Tag Archives: seattle

Is A Phenom As Cool As The Millennium Falcon?

While I am happy to shoot a Phenom 100 if it happens to be passing, I am not usually going to go out of my way for one. However, if I have a cloudy Sunday afternoon with nothing much going on and one is coming to Boeing Field with Millennium Falcon paint on it, why not? This jet was making a tour around the west and was coming to BFI from Bellingham. I got it arriving and the side I shot had the Falcon painted on it. Apparently the other side has an X-Wing. The underside looked like it might be interesting and I did get a departure shot but it wasn’t as special as I had hoped.

Alaska Max Jets On Test

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I got a couple of Alaska Max jets on test on the same day recently. One was still unpainted but the colors were on the rudder and winglets so it was easy to see where it was going. The other jet was already fully painted and probably close to delivery. With me now traveling a little bit more and that travel being with Alaska, maybe I shall get to travel on one before too long. We shall see…

Lots Of Light Rail Trains Ready To Go

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I visited the Sound Transit operations and maintenance facility in the south part of Seattle for meeting recently. This is the original facility but they have added one in Bellevue and another will be built in Federal Way in the coming years. Plenty of the trains were parked in the storage tracks including the original cars and the new ones getting delivered by Siemens for the extensions due to open soon. Too good to pass up the chance to grab some shots with my phone.

MD-500 Doing Something Odd

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It might be an old design but the MD-500 still holds some fascination for me. It is an agile machine and has a five bladed rotor which gives it a distinctive sound. Paint it in a sinister paint scheme and I am sold. This one was flying around at Boeing Field when I was down there recently and I got to shoot it a lot as it was flying a lot of pattern work. (I missed a cracking shot of it as well but that is a different story.)

The first time I was shooting it, I could see some flashing light coming from inside the cockpit. Looking at the shots afterwards, the guy in the right seat was using some device which would flash periodically. I am not a specialist on helicopters but I do know the rotor tracking is a thing that has to be done so I wondered if this device was a strobe to freeze the blades to allow them to be tracked. Anyone know whether it is.

The second time I was shooting it, the pattern was reversed so I got to see the other side of the airframe. Some cabling was clearly taped to the outside of the fuselage and then going in through one of the doors. No idea whether this was for the same purpose or something else. All good suggestions (and maybe some silly ones) are welcome.

Ice(Block)Breaker

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I have already shared quite a few shots from the Lego Awesome exhibit in Seattle. One of the creations they had on display was an icebreaker. This was a big beast and, in keeping with a lot of the pieces, it was cut in half to show the interior. The boat itself would have been an amazing build but the interior elements were fantastic.

To show all of the elements would result in loads of images and that isn’t going to be so good to work your way through so I have cut it down to a few shots to give you an idea of what they had done. The internal parts of the ship were reproduced and there were all sorts of Easter eggs scattered throughout like aliens that had been recovered from the ice. The ship was even pitching up at an impressive angle on a sea of blocks that was a great piece of work on its own. I think icebreakers are neat looking ships so to have one made on this scale, in Lego, and with so much little detail was a lot of fun for me.

Aviation Brick Creations

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Does this blog post count as an aviation post or a non-aviation post? It is about Lego so let’s say it is non-aviation. However, some of you may beg to differ. At the Lego Awesome exhibition, there were a few different aviation subjects that were on display. They had gone for scale in what they built and had selected subjects that had scale too. How much more scale could you go for than an Antonov AN-225 Mriya. They had a model that was half of the 225. One side was the complete airframe and the thing was cut in half to show the interior of the jet. It was a huge build and very neat. Using a technique like a fueling team under the wing to provide support was very clever.

A Mil Mi-26 was the other large scale subject that I liked. The 26 is a beast of a helicopter and quite unlike anything else. They had done a great job of modeling it in UN colors dropping loads in flight. Suspended from the ceiling it looked really cool.

Development Epic E1000

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The Epic E1000 is a development of a kit built turboprop aircraft called the Epic LT. It has been around for a while and the development from kit built to certificated production aircraft has been very drawn out. While many similar projects falter, this one seems to have hung in there. I think there are a only one or two of the production E1000 aircraft at the moment and one came to BFI. I caught it rolling out after landing and then taxiing to the Modern ramp. It is a curious looking airframe.

It later departed but it was hard to get a good shot. It got airborne early and there was quite a crosswind so they nosed in to that and towards my position. I effectively got head on and underside shots only so barely identifiable. Still, it was good to see it. I have seen some of the earlier airframes in California and at Oshkosh but not for a while!

Not Only a G-III But A Cool One

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If I see a GIV these days, it barely gets any attention from me. Sure, I’ll take a shot, but I am not getting excited. Go back a generation, though, to the G-III and suddenly I am definitely paying attention. One came to BFI recently and, while I was at the wrong end for an arrival airborne shot, I did see in the distance on final (no heat haze thankfully) and then as it rolled out and headed to the ramp at Modern. It was also in a nice dark paint job and it looked pretty cool.

It didn’t hang around too long. I watched it taxi across the field and up to the departure end. Then it was time for the long lens. The old Spey engines don’t have as much grunt as the later Tays so I anticipated a longer takeoff run and was not disappointed. I then watched it climb out with the Speys belching smoke. The engines are hushkitted but are still noisy beasts. As it climbed away, I got a clear view through the hush kits including the lobes of the exhaust diffusers. What a fun thing to see.

Korean Air BBJ Is Back

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Korean Air’s fleet of bizjets come through Seattle quite frequently. Their BBJs are not uncommon. They use the airfield as the departure point for the trans-Pacific route to Korea. Unfortunately, they often arrive in the middle of the night and head straight back out again. I timed it well when they were making a daytime stop. I got the arrival and the departure this time.

Conditions were not great but, last time I shot one of their BBJs, the high sun made the livery glare a bit. Flat lighting avoided that this time. The departure was a good one for me. The route across the Pacific is a long one so the plane was pretty heavy. This meant it rotated a long way down the runway and closer to me and was still only just climbing when it was level with me. I went with a long lens which meant things got large quickly. It did give me some shots I was pretty happy with, though.

Super Bugs At BFI

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Stopping for lunch at BFI, I was happy to be informed by someone already there that there were a couple of Super Hornets from the US Navy that had departed earlier and were due back shortly. I was able to munch on my sandwiches and do a little work while I waited but it wasn’t too long before they arrived. Initially, they appeared to be making a section approach but, as they got closer to the field, the separated and came in with about a 30 second spacing. One of the jets had some squadron colors which is always welcome these days. Not a dynamic approach but still a nice surprise.