With so many stored 787s at Everett in recent years, I have seen a bunch of Vistara jets on the ground. However, I hadn’t really done very well in catching them moving. Not very well is generous – I hadn’t got anything worthwhile. Then I was up at Paine Field earlier in the day for something else and a Vistara jet taxied out for a test flight. Thankfully it ran reasonably long on its takeoff roll and I was able to get some good shots of it.
Arizona is packed with old airframes. You can go to any number of airports and find some old military aircraft stacked up in spare locations. Marana Regional Airport is a great example. Wander along the fence of the airport by the road and you come across a bunch of A-4 Skyhawks and F-8 Crusaders tucked away. The weather is ideal for preserving an airframe and they look like they are in great condition. No idea what state they were in when they arrived and what bits are missing but they do look like they could be so close to being useful even if they are really never going to move again. Oh to see a Crusader or two back in action.
The AW101 is a helicopter I really like. I saw the early development airframes when I was young and have photographed Merlins of the Royal Navy and the RAF as well as an Italian example. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I have really wanted to photograph the Canadian CH-149 Cormorants. I have a desk model of one that I bought in California and figured I would have seen one fly by now, but I have had rotten luck. The Abbotsford show last year was another time when I didn’t see one fly despite it having been a principal reason for me going.
CFB Comox is a base for the Cormorant and their show this year, while interesting overall, really had me figuring they were bound to fly there. If they had a serviceability issue, there would be a spare airframe. If someone got called out, there would still be another airframe available. Surely it had to work out. Fortunately, yes, it did.
Early in the show, a Cormorant was launched and flew patterns around the airfield, initially quite high up. I grabbed the long lens to get shots of it. Gradually it got lower, and the shots got better. If everything else went wrong, at least I now had a shot or two of one flying. The show opened with a Cormorant flying in with the Canadian flag suspended beneath it (with a crew member hanging on the flag too). Then there was a SAR demo which it was a major part of.
I shot so many images of this helicopter. I really went overboard. I did play around with slower shutter speeds since I was able to get lots of shots. I tried getting down to 1/40th of a second shutter speeds and have discovered that the rotor speed of the 101 is really low. Even at that shutter speed, the blades are pretty distinct. Something I noticed as I was taking these shots was just how stable the Cormorant is in the hover. I have seen plenty of rotorcraft operations and hover stability is usually pretty good for larger helicopters but the 101 really did seem to come to a halt and then sit immobile. Very impressive.
So glad to finally have time to photograph this lovely looking airframe. I even got the best of the sun from the day, so the yellow paint was popping. A trip to Comox was well worthwhile.
A trip to Whidbey Island at the end of last year resulted in some encounters with the local P-8 Poseidons. The disappointment was that they weren’t exactly showing off loads of unit markings. With one exception, they were rather anonymous. I’m not sure whether they had been recently received and were later to get squadron emblems or not. I hope so. Fortunately, the light was nice at that time of year so I got some images I was pleased with.
It doesn’t take long for the weather to change in the Pacific Northwest. One afternoon I got a couple of Cirrus Vision Jets into Boeing Field. The weather was a bit overcast for one of them and then cleared up nicely by the time the second one showed up. The result was a far nicer shot for the second jet than for the first. It is amazing how quickly conditions can change and what a difference it can make to the images.
Air Canada operates a charter service under the Jetz brand. While the A320s are not the focus of the mainline fleet, they are part of the Jetz fleet plan. With a lot of use in sports charters, they do show up at Seattle pretty frequently. One of the Jetz jets has been painted in a gloss black livery which looks pretty cool. I really wanted to get some shots of it but they only seemed to be bringing it in late at night and departing in the early hours of the morning.
I wasn’t going to be out that late and photographing a black jet at night was not going to be that worthwhile. Then I saw one was going to come in on a Sunday morning. I took a look at the forecast, and it was showing the potential for the sun to be out and I decided to give it a go. Finding a location on that side of the field for the morning light has got a lot worse since construction has taken away some of the options. However, there are still some things that can work. I was hopeful that the sun might be there but, with the jet turning on to approach, there was still some cloud taking away the best of the morning light. Nevertheless, the jet looked pretty good as it flew by to touchdown. I wasn’t unhappy with the results.
Luke AFB is not just home to a load of USAF F-35s. It is also the training base for many of the export operators. They also allocate some of their jets to the unit, so you do have the opportunity to catch a bunch of jets that are not from the USAF. This includes Italian, Danish, Norwegian and Dutch jets. Aside from the Danish ones that actually have a tiny bit of color in their national markings, all the jets are low viz. At least they are slightly different, even if not very conspicuous.
A period of some pretty frequent visits to Seattle of 328Jets was nice to have. Unfortunately, I was unable to be there when one of them was arriving. Not chance to get the landing configuration but I was there by the time they were heading back out. I wasn’t sure of how quickly they would be off the ground given that the 328 is able to handle some short fields. As it turned out, they ran a reasonable distance and I was happy with the results.
During the trip with Mark, we made the excursion to El Centro to catch the Harriers. As I wrote in the post about those airframes, I thought it might be the last time I got to photograph Harriers. Turns out, I was a bit premature. With an exercise planned up in Alaska, the Marines were planning on taking ten jets to participate. Their routing staged through Boeing Field. The plan was for two sets of five jets to come across.
The moves were not entirely smooth. Bad weather in our area was not ideal, tanker support was not working to plan and then you get the occasional jet that breaks. However, we did get most of the jets showing up. The first bunch showed up at Boeing Field from the north. They were strung out on the approach but, from certain angles, you could see all of them stretched out over Seattle. One by one they came in and reminded us how loud a Harrier is in STOVL mode.
There was due to be the second wave later in the day, but they ended up showing up on another day. We had departures of the initial jets as well. When they called up for departure, they asked the tower to line up on both runways. This would have put them up at the north and away from where I was. This was a bad development. Fortunately, the tower informed them that they were too heavy for the short runway’s surface rating.
Instead, they lined up on the main runway spread out in a line. They powered up simultaneously and released brakes at the same time. The northern jet had no problem getting airborne in such a short space because of the STOVL capabilities of the Harrier. The jets further back were also airborne quickly and accelerating rapidly while still over the field. They climbed out in a loose line which meant assembling the formation would be a simple process. What a great thing to see one more time. Is that it for me and Harriers????
One of the special parts of the trip to Arizona was that Mark and I got invited along by our friend Joe to a night shoot at the Pima Air and Space Museum. I had seen some images from previous night shoots and the idea of photographing the many interesting airframes there in the dark intrigued me. The museum is excellent and well worth a visit, but it can be hotter than hell there and the light can be quite harsh, so this was a great alternative to try.
When I was a student, I used to do quite a lot of night photography. In the days of film, you played a lot more of a guessing game as to how things were working out. Also, film suffered from what was known as reciprocity failure so you could really extend the exposure in low light without necessarily ruining things. Digital is a lot more linear and also gives you the chance to see how things are coming out and have another go.
A lot of the attendees had done this more than once and had come equipped with a variety of tools to play with. Lights on stands, wands of different LEDs, huge flashlights etc. Plenty of things to work with. I had brought some tools along but was definitely keeping it simpler. Joe offered us some lights to work with but, since this was a new effort for me, I decided to keep it simple and try to get one approach worked out.
I had a tripod so I could leave the camera in place and then a couple of strobes to play around with. I had to make some set up adjustments first. Take off IS from the camera since it can wander over long exposures and make things blurry. Second, put the strobes on manual power and experiment with how well they do illuminating things. What I didn’t do but should have with hindsight was to go to bulb mode rather than 30 seconds on the shutter. At some points with the larger airframes, I was very frantic in trying to get everything lit in the 30 seconds. It proved to be rather energetic, and I was pretty pooped by the end of it.
I would open the shutter and then move around the airframe illuminating it with pops of the strobe. I quickly learned to shield the strobe, so it didn’t illuminate me and add me in to the shot. I also came to realize how the larger areas when I stood back a bit needed more light to compensate. All of this is logical but not something I thought of before trying it. More research/planning would have been a good idea. I was also surprised how my shadow could show up in some shots when I have no idea how it would have got there.
I did photograph some of the more famous assets in the collection – how can you ignore a B-58 or a B-36 – but I did also take time for others that were just of more interest to me. The size of the place meant you could easily not come across one of the other photographers for a while. They were helpful in pointing out the hazards of guy wires. Some of the larger planes have wires to stabilize them and these are basically invisible in the dark. If you are running around popping off flashes, you could easily collide with something unyielding. Fortunately, nothing like this for me but maybe some luck in that?
Would I do it again? Absolutely! It was very interesting and got some nice results. It also taught me a lot about what I wasn’t doing right and would set me up for a few ideas of how to do things differently in the future. I think a large flashlight would be an addition I would make, and I would definitely use the cable release and bulb mode. My thanks to Joe for taking us along and to the team for letting us join in.
