Tag Archives: Arlington

Transition From KAWO to Amazon

I am not sure of the reasons why, but Croman moved both of the helicopters used for the Amazon lift over to the site the day before the operation. They were a short distance from Arlington but apparently there was a reason to not start from the airport. Fortunately, they did this late in the afternoon after the Astar had arrived. I had moved across to a parking lot near the site ahead of time hoping to be in a good spot to get them arriving and also to see whether it would be good for the lift itself.

Both helicopters approached my side of Amazon prior to landing. This meant I got a good head on view of them and a reasonable view as they approached landing. They did, unfortunately, go directly over my head which limited the shots a little but still wasn’t too bad. The sun was more on their tails as they made their final approach which wasn’t ideal, but it was the side I was on so could have been worse. They landed behind some concrete walls so disappeared from view as they went in. The S-61 was first followed by the Astar. Now to see how the lift itself went.

Croman S-61 On The Ramp

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Amazon is finishing up a huge fulfillment center up in Arlington WA. I understand it will be over 600k sq ft of space. The structure is approaching completion and they needed to install the air handler units on the roof. The most efficient way to do this is by helicopter so, after my many times with helicopter lifts in Chicago, I was looking forward to this happening.

They contracted with Croman Helicopters. This is an operation out of Oregon, and they do a lot of firefighting work. The lifting is. A smaller part of their business. However, it is still a good line for them. They brought two helicopters up for the lift. One was an Astar (which might have been theirs or might have been chartered since it had a different name on it) and the other was one of their S-61s. I’ve shot S-61s a couple of times but not often, so this was something I was looking forward to. They came up ahead of the lift and parked on the main ramp at Arlington. Conditions were pretty good and I was able to get some shots of the airframe.

Most of the pictures I have seen of their S-61s have them in a yellow scheme but this one was a dark grey. It was a nice-looking finish but a bit tough if the lighting wasn’t great. The S-61 has plenty of rivets which make for some cool textures in the right light. It was also fitted with a good bubble window for monitoring the load along with some duplicate engine gauges on the outside in the line of sight of the lifting pilot. I had fingers crossed for good conditions to get it in flight…

Tufting The Wing

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I didn’t notice this at the time but, while working my way through some shots of the Alice taxi trials, I realized that the port wing is tufted. Tufting is a simple but effective way to see how the flow is behaving on a surface. It does need to be recorded, though, so I then looked for the camera and saw the blister up on the side of the fuselage that must contain the camera. I don’t know whether they have been paying attention to the flow visualization while doing taxi trials or not. They have had flaps down as well as up but, without the nose off the ground, maybe there has not been anything significant to see. They sure aren’t saying and have other things to address after some of the testing issues.

Wispy High Cloud Sunset

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A good sunset requires some nice high clouds. I was up at Arlington watching the recovery of the Alice prototype after it had done some off-roading and the light was fading fast. The clouds were quite high level and not terribly extensive so they provided a nice canvas for the low setting sun to illuminate. Sunset shots always seem like a lazy shot but it looks so good so why not photograph it?

Twin Twinstars

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Arlington had a couple of different visitors. They were both TwinStars and they arrived within a few minutes of each other. The first TwinStar showed up and I got some shots. When I saw a TwinStar on the approach, I assumed it was the same aircraft back around again. I figured I would drop the shuttle speed down a bit to vary things. Consequently, I was a bit annoyed when I realized the airframe in the viewfinder was a different one. I had to cross my fingers that I hadn’t blown it by going with the low shutter speed. Fortunately, a few of the shots were okay. Phew…

Pawnee Tow Plane

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I went up to Arlington one Sunday to see if Eviation was up to anything. Their hangars were closed up but I did see a Piper Pawnee in an open hangar as I nosed around and I hoped it would be in action. It is used by the local gliding club and, sure enough, it was going to get some use. Ahead of any towing activities, the pilot took it up to get some circuits in. I took a few shots of it as it hit the pattern. The Pawnee is a really strange looking plane. Very functional but not too elegant.

More Alice Taxi Trials

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The testing of the Eviation Alice continues. My first post on this was when they tried to do some high speed taxi trials but didn’t manage to get the plane going. However, they have been making more progress since. I managed to get up there when they were planning some more taxi trials. I was hoping for some more fast work which they delivered. Not fast enough to get the nose wheel off yet but progress all the same.

A few photographers were out to see what occurred. The test team did not seem too happy about the level of interest. I think they would prefer to get early testing work done without the world watching. They did have their own multimedia team, of course. Various cameras were doing the official recording and some drone work was done as they carried out the trials. A NOTAM for the UAV was in place for several days. I went with stills and video and put some stuff together for GAR and here is some of what I got. Let’s hope to get more as they progress.

Eviation Alice Readying To Fly

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North of Seattle is Arlington and the airport at Arlington is home to Eviation, a company developing an electric powered aircraft called Alice. They undertook some low speed taxi trials during December but plans for high speed taxi and flight were thwarted by consistently bad weather. A recent nice day on a Sunday looked like the first opportunity to do some testing again and a NOTAM was published meaning we knew something was up.

I met my buddy, Bob, up at Arlington and Alice was already out on the field when we got there. The time for the testing was at the end of the day so they were preparing for when the runway was theirs to use. Sadly, the aircraft was not playing ball. As is the way with flight test, things were not necessarily doing what they were supposed to. They did run one of the motors up to speed but the other failed to perform and resulted in the first shutting down too. Not ideal for an aircraft. No doubt they will resolve such things in due course. By the time they had spent some time troubleshooting, the sun was setting and there was going to be no taxi trial.

I chose the side of the field that was backlit since it was closer to where the testing would take place. Some great shots from the other side with the setting sun on the mountains behind were made by others. However, I was in the right spot when they dragged the plane back to the hangar. Things were getting pretty dark and I was very pleased to have brought the 70-200 f/2.8 with me since it did a great job with the lack of light. The raw images looked very subdued but they really came out well when I processed them.

I put together a piece for GAR on what we had seen. You can see that piece here if you want to check it out. It seems to have generated a lot of traffic which suggests there is a lot of interest in some of these electric aircraft projects. Whether they will be successful or not, we shall see. In the meantime, the weather got bad again but we shall hopefully have a break in it soon and a chance to see them taxiing the plane and then flying it.

Stillaguamish Flowing With Power

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Storms and rain have been a feature of the fall of 2021 in the Pacific Northwest. I was out with a buddy riding up the Centennial Trail in Snohomish County. Part of the trail, north of Arlington, takes you across an old rail bridge over the Stillaguamish River. The north and south forks of the river come together at this location and the combined river heads under the bridge and off towards Puget Sound.

The rivers were in flood and the amount of debris built up against the bridge was indicative of just how much damage the rivers had done on the local area. With two strong flows of water, the area where they came together was swirling with some violence. Whirlpools were popping up and heading downstream. Below the bridge, you could see upswellings of water from the lower levels and it looked like the sort of thing that would be very dangerous to find yourself in. The video I shot doesn’t really do it justice but you might get some sort of impression of how active it was.

Arlington Evening Flying Display

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After my afternoon out up in Skagit for the fly day there, I migrated with the guys down to Arlington. They were having an evening flying display that would include the Ryan I previously posted about. An overcast evening did not make for great light for photographing the aircraft. There were only a few displays to see so it wasn’t too much of an event but it was still nice to be out shooting planes again. Rene Price put on a good display in his Sukhoi and the Yak-18 display was a great example of what the plane can do. Interestingly, there was the occasional hint of sunlight from the horizon while it flew which would glint off the white airframe since it was high enough to see the light we weren’t getting.

Grumpy, the B-25, flew a bunch of passes having come across from Skagit. I guess with not much else flying, they were allowed to fly as many passes as they wanted. Other than that, it was a pretty low key affair.