Tag Archives: aircraft

Lots of P-3s, or One P-3 Lots of Times

Leave a Reply

Paul and I headed to Whidbey Island on the hunt.  We would be happy to shoot a variety of stuff but P-3s were the goal.  Whidbey still has them but they are disappearing fast so get what we can.  As it turned out, we got a ton of P-3 action but it was all with the same plane.  It flew a bunch of circuits after returning from a training sortie and then finally landed.  However, it wasn’t done.  A crew change and they were back up.  That plane got some use that day.  We could hear another engine running but it obviously wasn’t going flying.  Here are lots of shots of one specific P-3 instead!

Gweduck

Leave a Reply

When I photographed this amphibian, I thought it was a Goose or a Widgeon.  It made a pass over Paine Field while I was waiting for the return of the Bf-109 so I grabbed some shots of it.  It was only as I looked at the shots afterwards – particularly the engine installations – that I realized I didn’t know what it was.  I looked up the registration as saw it was a Gweduck.  This is the only example so far and it is based at Renton.  I would love to see more of it – particularly if that can include some time on the water!

Collings Foundation at BFI

Leave a Reply

The Collings Foundation made its annual visit to the Seattle area recently including flights from Boeing Field.  The weather had been rather uninspiring but I figured I would head along and hope for some gaps in the clouds.  The Mustang and the P-40 didn’t fly while I was there.  The B-24 and the B-17 did though.  Sadly, the B-24 only flew once.  The discussion was whether Seattle being a Boeing town meant that everyone wanted to fly on the B-17, despite the rarity of the B-24.  The clouds had a habit of parting at just the wrong time and place with good light up the approach and down the runway but not where I wanted it to be.  Even so, it was still nice to see these vintage planes again.

777X Taxi Trials

Leave a Reply

I had a lucky break one evening when I headed up to Paine Field for one thing, only to discover that the 777-9 development airframe was undergoing taxi tests.  I got there to see it on the Boeing ramp with cooling fans running to cools the brakes.  I was worried that I may have missed all of the action but this was not the case.  They had two more taxi trials that they ran before wrapping up.  Each time they would have a brake cooling session with the fans.

The engines are a problem at the moment so they don’t have a flight clearance.  That means that the taxi trials will not get too fast.  High speed taxi trials require a flight clearance to be available should the aircraft get airborne by accident.  These were not going to do anything like that so no lifting the nose wheel.  Just accelerate down the runway, gather data points and apply the brakes.  I wrote a piece for GAR which is here that covered the trial and there is some video below which includes a head on view of the folding wingtips being lowered into the flight position.

A Turboprop Goose

Leave a Reply

While on the terrace at Future of Flight, I saw a Goose parked up over near the FBO.  I had mixed feelings since it was interesting that it was there but I was disappointed I didn’t know it had come in and had missed the arrival.  You can imagine how happy I was to see it taxi out a short while later.  It made a mid flight departure so was still reasonably low as it came past.  The dark paint might have Ben a problem on a cloudy northwest day but we had sun so it showed up nicely.  Only as I looked at the shots afterwards did I realize that it was a turboprop conversion rather than a piston-engined plane.  Oh to see it on the water!

Boeing 2707 Mockup

Leave a Reply

An online discussion I was involved in recently revolved around supersonic transports.  While the TU-144 and Concorde were the main focus, the Boeing 2707 also came up.  I had seen the front fuselage mockup of this when it was at the Hiller Museum in San Carlos.  I realized I didn’t have any good photos of it and was a touch annoyed.  Looking up the story of the mockup, I found it was now at the Museum of Flight Restoration Facility at Paine Field.

I hadn’t visited the facility since moving up here so figured a visit was in order.  The mockup is easily accessible in the main part of the hangar.  However, it is rather big and so only fits in with the nose section removed.  I had a chat with the docent and he advised that it was unlikely to be moved to the main museum building given the amount of space it takes up.  I assume it will stay where it is for the foreseeable future.  The rest of the mockup was destroyed long ago so it is great that this piece has survived as a relic of a long gone program.

Nice T-38 Surprise

Leave a Reply

A Beale AFB T-38 was parked over at the FBO when I was at Boeing Field.  The canopies were up which gave me optimism but you never know whether they are just doing something to the jet or maybe haven’t long arrived.  When the crew walked out to the jet, I realized it was good news.  They taxied to the other end of the field and I waited.  A nice low departure kept them below the skyline of the hill beyond the field and I was happy with a slightly unusual visitor being photographed.

How Slow Can I Go With the Turboprops?

Leave a Reply

Shooting Dash 8s and Q400s at YVR is not going to be particularly interesting so I was able to spend some time playing with shutter speeds progressively lower and lower.  Shooting very low shutter speeds on the 500mm handheld is a bit of a crapshoot but you never know what you might get.  Besides, the evening light meant it wasn’t so bright that you were at ridiculous apertures with the associated endless dust spotting!

I was quite prepared to have got absolutely nothing from these shots.  However, either my luck was good or my technique has improved – I think we both know which it is – and I got a few sharp ones with plenty of prop blur and background blur combined.  Background blur always makes for a more interesting shot.  However, when you want to make sure you get the shot, you aren’t always willing to risk it.  Having something that is not a make or break shot means you can have a lot more leeway for experimentation.

A DHL Delivery But to Them Rather Than By Them

Leave a Reply

A lot of freighters come out of Everett these days.  All 747s are now freighters as are the 767s.  The 777 passenger variants are a regular feature but there is quite a demand for 777Fs too.  I saw one go to DHL not long ago.  They have some aircraft already in service but they are in a hybrid scheme.  This was the first one to be delivered in the full DHL yellow colors.  It taxied out and went to the other end of the field for a northerly departure which meant we got a good view of it airborne.  The short delivery flight across the US meant it was rather light so it got airborne quickly and was a long way up by the time it got to us again!

Lots of Max Jets in Storage

Leave a Reply

The grounding of the 737 Max fleet has resulted in plenty of parked jets.  I have shown them at Paine Field but Boeing Field seems to be a big storage location.  The employee parking lot has been turned into a 737 parking lot.  I have seen jets over there before either awaiting engines or from customers that can’t pay but nothing on this scale.

I took a trip to South Park so I could walk across the bridge and get a good view down into the storage area.  I made a rough count and think there were probably over fifty jets stored there.  While Boeing cut the production rate after the grounding, they only took it down to 42 a month so jets are still coming out at a prodigious rate.  This area is full so, aside from Paine Field and Renton, I believe they are flying them to other storage locations.