to visit Paine Field as flying seems to be busy and the light is often quite nice. On two separate visits, I saw this FedEx 777F flying. The first time it was on some acceptance flights and it flew an approach followed by a low go around. The gear doors had been blown down prior to this approach and the RAT was deployed. It then flew a pattern and landed.
Next time I saw it, it was heading off to Memphis on its delivery flight. They seemed to have a few issues with the transponder prior to departure which was fine for me as it delayed them until the light was a bit nicer. Not sure I would be so happy to take my new plane with a snag though! Memphis when empty is a piece of cake for a 777F so it made it off the ground pretty speedily.
When I got to Olympia for the Olympic Air Show, one of the first things I saw on the ramp was a very serious looking Black Hawk. It was equipped with everything you could think off. The ESSS system was mounted, there was a FLIR turret and a variety of weapons. I was rather curious what unit owned it. It turns out it is a civilian owned machine. Northwest Helicopters is the operator and it is used for filming work. That explains it looking so tooled up. A civil registration is discretely on the tail and it says the machine is actually an EH-60. I’ll have to watch out for it in any movies that are coming up.
Top Gun 2 is in production at the moment. There has been much activity around the Super Hornets on the west coast and their involvement in the film with one jet getting photographed a bit in Pete Mitchell’s colors. What I didn’t know was that the production has been on the road. While up at Whidbey Island we saw a Super Bug launching towards us. Based Growlers are of interest and Super Bugs less so but we still shot it. As it got closer, it was clearly painted up differently and we realized we had Maverick’s plane in frame. It flew a straight out departure and we didn’t see it return before we left but it was kind of a pleasant surprise to get it at all!
Getting a good angle on jets lined up on the approach is a combination of luck with where you can stand and the timing of the arrivals to be in sequence when you can get them all together. It is also a question of whether you have the right focal length to catch them together but not so much that one is out of frame. I played with this a bit at YVR. Sometimes there would be a jet on the parallel approach too but combining the lot was more luck than judgement.