Tag Archives: california

San Jose for R2-D2 Boeing 787

The arrival of a new Star Wars movie is not really a secret. There are more promotional efforts associated with the film by businesses of all types than I can remember for any other release. All Nippon got in on the game quite early and announced that a number of their jets would be carrying Star Wars markings. The first to break cover was a 787-9 with markings to represent R2-D2. My friend Hayman and I made it to San Jose a while back to catch it arriving.

The story of finding it made it to a blog post for GAR which is here. Therefore, I won’t repeat the whole story of how I nearly missed the arrival. If you want to see that, click on the link and you can read the whole thing. After the arrival, we hung around and then headed to the departure end of the field to be ready for its return journey to Tokyo. It is a pretty cool scheme that they have implemented. I will now have to keep an eye out for the other two that they are doing.

Sunrise and Moonset

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We live to the east of some hills that border the San Francisco Bay area. On a number of occasions when I have been heading to the bay, I have seen the moon setting over the hills and thought that it would make a good shot. Of course, at those times I either don’t have the camera or I am not in a position to take a picture. I regularly use an app on my phone called The Photographer’s Ephemeris that gives information on sun and moon angles for any location. The shot I was after was to have the full moon setting behind the hills just after sunrise with the early light on the hill tops.

This happens once a month but having it occur when I am not constrained by work requirements is a different thing. It turned out, though, that the combination I was after was going to occur on the morning of Thanksgiving. Excellent. Of course, did I remember to set an alarm? Nope. I woke up and realized I had missed it. The following day the conditions were similar but an hour later. I decided to give it a go anyway. The result is not quite what I wanted but it is okay. However, the sun was way too high by the time the moon hit the tops of the hills. I will definitely try and do this again some time.

Virgin Dreamliner

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Not long ago I wrote here about the effort to get a Virgin Atlantic A340-600 before they were retired. At the time I noted that Virgin had added a second flight to SFO and it was using the 340 prior to the availability of the Boeing 787-9 later in the year. It turns out that things have changed a little. The 787 is now operating the service but, rather than replace the A340, it has replaced the 747-400 and the A340 is running the additional flight albeit only on weekdays.

The loss of the 747 is another example of how quickly they are disappearing from services as I have written about a few times now. However, it is nice to have the new type and still retain the increasingly rare A340. Unfortunately, getting out on a weekday to catch the 340 is not usually practical. I have managed to see the 787 at last though. Winter can be a great time to photograph aircraft with low, soft light. It can also combine with crappy weather in the form of high and gusting winds though. Such was the case this time. Hiding behind a tree to try and minimize the impact on the camera does help though. Interestingly, the colors of Virgin Atlantic’s latest scheme do not seem to like digital capture. The red seems a lot more subdued in my images than I recall it being!

Nippon Cargo 747-8

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Today’s pictures involve a shout out to Roger Cain who was the one that let me know that this movement was happening. Nippon Cargo operates a regular service to SFO with their Boeing 747-8 freighter. Normally it arrives early in the morning and departs not long afterwards when the light is just coming up. This does not make for a good opportunity to get a good shot of it. For some reason, it was running late and was showing as due in to SFO shortly before sunset.

I was in the East Bay dealing with the replacement of a tire on my car. Roger called to tell me about it. What I didn’t know was a) whether I would be able to get across in time based on the tire being fixed and b) whether it would actually depart LAX, its previous stop, soon enough to arrive at SFO before it got dark. Driving across the bay to miss the light was not something I wanted to do. Both Roger and I were tracking the jet online and, as I got the car back, he called to say it was taxiing for departure at LAX.

I headed across the bay and got to Roger about ten minutes before it was due to arrive. The light was beginning to go down but it looked like it would work out okay. Sure enough, it came into view just before the sun went below the hills. We got some really nice light on it. I continued to track it to touchdown but, by the time it got to the runway, it was already in shade. It was that close!

Diamond DA62

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I was actually looking for something else when I headed to Livermore. An interesting aircraft had come to the field from Denver and a friend had given me a heads up about it. I went over to see if I could see it. As it turned out, the tail was just visible in a hangar across the field but there was nothing much to see. I decided to hang around for a short while before heading home.

As I was wandering along the fence line, a light twin came in to land. I got some shots as it landed and could read the DA62 logo on the aircraft. This is Diamond’s newest product and this appears to be the first example to show up in the US. I had just been reading the flight test on it in Flight International. It turns out the wife of the pilot was standing nearby. They were due to head off but we chatted for a while about their training operations and now the role of distributor for the type.

The DA62 has a change for Diamond in that it can be painted in colors. Previously, the airframes were white and all you could do was add stripes to customize them. They have done something new with the composites and this example was in a really nice metallic gray finish. They soon loaded up and headed out. This is a cool plane and a comfortable seven-seater. If you are in the market, give these guys a call!

Zoomify the SFO Departures

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I was recently drawn back to something I had experimented with a long time ago but had since forgotten about. I was at SFO when the wind was strong enough to require all departures to operate from the 28s. This resulted in a long line of jets along the taxiway beside the runways as they waited their turn to take off. I shot a very wide panorama shot of them all lined up. It didn’t help that they weren’t bunched too tightly but, even if they had been, the pano that results is very wide and shallow.

There is nothing much you can do with this unless you have a long wall waiting for a mural (which I don’t). However, I still liked the shot. What to do with it? Then I remembered Zoomify. This is an output format embedded within Photoshop that creates a web page that you can zoom in and out of and pan around. It allows someone to explore a large image in more detail if they want to do so. Not quite on the scale of Gigapan images but still a neat tool when you need something slightly different.

Zoomify Panorama

Parade of Ships

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I have mentioned the LCS ship that was part of the Parade of Ships for Fleet Week. It was one of several warships to take part in the parade. Most were US Navy ships but there was also a Coast Guard ship and a visitor from the Royal Canadian Navy. They entered the bay under the Golden Gate Bridge before parading in front of the spectators arrayed along the shore and in the boats out on the water. The first ship was led by a fire boat that sprayed water from its cannons in greeting.

These pictures are a sample of the different ships that were on parade. Another warship was part of Fleet Week but it remained tied up during the parade which was a shame as I would liked to have seen it. You could tour it if you wanted but I had other plans that meant that wouldn’t work out.

Delta 717s

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When Southwest bought AirTran, they inherited a mixed fleet of 737s and 717s. AirTran had been a 717 only fleet for a while but had expanded to include 737s as they grew and the production of the 717 ended. It didn’t take too long for Southwest to announce that the 717s were going away. Where to was the question. That was soon answered when Delta picked them all up. Consequently, there has been a steady stream of 717s showing up in Delta colors recently.

I have come across a few of them recently on both sides of the country. Despite the age of the basic DC-9 design, the updates introduced and the chunkier profile of the more modern engines means that there is something slightly different about the appearance of the jet. I quite like the look of it. Previously, the majority of the examples I had seen had been Hawaiian (including those I had ridden on). It is nice that the type has found a new home which means they shall be around in the US for a while to come.

Closest Yet on the 777-300ER Gear

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You might not think a really windy day was going to be a great time to head out and take photos with a long lens hand held. This certainly is not ideal but there are some advantages that a really windy day can bring. The purpose of the trip was to catch the new Virgin 787-9 service coming in to SFO on a Sunday afternoon when I didn’t have anything else planned. While the wind was very strong, the light was nice so I gave it a go. What I didn’t realize was that, while it was windy at home, it was really windy at SFO! Everything was operating on the 28s because the wind was above 30kts and gusting to well over 40kts. This also meant that departures got airborne quite quickly given that they started with over 30kts after zero takeoff roll!

The heavy jets were frequently airborne before the intersection of the runways and this included an Air France 777-300ER. Consequently, I was able to get a clearer view of the gear during rotation than I have managed before. Above are a still of the gear during rotation and also an animated GIF of the rotation in progress. I think I shall consider myself happy with this. It is the best I have got. Unless I get to spend some time out by the runway while one is departing, I doubt I will get a better chance than this.

USS Coronado LCS

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As a small boy, my Gran would take me to Portsmouth each August for Navy Day. We would spend a day walking around the dockyard and getting on to various warships to see what they were like. This was a pretty big event and, in those days, the number of ships in port for those days is probably more than the Royal Navy has in total today. The result of this was an interest in an early day with warships. Growing up by the water meant that ships of all types were a regular feature of life.

Warship design underwent quite a transition. Traditionally, warships had been slender designs that achieved speed and supposedly provided the most stable ride. However, this was not an approach that was universally agreed and shorter broader designs started to gain favor. The Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates were one of the first signs that Navy’s were taking new configurations seriously.

The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has gone a stage further with one of the builders. There are two LCS designs in production and one of them has a narrow center hull and two additional outboard hulls further aft. This trimaran configuration provides slender hulls but with a lot of stability and the space for a large deck. One of the LCS ships was in San Francisco for Fleet Week and took part in the Parade of Ships.

USS Coronado (LCS-4) was the ship on display. She is the second of the General Dynamics – Bath Iron Works ships to be commissioned and entered service in 2014. As she entered the bay under the bridge she turned towards to city and you could get a good view (albeit at some distance) of the unusual hull shape. As she got closer, the view was more abeam the ship but you could still see the layout of the armaments. As she headed away, a view of the stern hinted at the hull layout but really emphasized the width of the deck.

The US Navy is currently reconsidering its needs and is looking for a frigate that is more heavily armed than the LCS designs but makes as much use of the hull designs as possible. We shall see how that all works out. In the meantime, this is one of the more unusual shapes afloat. The Zumwalt destroyer is even more unusual so I shall have to try and see that at some point too.