Tag Archives: airplane

A Brief Moment with Great Light

I was swinging past SEA one morning and, as I got closer, the sun was not much above the horizon and still below a solid cloud layer. I could see that departing planes were catching the light really well and diverted off my planned route to see if I could get a couple of shots. Things immediately went wrong as I got in a turning lane at the lights behind a coach. Two long cycles of the lights without our filter arrow turning green ate a ton of time up. I eventually pulled out and turned right instead of left before making a U turn and coming back the way I originally wanted. By this time, I had missed a few interesting departures. I did get one Alaska 737 as it climbed out but, by the time it was level with me, it was in shadow. The next departure was almost totally shaded. The sun had risen enough to go behind the cloud bank. I went on my way, but I could have had some gorgeous light if the signals hadn’t screwed things up.

Do Whales Look Better in the Rain?

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A rainy weekend and not much going on but I saw that Alaska Airlines’ West Coast Wonders jet was coming into Paine Field and, with nothing else going on, I figured I would swing by. The weather was far worse than I expected. It was pouring as the jet was on approach. I had gone so might as well try. At the last moment, I wondered whether I should have gone with video but too late. The jet’s lights were appearing out of the gloom. Streaming vortices from the flaps, it was soon by me and touching down. I was pessimistic but, as Nancy pointed out, the dark blue of the paint kind of suits a gloomy day and it didn’t look so bad!

Planes on Poles in Arizona

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Early 2024, during the trip to Arizona with Mark, we saw plenty of planes moving but also a few that won’t be flying again. Mark knew of a bunch of planes on display in the area and we were able to swing by a few of them during our trip. Some were in odd locations – a school would not be a place I expected an A-26 for example. A Veterans center was a more logical one. Old airframes show up in the oddest places. Here are some from our explorations.

Philippine Mars Awaits Its Turn

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By the time this post goes live, Philippine Mars will probably have made its final trip from Vancouver Island to Arizona where it is joining the Pima museum collection. Whether I have got to see it on that journey or not, I don’t know when I am writing this. It is supposed to make a couple of stops en route but will I be there? During the visit to see the Hawaii Mars prepare for its last flight, Philippine was sitting on the ramp at Sproat Lake being prepared for its move. From the water we could get a reasonable view of it up on the slipway. Fingers crossed I get to see it fly but who knows.

First of the Weekend Flyovers – The F-35C

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The Navy brought three F-35Cs to Boeing Field to provide a flyover for one of the UW Huskies’ games. It would have been great to catch them landing but that wasn’t possible, but the game was on a Saturday that I was free, so I headed out to catch them. The conditions were really nice with that sort of fall lighting that can be so welcome. Two jets were going to do the flyover so the spare could wait on the ramp.

They got airborne long in advance of the game itself. Whether this was to allow a little sightseeing or to buy time if there was a need to jump to the spare, I don’t know. I did decide to get some video as they taxied out since it showed off the wings being unfolded. The video is below and is actually a combination of two different departures.

I haven’t seen much of the Charlie models of the F-35 so was happy to have these jets operating locally. The motor in the F-35 is a big one and the take off is not subtle – they do seem to come out of burner pretty early, though. I guess that much power gets you going fast enough pretty quickly. I picked my mid field location for the take offs to get a reasonable angle on the jets as they rotated and climbed out. Then it was time to relocate.

The return of the jets after the flyover had been completed gave the opportunity to get some touchdown shots which I had missed from the day they arrived in Seattle. More good light so all was well. They stayed overnight and then headed back home the following day. A different flyover was happening that day which will be a different post but, in the meantime, there are some bonus shots of the three jets heading back to base.

Low shutter speed SEA shots

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A recent post was focused on some shots from BFI when I was dropping the shutter speed. I had also been playing with this one gloomy morning at Seattle Tacoma International a while back. I was waiting for a specific movement but was passing time with some of the more regular movements. Since they weren’t the most exciting subjects, I tried dropping the shutter speed down to make the motion more apparent. They were really dramatic shutter speeds, but it made a slightly more interesting shot than would other have been the case.

Departures Off the Parallel

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Having made the FOD Walk at Boeing Field before, I missed it the next year but did it again this year. I saw a few of the local aircraft operating from the short runway while the long runway was closed for us. Since I was on the south end this year, I wasn’t as close to the runway as last time, but I still got a good view of the passing planes as they climbed out.

Gloomy Day for a National Arrival

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It was a wet and gloomy weekend morning up in Everett and so might not have been worth heading out. However, National Airlines was bringing a 747-400 into the Boeing facility and that was worth a trip. The plane emerged from the gloom as it came down the approach and, as it came across the threshold, the vortices could be seen streaming off the flaps. A grey jet on a gloomy day is always a tough one but I think this was definitely a result.

Nothing to Say Other Than It’s an Avanti

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No shock to any regular reader that I found a way to photograph another Avanti. Just some good fortune about when it showed up at Boeing Field and that the light was playing ball when it had been rainy for a good portion of the time. I was able to be there to catch it and would have loved to have been there for departure too, but you take what you can get.

Brief Time Shooting on the Ramp at SEA

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I was clearing out some old shots to try and clean up some hard drive space. As I ran through some of them, I found some shots I took at Seattle Tacoma International during a visit. We were heading out to a part of the airfield to look at where some future work may be undertaken. As we drove across the ramp, I did grab a few shots of the aircraft as they taxied around and also as some were departing. It is fun to shoot from a ramp as you get a very different perspective on things.