Tag Archives: king county

Raptor Turning Overhead

The F-22 Raptor that displayed at Seafair took off from Boeing Field away from us. It kept things nice and low building up speed before pulling hard to the vertical. Impressive but a long way away from us. Unfortunately, the pilot then elected to land on the opposite runway. All of this was away from us. The only upside was that, when he ran in to break, he ended up breaking right over the top of us. A brief window to get some shots and rather close in for the longer lens I was using but, all things considered, it was a good consolation prize.

Easy to Guess Who You Work For

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At was at BFI awaiting the arrival of something and I was checking FlightRadar24 to see what was coming in. I saw a Learjet 60 on the screen south of SeaTac and tapped on it. As soon as I saw the flight path, it was clear who the jet belonged to. The shot below was what I saw and the repeated patterns around SeaTac suggested it was an FAA aircraft undertaking calibration flights for the airport instrumentation.

I stopped thinking about it for a while until I saw a jet appear on the approach to BFI that I hadn’t been aware of. Sure enough, it was the FAA Lear 60. They plonked it down right on the keys and quickly exited to the FBO. I imagine that flying repeated sequences of approaches is not the most exciting way to spend the day so they were glad of the break.

787 Development Jets

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Two versions of the Boeing 787 have been in service for a while. However, development activities continue. The 787-10 is still undergoing flight test but work also continues on the older jets. Some of this is also related to the Dash 10. I had a post on my first encounter with the 787-10 which I wrote about here. I have since come across another of the test aircraft. This one is plain white and doesn’t benefit from the nice house colors that Boeing has.

Meanwhile, one of the 787-8 test aircraft has recently been testing the newest version of the Rolls Royce Trent 1000. I saw this engine when it was being tested on Rolls’ testbed in Tucson and that was in this post. Now it has been fitted to its intended platform and is undergoing trials. These have included lengthy flights around the US including one in which they traced out the planform of the aircraft across multiple states. If you are going to go flying for 18 hours, you might as well find a way to have fun with it. The aircraft is carrying the same logo on the engine nacelle that was on the testbed. Hopefully, the delayed upgraded engine will soon be in service, not just on the Dash 10 but also on the other variants.

Union Pacific’s Falcon 2000

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Union Pacific is one of the large freight railroads in the US. Their fleet of locomotives is commonly seen across the US west of Chicago. They are painted yellow and carry a large American flag on the side. However, trains are not the only way that staff of UP get around. They also own a Dassault Falcon 2000 and I saw it come in to Boeing Field. While it isn’t painted like a loco, it certainly shares a few design cues with them and it looks a bit more interesting than the average all white scheme.

Two Tankers

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The KC-46 Pegasus tankers have appeared in the blog before but only on the ground. That post can be found here. I have finally seen them flying. A couple of them were airborne on test flights from BFI and, while they had taken off quite far apart, they ended up returning quite close together so I was able to get shots of them both. They don’t look terribly dissimilar which is what you would expect. They are fully fitted out with the boom and one of them has the pods so this is what a service aircraft should look like when the Air Force squadrons start to get their hands on them.

Building But Not Delivering – The KC-46 Story

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The tale of the USAF’s quest for a new refueling tanker has been long and drawn out. People went to jail, awards were made and overturned. None of that matters now. The contract is with Boeing to produce a variant of the 767 as the KC-46 Pegasus. The program has not been smooth. Technical and production issues have caused delays. The in service date has slipped and Boeing has incurred a lot of overruns.

While all of this has been going on, the production process has not stopped. Consequently, while testing still continues, there are production airframes coming off the line. If you go to Boeing Field, there are a bunch of test airframes on the flight line. If you go to Paine Field, there are a bunch more that remain to be finished. It appears that Boeing is building the airframes, sealing them up, not fitting high value items like engines, and parking them wherever there is space. A few years ago, Paine Field was covered in undelivered 787s. Now it is as if time has turned back because the Dreamliner’s predecessor is the type parked all over the place.

Boeing 787-10 on Test

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I wrapped up some work in Seattle and was about to head back home when a quick check on FlightRadar24 showed me that the Boeing 787-10 test aircraft was en route back to Boeing Field. It would be rude to ignore that. The weather had been pretty crummy and there was plenty of heavy cloud in the area but it looked like it might brighten up a bit and, as the sun went down, there was a chance of it lighting up beneath the clouds. I sat in the car dealing with some emails and waiting for the arrival.

Sure enough, as the time approached, the sun did start to peep out from beneath the clouds. It was intermittent at first but it became more consistent as Boeing 01 Heavy called up on approach. Meanwhile, a nice black cloud was still lurking in the background. What a great combination that type of light makes. The plane glided down the approach, its trailing static cone hanging from the top of the fin and then it was down. A nice result.

Some Corporate Movements

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Much as the light aircraft movements at King County don’t get much attention, there is so much corporate jet traffic that it can also get overlooked. The bigger jets like the Globals tend to be more interesting to me. However, there are plenty of different types coming through. As with the light aircraft, here is a selection from a recent trip.

UPS Movements

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Boeing Field is a busy location for UPS. FedEx run their Seattle operations from SeaTac but UPS has made King County their location of choice. You get a busy period in the evening with arrivals and departures in a pretty narrow window. Provided there is evening light, you can get a lot of movements.

I have shot a bunch of their jets over the course of various visits. Usually I get them arriving and departing from the same location. I did get some familiar shots this time but I also decided to head to the other end of the field and shoot the departure head on. They do get airborne pretty quickly and climb quite fast so they rotate a long way off and are well above you by the time they cross the fence. Not ideal but still a bit of variety for me.

SeaTac Departures Over Boeing Field

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Boeing Field is closely aligned with the extended centreline from SeaTac. If you approach SeaTac from the north and sit on the left side of the plane, you can look almost straight down on the field. Similarly, if the departures are heading northerly, it routes nearly over Boeing Field. For most flights, they are already high enough that they are not a good photo target. The heavies provide some interest though.

First, they are bigger so a slightly easier thing to fill the frame with. More importantly, they tend to be a bit more leisurely in their climb rate so are a bit closer in as they pass over. While I won’t bother to shoot the majority of the passing traffic, the heavies will often get my attention – provided nothing else is happening in front of me. Here are some of the recent passers-by.