Tag Archives: Kodiak 100

Seeing a Kodiak Again

The Pacific Northwest was a great place to see Daher Kodiaks. They were built over in Idaho and there were plenty of them in the Seattle area. Even so, I was still keen to see them as there is something about their chunky functionality that appealed to me. When I came back to the UK, I wasn’t expecting to see them around. Consequently, when I got to the FAST museum at Farnborough, I was pleasantly surprised to see that one was inbound shortly from Guernsey. It was really overcast with the base very low. The instrument approach would result in popping out of the clouds quite late. I went with my preferred technique for shooting in such conditions with a couple of stops of overexposure with the goal of having enough light on the airframe and then post processing to bring the sky back down to something sensible.

I wasn’t exactly sure what the angle on the plane would be from the area outside the museum and where the plane would come into view, but it wasn’t too bad as it worked out. I had a reasonable sighting line and enough time to react. Having a dark grey aircraft in such dreary light was not helping but I think I got something reasonable from it.

The Support Kodiak Comes In

I posted some shots of the K-Max that came to Snohomish to support the firefighting operations on the Bolt Creek fire.  They flew in from another location and needed some material to support their planned stay.  They made a call to their base and arranged for some parts to come up on a support aircraft.  This turned out to be a Daher Kodiak 100.  I was actually getting ready to leave when the Kodiak showed up making a tight pattern to land.  I was out of position so just watched it but, they were a bit high and fast on the approach so made a go-around.  This gave me time to get somewhere better for the second approach.

Kodiak Floatplane Returning To Renton

A sunny Sunday afternoon had me driving past Renton so I figured I would stop off to see a few things.  I swung by the floatplane base after I had done whatI came for and things were quite quiet.  I had just missed a few planes and wondered whether I would bother hanging around.  Then a Cessna made an approach, as covered in another post, and, while it was taxiing back to the dock, I saw a Kodiak heading towards us down the lake.  Initially I thought it was going to make a straight in approach but, since the main Renton traffic was operating to the north, I guess it had to fit with that.

Consequently, it made a path that took it towards the eastern shore of Lake Washington before carving a sweeping, descending turn towards the lake.  With the hills of that shoreline behind it, things looked pretty impressive.  There were plenty of people out on the lake in boats, kayaks and paddle boards and they would have got a really good view as it came in to the lake to touch down.

They taxied back towards the base and I hadn’t appreciated what their plan was.  I figured they were tying up at the dock and I had moved away slightly but they had dropped the wheels and were coming up the slipway.  A good dose of power was needed to come up the ramp.  I wish I had shot that or, better yet, got some video.  I will have to go back to the seaplane base there.  The new fencing is not great but there are still some good photo opportunities to be had.