Tag Archives: class

Daring Class Destroyer

The Royal Navy destroyer fleet’s most recent additions have been the Type 45 Daring Class.  These ships are an integral part of the groups that will support the new carriers.  The Type 45s preceded the carriers in to service by a number of years.  They have a superstructure that suggests more focus on radar reflectivity and the main mast is a larger structure than seen on previous ships.  This example was sailing out of Portsmouth and towards the English Channel while I was at Seaview on the Isle of Wight.  It was a bit distant but still worth a shot given how I haven’t seen one on open water before.

PG&E Heli Lift Training

I miss the amount of helicopter shooting I used to do.  Every once in a while I come across a help in action and I feel like it is a little victory.  One time it was the local sheriff’s department practicing line work and that showed up here.  On this occasion, I was coming away from an interview I had done for a GAR feature.  I was at Yolo County airport in California.  As I drove down the road, an MD500 was hovering over the field next to the road.

I pulled off a short distance away to see what was going on.  PG&E is a local power company and they appeared to be running a training program for they power line teams.  They were hooking up transmission components and moving them a short distance to another team that then unhooked them.  This process continued as they moved items from place to place giving the ground teams practice with the various items.

There was a strong breeze and a bit of gustiness so the pilot was working quite hard but, since everything was at ground level, I suspect it was a lot easier than if this was at the top of a pylon.  He wasn’t the one getting the training, though, by the look of it.  I watched for a while and from a couple of different angles and then left them to it.  I hope the class was successful.

Submarines

AU0E4300.jpgThere weren’t just sailing ships along the harbor front. A couple of submarines were also there. One was an old Russian sub while the other was far smaller but was a research submarine. The Russian sub is a Foxtrot class diesel-electric sub and it is moored a further out on a pier away from the shore. The USS Dolphin was a test and research sub for the US Navy and was involved in much deep diving research and test programs to support the fleet subs. She has a very simple hull shape compared to operational subs. She was only retired in the last ten years and was the longest serving sub in the Navy.

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