Tag Archives: sikorsky

Marine One

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With the President being a Chicago resident, it is not uncommon for him to be in the city from time to time and a presidential movement means some unusual aircraft.  Given all of this, it might be surprising that I have not got any pictures of Air Force One or Marine One since he has been president.  Usually I am not aware of his movements until after the event and I can’t always drop everything to go out even if I did know.

Recently, he came home for the weekend.  A few friends had mentioned the arrival and departure schedule for Air Force One so I did consider whether to head out.  The arrival wasn’t practical but the departure was on a Sunday evening which I could manage.  As it happened, I had been out earlier in the day and coming back into the city I saw how bad the traffic was heading out of town and decided that going to O’Hare was going to be no fun at all.  Besides, you are always wondering what runway will be sued and might find yourself totally out of position anyway.

Instead, I decided to try and get some pictures of Marine One.  It picks him up on the lake-shore south of the city to transfer to O’Hare so might provide an alternative opportunity.  I headed down to a location I thought might be good.  As I drove Through Grant Park, the two CH-46E Sea Knights that accompany him flew over shortly followed by the VH-3D.  I was a bit miffed that I wasn’t a few minutes earlier so I could have got them arriving but never mind.

I found a parking place – no mean feat on a sunny Sunday by the lake – and wandered to the water to find a spot to wait.  Then I waited – quite a long time.  A temporary flight restriction (TFR) is issued when the President moves.  I knew the times it was active but he can go any time in that range.  This time it was later in the range.  I watched the boats on the lake, the police helicopter checking us all out and the police boats stopping people getting where they weren’t supposed to be.

Finally, I saw the first of the two VH-3Ds take off.  Followed by the second and then the Sea Knights, they took off to the south, away from me!  This wasn’t promising.  At least they might turn left and come back up the lake.  No, they turned right and went inland.  I was feeling a touch annoyed by this development.  Then things got better.  They continued their turn and headed right for me.  They passed over the lake giving me a great view with the sun behind me.  They are a bit shiny which is tricky with the sun but in the end I got the shot.  It was worth the wait.

Changing Your Name – Even if You Are a Building Pt 2

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And so we progress to Part 2.  Attentive readers will already be aware that the Unitrin sign had been removed.  I was a lazy boy and watched from my living room.  The following weekend the new sign was scheduled to go up.  Fortunately, we had friends staying with us.  Mark is a flight test engineer and a pilot so the suggestion that some aviation action could be added to the weekend was good for him.  Since it was close to home, we wouldn’t be missed for a short while on a Sunday morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The replacement of the sign was pretty much the reverse of the previous week.  The letters and the logo had been assembled on the street on the back of trucks.  Two sides of the building had to be done and fortunately our side was to be first.  The placement of the signs was a touch more tricky than the removal.  Pulling them off meant getting them clear and dropping them down to the street.  Lifting the new ones up was complicated by the way in which the letters – which are large but don’t weigh much – can catch the wind and start to rotate.  The crews on the building have to catch the tag lines and then pull them steady before positioning them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They soon got a good rhythm going and we watched the letters and the logo go up on the first side of the building.  We then retreated to further away as the other side was dealt with, not least because a lot of it was out of sight from the better locations.  Midwest did a great job as always and it was good to see the team.  Thanks everyone and Mark certainly was glad to see one of these jobs in person.

Changing Your Name – Even if You Are a Building Pt 1

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This story comes in two parts (if the title didn’t give that away already!) and it is one that is a little bit of luck.  Regular readers know that I do a lot of jobs with Midwest Helicopters.  This was a job of theirs but not one that I was involved with.  However, it just happened to take place outside my window so I got to watch anyway.  There I was on a lazy Sunday morning (I was being lazy even if others obviously weren’t) catching up on a bit of TiVo viewing when a helicopter comes in to view out of my living room window.  Familiar shape and colors but what were they up to?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turns out a building across the river from me was due to have its name changed.  The company had renamed from Unitrin to Kemper.  Unitrin was plastered on two sides of the building in large illuminated letters so they needed to come down.  The first week of the job was to take down the old letters.  I could have hurried outside and grabbed some shots but this was a lazy day (did I mention that before?) and so I just grabbed a camera and shot through the windows.

It was about an hour’s work to get the letters from each side of the building and drop them down to the truck on the street.  All of this from the comfort of my living room interspersed with a bit of Grand Prix watching!  Of course, if something comes down, there is probably something to replace it?  And so we shall progress to Part 2…

Some Board of Trade Video

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Over a year ago I shot a job that Midwest were undertaking on the Board of Trade building here in Chicago.  The job was spread over three weekends and I was there for the first two.  The job involved lifting a lot of steelwork and piping into location at the back of the building where the steelwork was then assembled using the helicopter to move the individual pieces into position.

All of this was a touch trickier since the assembly location was close to the building which is pretty high.  Therefore, 300′ of lifting line had to be used which made the job of maneuvering the helicopter to position the loads just that bit harder!  The final week involved the cooling towers being put in place but I could not be there for that.

I shot a bunch of stills but also got a fair amount of video which, at the time I did nothing with.  While doing some work on my database recently, I realized just how much footage I had and decided to have a shot at editing it down to something a bit more digestible.  Here is the result.

McCook Lift

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As I hinted previously, my day with Midwest involved a couple of lifts.  The first was a relatively straightforward job.  In common with a lot of jobs it was cooling systems for the roof of a building that was being constructed.  The equipment was laid out on the ground near the building and the guys were ready to roll when we landed.

The location is quite close to Midway airport.  We talked to them as we came in and the traffic from the airport was close to where we were operating.  A couple of times, a low flying Boeing 737 from Southwest could sneak into my shot.  They were obviously well clear of us and there was no problem but it was quite fun to see something different in the background.

The job went off without too many issues and soon the aircraft was back on the ground and we could hop on to head to the next job.

Millennium Park and a Helicopter? Result!

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The good folks at Midwest Helicopters were recently undertaking another lift in downtown Chicago and invited me to come along.  This one required two goes since the date of the first attempt awoke to find cloud base down amongst the buildings – not ideal conditions for a flight of any sort let alone one that requires weaving between the buildings downtown.

The forecast for the second attempt was considerably better.  In the end it didn’t quite turn out that way with a slightly grey and overcast morning for the lift.  This was a mixed blessing really.  I was going to be facing east so would have had some awkward lighting angles if the sun had been strong.  However, cloudy skies are not a great backdrop.  This limits some of what you can get but, in this case that wasn’t too much of a problem.

Cloudy skies also soften the light in total which can avoid some of the harsher contrasts that you can get shooting aircraft.  Since Midwest’s fleet are painted orange and white, this contrast on the airframe alone can sometimes be a problem.  Moreover, I have a lot of pictures of their fleet.  Shots against a blue sky are not terribly new but something that brings in the different backgrounds in which the work is being done are a lot more interesting.

The location for the lift was a building directly across from Millennium Park.  This should be a photogenic location.  In advance of the job I was pondering where a good spot to shoot from would be.  Involving the Bean would be a good feature.  However, if I shot from near there, I would basically have one shot and miss the rest.  Getting a reflection in the Bean was another idea.  However, the shape of the Bean acts as a very wide angle viewer which means getting anything specific reflected in it – especially something not too large like a helicopter – is problematic.  The idea seems good but it is hard to make it happen.  If we had a second lift, I would certainly give it a go but I had to make this one count.

The roof was going to be the location of choice again.  This way I can get the aircraft with the park in the background, have it flying in front of other buildings, look down on it while it is low to the ground and also get some of what is happening on the roof as the load is set.  This was a little more tricky since I was actually operating mainly from a slightly lower section of roof than that on which the loads were being delivered.  I also had to make sure to keep myself out from underneath the path of the loads as they came up.

All in all, it went pretty well.  I got some good shots and most of what I was hoping for.  Sometimes you wish you could instruct the crew where to fly for the benefit of the shot but that isn’t why they are there!  However, it was funny at one point to look at the images and notice that Jim, the pilot, must have just spotted me as he brought a load up since he is briefly looking directly at me and grinning!  A couple of frames later and the grin is gone and he is back focused on the task – a task that requires quite a bit of concentration!