Tag Archives: aircraft

My Buddy Was Flying This

Getting a British Airways 777-200ER arriving at SEA would not normally be a priority unless the light was great and I was going to get Mt Rainier in the background. If the weather was cloudy and it was arriving from the north, might not seem to be that much of a deal. However, if it is being flown by someone I know, that is a different story. My friend, Paul, was the skipper on this flight and I was meeting him to have some time around Seattle before he headed home the following day.

The clouds were a shame but the light wasn’t totally bad. I figured it would need a bit of work in post to try and make the best of the shots but the lack of heat haze did help a bit. I was able to grab a few shots of the jet as it came down the approach and then as it was over the threshold prior to touchdown. Not the greatest shots Paul will have of him flying but, hopefully there are not too bad.

Typhoon Air Data System

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Working through some older shots for another project, I ended up looking at some shots of an RAF Typhoon displaying. As I was zoomed in on some of the shots, it was interesting to see the air data vanes on the underside of the front fuselage as the plane maneuvered. There are several vanes around the underside of the front fuselage and the differences between them can tell yaw and pitch angles. In one shot when the jet was climbing straight up, the vanes are all pointing in similar directions. Shortly before this, as the jet was pulling hard, the angle of attack was higher and the flow up around the front fuselage results in some significant differences in vane angle.

This is the sort of thing that is very important when designing and clearing a flight control system. We had a front fuselage wind tunnel model for the Typhoon during the development program. This was used for intake design but also for air data system modeling. The way in which the various vanes move is vital to understanding the control law requirements. It is also important when considering failure modes. If one vane should fail, how much it impacts the flight control behavior and how much the system detect the failure. Will the aircraft be vulnerable to control loss in the interim? The Tornado did not have as complex a flight control system, but it did have augmentation of the controls and, as it rolled, you would get quite different readings from the angle of attack probes on each side of the fuselage. How much of a difference was normal versus what was a failure was an interesting analysis problem which I enjoyed working on. My days on Typhoon were relatively limited and shortly before first flight so I never got involved with the results of the testing program, but I do enjoy looking at the resulting aircraft whenever I get the chance.

Wichita’s Finest is Everywhere in the Parks

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Kenya and Tanzania have many small airstrips scattered around the countryside including in the national parks. These provide quick transfers between locations if you are willing or able to pay and don’t want the long and bumpy road trips. There are a variety of types that are used for these services and I shall show some others in upcoming posts. However, one type does dominate.

The Cessna Grand Caravan is everywhere in the region. It has the right size for many of the trips, it has sufficient capacity for luggage with the baggage pod beneath he fuselage, it is fine with the rough surface strips that are in most places and it is PT-6 powered so very reliable. We saw tons of them during the trip and also got to experience a flight on one. I was surprised to find it was a 1×2 configuration. I had assumed that they were 1×1 but not in this case. It got a lot of us in there but getting in and out was not an easy process. The aisle was minimal!

I have no idea how many Grand Caravans there are in use in rural Africa but I imagine that Cessna has delivered a ton of aircraft from Wichita to the region. I suspect that the best replacement is another Caravan. The Islander might once have been this sort of workhorse but the efficiency and reliability of the Caravan must be what has made it so ubiquitous.

Hot Air Balloon Searching for a Landing Spot

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Nice evenings during the summer mean balloon flights over Woodinville and the surrounding area. I was driving home one evening and, as I came up I-405, I could see a balloon that looked like it might be close to home. Rather than turn towards the house, I headed for one of the nearby fields that has been a landing zone for balloons before (and that have made it into posts on here). When I got there, the balloon was close but was tracking slightly west of the field so no way it was going to make it in. It was heading towards the town so I decided to drive towards the south side of the town to see where it might end up.

I was coming around the south side on the road that skirts the town and the traffic had come to a halt. This was because everyone was watching the balloon low overhead. I actually took a shot through the sunroof of the car as it came low over me. I looped around the roundabout but didn’t take the south exit because the crew seemed to be heading that way and I didn’t need to crowd things.

I went around to the next road and looked back across the fields as the balloon continued on its way. It wasn’t touching down so I guess the area was not ideal. I figured I might head a little further south and see if it came even further. I took the road to Redmond and pulled off at one of the field entrances. Sure enough, they were still drifting south but looked like they might finally be getting close to landing. I didn’t shoot much video, but I did get a little to emphasize the way the balloon was drifting through the trees. As I watched it, the ground crew pulled up and started honking at me. They were incredibly rude. As soon as I saw them arrive, I was getting out of the way. Not my fault that they were struggling to catch their balloon, but they behaved like everyone should just get out of their way. I did anyway but, if you are reading this balloon crew, don’t be assholes to bystanders if you are struggling to recover your balloon and its passengers.

The Cormorant Beats Me Again

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One of my goals for going to the air show at Abbotsford this year was to see a Cormorant fly. I know this would sound like my normal interest in the bird species but this time it means the AW101 version that is flown for Search and Rescue by Canada. Sure, I have seen plenty of 101s over the years with the British and Italian examples, but I have never seen a Canadian one before. It was due to display during the show. When I got there, I was delighted to see it sitting on the operating ramp.

However, my optimism was unjustified. There was no announcement during the show about what had happened to the SAR demo, but it just didn’t happen. The day shows did get the demo, but the Friday evening show was a no go. It was a fun show, so I wasn’t too disappointed, but it was a little frustrating to still have never seen a Cormorant airborne. One day…

Concrete Fly In

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The time between me doing something and its appearance on the blog can vary wildly. Sometimes, I will aim to get something squeezed in here soon after it happens but that is the exception. Usually, I have stuff posted out quite far in advance. As I come up with new topics, they get added to the schedule and, if a topic doesn’t get written about promptly, it can really disappear into the distance. Such is the case with the Concrete fly in of 2023.

There will be several posts that make it on here from that event in the coming weeks. I have started writing them up but some of the specific topics will take a while to appear. However, I shall start things off with a more general post about the fly in. Held at Mears Field in the interestingly names town of Concrete, it is a popular gathering of planes from around the region. There is a single runway running east/west in the valley and the planes park up on either side of it. You are able to walk across the runway at a couple of locations (or further away from them if you want to avoid the air cadets) so just keep you head on a swivel. The wind seems to change midway through the day, so arrivals were from the west in the morning and the east in the afternoon.

We set up at a spot near the threshold on the eastern end of the field and it provides a good location to watch the landings and the takeoff rolls. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that you can walk around, and you find you have stayed in one place for ages getting similar shots. I did try and mix it up from time to time but it was rather sunny and warm and the shade under the wing of a 170 was pretty appealing.

Since I was shooting a lot of light aircraft, I decided to try and make the shots more interesting by keeping the shutter speed low to emphasize speed. The downside the this is that you are very close to the runway so the parallax effect is quite pronounced. You can also just miss a ton of shots but why not have some fun. Few of them are ones you can’t afford to miss. It does mean a sharp nose is probably combined with a blurry fin. This will really annoy some viewers and others will never notice. Since I am shooting for me, I’m the only one that has to care!

More to come of some specific planes and events from the day out with a regular crew of aviation loons.

Almost Directly Under the Approach

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Photographing airliners can be a little “samey” since there are lots of very similar jets and getting a shot of them from the side looks much like any other shot unless the aircraft is specially painted or the lighting is particularly unusual. Consequently, every once in a while, it is fun to try and shoot from a different angle. The approach to SEA when the planes are on a southerly flow brings them in over a part of Burien where you can get yourself pretty much under the flightpath.

It won’t take too long before you are again getting a sequence of repetitive images, so it isn’t going to be useful for much time, but it is a chance to do something a little different. Head on shots from a distance are possible. Then you can get the shot looking up from the underside. This might be a tight shot of a part of the airframe, or a wide angle shot of the whole thing. An opportunity to do something a little different when you are photographing aircraft that are not ones where you care about missing the shot as you might when something special is coming in.

Air Canada Instead of Jetz

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It’s not unusual to see Canadian A320s in Boeing Field. They provide a lot of sports charters but, until recently, these were usually undertaken by Jetz aircraft. More recently, it seems that they have transitioned to jets in the Air Canada core colors. Since Air Canada has been taking delivery of lots of 737 Max aircraft recently, maybe they are cascading some of the older mainline jets to the charter operations. I don’t really know. I only know I have shot a few of their aircraft at Boeing Field recently.

Ault Field Morning Arrivals

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I had taken a day off to go to Coupeville earlier this year. Since I was heading to Whidbey Island for the day, I went to Ault Field at the beginning of the day to see if there was any traffic. I went to Moran Beach to see if anything was coming in when the light is still favorable in that location. I actually got pretty lucky. There were a bunch of Growlers already up and about and they were recovering before I had to move off. Some squadron jets including some in special schemes were coming in. Recovering overhead me while others were on the approach, it felt pretty busy. Here are some of the shots from that morning.

Sun on the MU-2

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Regular readers of the blog will know that there are certain types that I seem destined to struggle to shoot in decent light. It might be the nicest of days, but the sun will go behind a cloud just before the intended subject appears. I thought the Mitsubishi MU-2 was one of those types but, a few months back, I finally got lucky. One came into Boeing Field on a day with good sun. Not the perfect conditions but it was still a relief to finally get some shots when it wasn’t overcast!