Tag Archives: arizona

Breaking the Old Jets

Boneyards can be interesting place to explore. Old stuff and things from odd locations abound. On one side of Tucson International Airport is a place filled with old airliners. Some are being worked on and will fly again. Others are being stripped for the useful parts that they have. I didn’t get to go inside but instead wandered along the fence line seeing what was going on. Interestingly, having seen one of the last flights of the Texas 737 for Southwest, I was surprised to find it here a few days later. It was being broken down already. Other 737s were looking short of key parts and a few MD-80s were looking unlikely to move any time soon. A couple of A320s were there and they did look like they might be on the move at some point. One was being repainted which I imagine means it has a future.

Vampires Out in Daylight

Leave a reply

Tucson International is a place I was expecting to shoot F-16s of various nations. I had not expected to see any Super Hornets. However, the Navy had other plans. A couple of VX-9 Vampires jets were detached and carrying out missions with some of the based test aircraft. One of them was the color jet too! This was a very pleasant surprise. They took off in the morning for a mission and we got to see them head off. They returned ahead of my expectations and I wasn’t in the right place to get them on approach. Even so, a great addition to the day. I was flying home later that day and, while looking out of the window at the gate, they taxied by again so I guess they were getting a lot of flying in.

Rolls’ Testbed Flies While I Am There – Twice!

1 Reply

On my previous visit to Tucson, I saw the Rolls Royce owned Boeing 747 engine testbed. This was converted for the Boeing 787 Trent engine development program (hence the registration N787RR). The Number Two engine was removed and replaced with the test engine. The other three Rolls RB211s are unchanged. At various times the testbed has been reported to be without an engine in the test location but there was something there when I was last here – it’s just they didn’t fly. This time was different.

I saw the testbed when I left the airport after my flight landed. The following morning, I headed out to see what F-16 traffic there was and saw online that a flight plan had been filed for the testbed. I only had a certain amount of time before I was due to be at Hawgsmoke but it was supposed to fly long before that. Of course, test flying is not usually something that happens to a tight schedule and the takeoff time came and went. We were beginning to think we might miss it when the sound of some large engines spooling up reached us. A while later, out she came.

Engine testbeds require some careful control. Since one engine is significantly different in thrust from the others, there is a balancing act required to keep the thrust differential within the ability of the control surfaces to overcome. That means the max thrust is not always going to be used. Consequently, they use a good portion of the runway for takeoff rotating just passed our location. That meant I didn’t get the front quarter rotation shot I had in mind.

No matter, I still got to see it fly. The return was about six hours later and I was busy elsewhere at that time. I figured that was it for this trip. I was wrong. The morning of my departure, I had a little time to spare so went back to see what was happening. Amazingly, the testbed was already being crewed as I drove up. We got a repeat of the previous day and some similar shots. I guess I was compensating for not seeing it fly last time!

Japanese C-130

Leave a reply

A couple of years ago I was in Tucson for an exercise I was covering for GAR. There was some time when I was shooting the arrival of the A-10s on the base. In between the Hawg movements a few other aircraft came in, most of which were what you might expect. One unusual arrival was a C-130. I was trying to work out what unit it might belong to as it came in because it was a pale color. As it got closer, the markings were clearly those of the Japanese Self Defence Force. This was something I hadn’t seen before.

Phoenix International Raceway

Leave a reply

I make one trip on a regular basis. I have a number of options as to where I shall change planes en route but I have been through Phoenix a few times. One time I was looking out to the right side of the plane as we were on the final stages of the approach and I got a good view of the Phoenix International Raceway. I didn’t have a good camera for the shot at the time but I had to make the same trip a short while later. I took the camera this time and made sure I was able to get the shot. I like the way the circuit is tucked under the hills. It is quite a way from the city but I guess it is easily reached by racing fans.

AMARG

Leave a reply

The storage facility at Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson AZ is very famous. The storage of so many airframes that are either gradually being broken down for parts or that have the potential to make it back into service is well known and has been the subject of many books and articles. Getting access to the facility is a bit harder than it used to be but there is a tour that is run each day from the Pima Air and Space Museum across the road from the base.

The tour is on a bus that doesn’t allow anyone off so it is not ideal either from a photography perspective or from the point of view of exploring the more unusual aircraft. However, it is a simple thing to do so making the trip on the bus was the option I went with when I was there a few years ago. The bus had tinted windows which affect the photos quite a bit and you are stuck on one side of the bus so anything on the opposite side is a case of seeing what luck you have shooting across the bus. Reflections are a constant problem of course.

The storage facility is exactly as you imagine it would be. The lines of aircraft of the same type are very cool. It really doesn’t matter what the type is. Seeing so many of one type together, often with a wide variety of unit markings, is impressive. The big types like the C-5, the C-141 and the B-1B dominate their areas. The smaller types can be scattered in amongst them. Some look rather forlorn, often without the gear any more, mounted on wooden frames. Other locations have parts stacked up. A selection of wings from A-10s were stacked in a row. At some point I need to make the plan to visit and investigate the facility in a lot more detail.

Hyper Lapse Landing at Phoenix

Leave a reply

Hyper lapse is not something I have tried a lot of but I have done a little experimentation. For those who are expert at it, my description might be a bit simplistic but it is basically a time lapse when the camera doesn’t stay still and the movement through a scene is accelerated. I had a go at this out of a window of a Southwest flight that was approaching Phoenix. Keeping the camera still and in the same reference to the aircraft is a little tricky but the nice thing about time lapse shooting is that small movements get blurred out quite quickly.

I liked the idea of the rapid passing of the scenery, the rapidity of the maneuvers and the speedy deployment of the flaps showing up. I decided to let it run until we were back at the gate. As my friend Paul said, “Don’t all Southwest flights taxi at that speed?”

Grand Canyon Spotting

Leave a reply

I was flying from the Midwest back to California a few weeks back and had to change planes in Las Vegas. This is not one of my favorite things to do as I find the airport in Vegas to be horribly depressing. However, the route to Vegas took us close to the Grand Canyon. The crew announced that we were coming up on the Canyon so I got the camera out. Shooting through aircraft windows is never a great task but it was still cool to see so here is a little of what the view was like.

Working Bell 407

Leave a reply

I was heading back to the airport in Tucson to catch my flight when I came upon a Bell 407 doing some long line work with a person on the end of the line. Normally this sort of thing happens when you are nowhere close to a convenient place to stop. However, this time I was in luck. A turning was coming up and it had a great place off the road to stop. Consequently, I got to spend a bit of time watching the team training.

They were from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. I have no idea what that is and as a dodgy foreigner, I wasn’t going to ask. They were lifting a guy from the ground, holding him for a while and then depositing him back on the ground. They also landed briefly during the time I was there. I did have a flight to catch so I couldn’t hang around for too long but I was able to get a few shots of them at work before it was time to take the car back.

Since they weren’t too far away, I was able to use the 70-200mm. That also gave me some flexibility for playing with low shutter speeds. As I do in these cases when I have the time, I ramp the speed lower and lower. That way I figure I will get some sharp ones and then gradually increase the failure rate until nothing comes out sharp or, as is the case on a sunny day in the Arizona summer, I run out of apertures to slow the shutter speed any further. In this case, I had good luck throughout the range and was able to get some really nice discs for the rotors.

Hercs

Leave a reply

Davis Monthan was not just a hive of A-10 activity. We also got a couple of Hercules while we were there. The first to show up was the one I was particularly pleased with. It was a Japanese forces aircraft and looked very nice in its pale blue colors. The other was a based aircraft which was an EC-130. We actually got to see it twice. Once it was flying around DM itself but it also flew an approach while we were at Tucson shooting the F-16s. A nice addition to the trip!