Tag Archives: q400

Stored Airtankers Awaiting Their Turn

Quite a while back, I made a trip to Abbotsford. In more recent visits I have created posts of their Q400 based airtankers out on some test flights. However, before they became tankers, these were all airliners that had been retired from passenger service. Conair buys up these older airframes when the price is right, and they come to Abbotsford to await their time in the conversion program.

A few of them were sitting on the ramp when I made my visit. Some were being worked on while others were just waiting for some attention. Various bits were missing – often the expensive bits like engines. It is possible that some of the airframes might only be acquired to provide a source of spare parts and they will never fly again. I have no idea whether that is the case for any of these. Hopefully they will have since made it back into the air and are now being used to fight wildfires somewhere.

Conair Q400 Water Drop Testing

Leave a Reply

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.

Q400s Into the Horizon Sunset

1 Reply

The Alaska Airlines fleet is undergoing a transformation. Part of that was the removal of the Q400 from Horizon’s fleet with the Embraers becoming their only platform. Suddenly getting shots of the aircraft seemed a lot more interesting. I did manage to get the retro livery special one more time as it took off one evening. As it headed into the sunset, it seemed far too on the nose for their retirement. A few weeks later, they were gone.

Horizon Retro Before They Go

Leave a Reply

Alaska Air is going through a re-fleeting process in the near future. They are consolidating types in service with some aircraft disappearing. The Airbus fleet is on the way out which is no great surprise to anyone. The Horizon fleet is also getting some changes with a focus on the Embraers and the Q400 turboprops also going away. The Q400s have been ubiquitous in the Pacific Northwest for so long that I didn’t always pay them much attention. Now I need to think about them a bit more.

One of the fleet has been painted in a retro paint scheme for Horizon’s days gone by. Despite it being a plane that should appear at Seattle multiple times a day, I had never seen it before. Therefore, I was very pleasantly surprised to see it at Portland when we were down there. Our photo location was directly above the ramp that the Horizon planes were operating from and the south runway, which was their runway of choice, was convenient too so I was able to get a bunch of shots of it in action. How long before this plane and all of its sisters are gone from the area.

Cessna 182 on Floats

Leave a Reply

This 182 showed up at Boeing Field during my day off. I was a bit far away from it but wasn’t going to pass up the chance to shoot something new and floats make a Cessna a bit more interesting than it might otherwise be. It didn’t hurt that a Q400 from SEA was climbing out in the background and showed up in a few of the frames.

Q400 Full Disc On The Props

Leave a Reply

I took this a long time ago but just came across it again. I was under the approach path for SeaTac and one of the many Q400s that come in and out every day was setting up on final approach. Since it was nothing special, I figured a low shutter speed was in order. With the light on the front of the plane, this should show up the prop disc nicely. It worked out pretty well.

How Slow Can I Go With the Turboprops?

Leave a Reply

Shooting Dash 8s and Q400s at YVR is not going to be particularly interesting so I was able to spend some time playing with shutter speeds progressively lower and lower. Shooting very low shutter speeds on the 500mm handheld is a bit of a crapshoot but you never know what you might get. Besides, the evening light meant it wasn’t so bright that you were at ridiculous apertures with the associated endless dust spotting!

I was quite prepared to have got absolutely nothing from these shots. However, either my luck was good or my technique has improved – I think we both know which it is – and I got a few sharp ones with plenty of prop blur and background blur combined. Background blur always makes for a more interesting shot. However, when you want to make sure you get the shot, you aren’t always willing to risk it. Having something that is not a make or break shot means you can have a lot more leeway for experimentation.

PDX Evening Arrivals

Leave a Reply

Back in the summer of 2017, we made a trip to Oregon for the solar eclipse. You can read all about that in previous posts here and here. The night before the eclipse, we stayed in Portland and the most convenient place to stay was at a hotel near the airport. The location turned out to be between the two runways at PDX and that evening the approach paths brought the planes in from our direction to the runways.

I figured I could pop out for a few minutes and photograph some of the arrivals. The evening light was coming in and we were a little on the wrong side of the closer runway but this was an impromptu shoot so I didn’t mind. A little biz jet traffic came in on the other runway while I got a selection of Q400s, FedEx freighters and the usual narrowbodies.

Since I was close to the centerline of the approach, it provided a slightly different perspective to that which I would normally go for. Looking up and almost straight down the nose is interesting. Not something to do all the time but certainly some variety (particularly if it only requires you to walk out to the parking lot). It’s good to try different angles on a regular basis and avoid getting repetitive.

Q400 Go Cougs

Leave a Reply

Medford is not a busy airport for commercial traffic but it does have some regular services. Horizon seemed to be the most common operator (should I call them Alaska now?). Their Q400s were coming and going quite often. Horizon has been painting their aircraft in a large variety of schemes, many of which are associated with colleges around the region. (My friend David who works for them recently shared with me just how many there are so I might start trying to get them all.)

One of the planes is painted to represent Washington State University at Pullman WA. I have seen this one before a few times but this time it was taking off while I was driving around the airport to see what was there. It quickly climbed away past me but I got a better look at it than I had previously done.

Horizon schemes

Leave a Reply

Seattle is a busy airport with plenty of operators coming through. However, the home airline is Alaska and their regional affiliate is Horizon. Consequently, both of them are very busy. Horizon operates a fleet of Bombardier Q400s. They used to have some CRJs too but these have been moved to another operator and now they are dedicated to the turboprops.

They do seem to have really gone to town in applying special liveries to some of their aircraft. These are focused on a lot of the local colleges and universities. They do paint up a lot of planes in school colors! While I was there, I got a surprising number of them passing by. Here are a few samples of the different schemes they have (along with one normal one just to show that they aren’t all specials).