Tag Archives: de havilland Canada

Conair Q400 Water Drop Testing

I went to Abbotsford for the day to see the arrivals of the planes for an event on the airport that weekend.  Abbotsford is also home to Conair with them undertaking conversion of aircraft for firefighting duties as well as maintaining their in service fleet.  They have a fleet of de Havilland Canada DHC8-400s that have been converted to waterbombing duties for fighting wildfires.  One of them was undertaking some test flying while I was there.

It took off while I was waiting for some other arrivals and then started undertaking a series of water drops at the far end of the field.  I did try getting some shots of it, but it was far away, and the heat haze was brutal, so this was not going to be a good result.  After eight drops, they landed and taxied back to the ramp.  Fortunately, later in the afternoon, they came back out for some more runs.  This time, since I was about to leave anyway, I headed to the other end of the field to get some shots of the test drops. 

Unfortunately, the weather became rather damp, and I was standing out trying to get some shots without getting drenched.  Seeing something like this without being in a dangerous spot where real fires are raging was a nice bonus.  I did also try a little video while I was at it so that is lower down too.

I’ve Seen This Before

A while back, I was wandering around the Kenmore Air base at the top of Lake Washington.  I saw a camouflage painted Otter on the parking area and grabbed some quick shots.  More recently, it was operating on the lake with a new registration and Kenmore’s own markings.  I guess they have taken it on charge.  Not sure where it came from, why it is painted in this scheme and whether it was always the plan for it to be added to the Kenmore fleet but here it is!

Floatplanes in Nanaimo Harbour

Vancouver and Vancouver Island are busy with floatplane activity.  It should have occurred to me that, when we were staying in Nanaimo, that there would be floatplanes to see.  It didn’t, though.  When we took a walk along the waterfront, I had only taken a camera with a short lens attached.  This was not ideal for getting images of the planes in motion but it worked out just fine when they came in close.  We walked along one of the breakwaters surrounding the harbour and, when one of the planes taxied in, it came right by the end of this breakwater.  Sometimes a short lens will do the trick!

Crop Duster Conflicting Arrival

The traffic at Eloy was mainly light aircraft on training flights or jump ships for the sky diving operation.  As one of the Twin Otters was lining up to depart, we saw a crop-dusting aircraft approaching the field.  He seemed intent on landing from the opposite direction to that which the Twotter was going to use.  We wondered how this would play out but they clearly had done this before.  The jump ship got swiftly airborne and then turned left and directly towards us.  This gave it separation from the inbound plane which then landed quite happily on the now vacated runway.  It also meant we got some different angles on the departing plane which was welcome.

Twotter Jump Ship

One of the sky diving airfields in Arizona is at Eloy.  A small field in a very small town, Eloy has a lot of customers for the jump ships and the vertical wind tunnel.  During our trip, I had seen some Skyvans operating as jump ships, and I was quite looking forward to the chance to shoot some Skyvan ops from close range.  When we got to Eloy, it turned out that things were different on the day.  The Skyvans were nowhere to be seen.  Instead, it was Twin Otters providing the lift and, once we were there, only one of them.  However, there were a couple of locations around the field that gave us options to photograph the Twotter with it taking off to the north and recovering in a southerly direction.  There was even one departure when it turned right over us but the reason for that will show up in a future post.

A Development Dash 8

I may have a soft spot for testbeds, but development airframes are also something that will interest me.  While driving around Tucson International Airport, we were looking at the various airframes at one of the schools based on the field.  There was a Dash 8 sitting in the yard.  It had Series 200 markings on it and seemed to be a development airframe.  With Mark being a Canadian, he was definitely pleased to catch this but I was too.  It looks in surprisingly good shape.

Some of My Rides on Safari

We took three internal flights while we were in Kenya and Tanzania and all three were interesting aircraft.  Better still, they were all different types.  One was a new one for me to fly on, but you might be surprised as to which that was.  Our first trip was on a Let 410.  It took us from the Serengeti to a short strip just short of the border with Kenya.  This wasn’t my first ride in a 410 but it was my first landing.  Previously I jumped out of one as part of a tandem skydive.  This one had far more comfortable seating.

Once we crossed the border, we took another flight into the Maasai Mara.  This was on a type that is ubiquitous in the area – the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan.  I have never been on one of these.  They were very densely configured and getting through the cabin to a seat was quite an effort.  I don’t care to think what getting out in a hurry might be like!  We saw so many of these with different operators over the course of our visit.

The last type we flew was a Dash 8 100 Series.  A far larger type than the others, this flies some heavier routes, and these might involve multiple stops along the way picking up and dropping off customers.  Ours picked us up in the Mara and took us direct to Nairobi.  No intermediate stops for us.  It has been a long time since I flew in an early generation Dash 8, and I hadn’t thought of them as doing rough field ops.  However, supporting remote communities is part of their history so of course they are fine on these strips.  Unfortunately, heavy rains at the strip 90 seconds from our camp meant we had to drive for forty minutes to another strip to make this flight.  It was a good trip, though.  This part of the world was great for people like me that like close up encounters with aviation!

The Old Horizon Fleet

The departure of the Q400s from Horizon’s fleet means that they are now fully equipped with Embraer E175-E1s.  I know some people didn’t like the Q400 but I actually found it to be perfectly fine when I flew in them.  Not a ton of space but not the longest flights.  Certainly nothing as long as I have done in the Embraers!  However, before the Q400s, there were other aircraft in their fleet.  I was scanning through some shots for some other reason and came across shots of Dash 8-100s and CRJs.  I figured I would remind people of some of the older times that Horizon operated when I was shooting stuff.  Of course, there are far older types that they would have had but they are before my time.

A Dash 7 Almost Catches Me Out

We saw a variety of planes in Kenya and Tanzania.  This one I didn’t get too close to but I was really happy to have caught either way.  Dash 7s are pretty few and far between these days.  There are some up in Canada that I would love to get up to see but the last ones I saw were in Toronto and looked stored.  This one flew overhead and I grabbed a few quick shots.  Oh to have seen it touching down on one of the rough strips.

Log Boom with Mark

My buddy, Mark, was heading through the region on his way south but he had a little time to kill.  We agreed to meet up late in the afternoon to see what the traffic was like at Kenmore.  He comes from Vancouver, so floatplanes are not a novelty for him, but a different operator is some variety I guess.  I am always happy to watch floatplanes.  I got there a little before him and got a couple of extra movements but there was still enough happening once he showed up.  Log Boom Park provides a good spot to watch the planes from, but the summer can be trickier as it becomes a popular spot for the local kids to hang out and swim.  Fortunately, the day was cooler, so we weren’t surrounded by kids.

Most of the planes approached from down the lake and came straight in but there was one Cessna that decided the southerly wind necessitated the approach over Kenmore.  I would like more of those to be honest as they provide some interesting angles, but it was just the one this time.