This guy landed at Half Moon Bay while we were there. I have to admit I thought I was taking pictures for the accident investigation at first. However, he maintained this pose all along the runway until he turned off and apparently had done it earlier. I guess he had a lot of elevator authority. However, whether it is a good idea is a very different question.
While it isn’t actually an airshow, Dream Machines at Half Moon Bay was my first aircraft event of the year. Hayman and I headed over there to see what would show up. I was also planning on writing it up for GAR again this year. That piece has now gone live at http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2014/05/05/aviation-event-review-dream-machines-half-moon-bay/ so you can head over the GAR to see the finished version.
The piece focuses more on the aviation side of things than the cars since it is an aviation site. However, the cars were really cool. Here are a couple of cars along with a plane to give you a hint. I might add some more at a later stage!
Another opportunity that Richard organized for us while at Mojave was the chance to shoot Orbital Science’s Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. This is an airframe that was modified to provide the launch platform for their Pegasus orbital launch vehicle. The underside of the fuselage is modified to mount the Pegasus which is then taken to altitude and dropped before the booster ignites. The TriStar is a type that disappeared from service far faster than its rival, the DC-10, so seeing one in great condition was pretty cool.
A few years ago, my friend, Richard, had arranged a visit for a number of us to Mojave Airport. This airport does not have a reputation for being photographer friendly but Richard had made the necessary contacts to get us some time out on the field near the taxiways and runways. One of the operators at Mojave is the National Test Pilot School. NTPS operate a wide variety of types on various flight test training activities and some of them were up and about early on this particular morning.
One type that really caught our eye was the deHavilland Dove. An old piston small transport type, the Dove is not something you see around very often these days. This one is kept in excellent condition and appears to have some modifications for flight test purposes and to assist the training of test pilots and flight test engineers. It took off on a runway that brought it towards us nicely. When it returned, it used another runway so we got to see it from several angles.
I was in Los Angeles a little while back and managed to get a few shots of things at LAX between other activities. This is a quick picture post. The new international terminal has been opened and the big jets are often arrayed along it at the right time of day. The thing that I find funny about this shot is that the small fin in the middle is a Lufthansa Boeing 747-8. This is not a small plane but the Airbus A380 fins make it look tiny!
If you aren’t already bored with my quest for something definitive on the takeoff characteristics of the Boeing 777-300ER, here is something more on the topic. Rather than animation, this time it is a couple of still shots. The first is a 777-300ER rotating. The second is a 777F. You can clearly see that the truck is rigidly rotating on the 300ER while the freighter has all wheels firmly planted on the ground up into it gets airborne. Maybe I will call that it for now. I promise no more posts on this for a while!
I was watching something on TV recently and there was some footage of the harbor in San Diego. The camera panned across the waterfront and right across the USS Midway. The Midway was a long lasting ship. She was originally built immediately after the end of WWII. A variety of upgrades and rebuilds meant that she served for nearly fifty years. She was a big ship but not as big as the Nimitz class ships in service today or Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes. Consequently, she could not operate F-14s and was the last carrier to operate Phantoms which were replaced by F/A-18s when the Phantoms were retired.
Upon retirement, she became a museum in San Diego where you can visit her today. I took a look around a few years ago when ISAP was holding it symposium in San Diego. I got there a day early to have a look around and a bunch of us went down to see the Midway.
The collection of aircraft on board is pretty cool. There are some unusual types on display and they are arranged about the ship. The deck and hangar space provides plenty of options for the displays given the size of the air wing she used to accommodate. The deck has been used for other events including launching Kirby Chambliss during the Red Bull Air Races one year and hosting a college basketball game.
One frustrating memory of my visit relates to something not on the Midway. I had been talking with my friends about how I wanted to shoot LCACs – the hovercraft the Marines use for coming ashore. While I was up on the deck, what should I hear but an LCAC. Unfortunately, I was at the wrong end of a long flight deck so only got a passing look at the LCAC as it went by. I did get a quick shot but not one that will ever win any awards!
Should you find yourself in San Diego and you have some free time, I heartily recommend a visit to the Midway. San Diego has a lot to offer but the ship is impressive enough on its own and the collection of aircraft onboard is an added bonus.
There are some shots that it is just hard to get. They are possible but it depends on what you have available. One idea that I have been trying to come up with a solution for is getting good shots of airliners as they lower their gear. The sequence for lowering the gear is pretty cool and the outline of the plane when it has flaps deployed but no gear is of interest to me too. However, to get a shot like that, you need to be high up further out on the approach. Unless you are in another aircraft, that is tricky to do.
From the normal locations on the ground, the aircraft is just too far away to get a decent shot. Not only is it in the distance and, therefore, small but you also have to cope with atmospheric disturbances like heat haze and dust in the air. It doesn’t make for a compelling shot! Instead, I decided to try something different. I would shoot the sequence of shots of the approach and then animate them. This would mean that the reduced quality of an individual shot would be lost as the sequence would require a certain amount of motion blur anyway.
What I didn’t realize until I tried this on an A380 was that this jet has an unusual gear sequence. I was looking at trying a 747 or an A380 since they are large and have interesting wing configurations when approaching to land. As it turns out, the A380 lowers the outer two gear legs first before the two center body legs come down. I had not appreciated this before trying this shot. Animating the sequence really put the computer under some pressure. Creating a file with over 100 layers and then adjusting each layer to align properly took some time and really made the machine work hard. Ultimately, I got the sequence you can see above.
A buddy of mine recently photographed a Cessna Citation in Texas which, at the time, he didn’t pay too much attention to. Later, when he looked at the pictures he realized it had an unusual fairing mounted on it which we thought might be a radar of some sort. This triggered a memory for me of a Citation that I saw at Andrews AFB. This was operated by Homeland Security and included a modified nose with an air intercept radar. I don’t know which types it was but I seem to recall it might be a variant of the F-16s radar. Anyway, thinking of that made me dig out the original shot and here is the aircraft in question.
Every once in a while I am looking for things to include in the blog from previous photographic outings. I was discussing an aircraft with an unusual radar installation which will now show up in an upcoming blog post as well. However, it triggered another thought about some radar testbed aircraft that I used to see quite regularly. For a number of years I was working in Washington DC on a regular basis and I would fly in to BWI airport. Aside from being a popular hub for Southwest, it is also the home of a Northrop Grumman radar plant.
They have a hangar on site which not only deals with their corporate aircraft but also their testbeds for the airborne radar programs. This hangar is located along a tree lined taxiway so everything is pretty obscured from view (unless you are airborne when you can see in a lot more clearly). The two testbeds that I saw quite frequently were a Sabreliner business jet and a BAC 1-11 airliner. The 1-11 was a regular sight when I was a lot younger but now they are almost all gone. Therefore, this was the one I was always pleased to see.
Sadly, I often saw them when I was without a camera or the camera was away. No electronics below 10,000’ in those days. However, I did catch them occasionally so these shots are a reminder of what was there. I suspect that the 1-11 is no longer in use. I imagine it was becoming a pain to maintain but I don’t know for sure whether it still is around. If you know, please do tell me.