Beech built the Mentor trainer for the military with a piston engine before coming up with the more powerful turboprop version, the T-34C Turbo Mentor. This saw extensive service with the US Navy. Now there are plenty of them on the civil register including this one I saw one day departing from Paine Field. The dark blue paint enhances the look of the plane and it looks like it has plenty of oomph. I imagine it is a ton of fun to have. I think it would be great to shoot air to air as well!
I have not done well in my previous efforts to photograph NASA’s DC-8 environmental sampling aircraft. I had taken some distant overhead images when I was down at Star Wars Canyon and had hoped to see it fly at the air show at Edwards AFB last year. Sadly, that didn’t happen as it was down for some maintenance issues. With it due for retirement soon, I figured that might have been it. However, I was chatting to some friends a while back and they informed me that it was due to come up to Everett for about ten days of flying in November.
This proved to be the case. A program with Boeing as part of their EcoDemonstrator program had a new 737-10 that is ultimately destined for United (if the Max 10 ever gets certificated) flying with sustainable aviation fuel and the DC-8 flying behind it to sample the air, identify the emissions particles and measure the types of contrails formed but the different elements of the fuels. The Max 10 was painted in a special livery which included the EcoDemonstrator Explorer program name.
The DC-8 was operating from Paine Field for the trials. I was not able to get it arriving, but it was there long enough that I didn’t miss out. These shots are from the first time I was able to see it getting ready to fly and heading out. Over the course of the time it was here, I had further encounters and some of those are worthy of their own posts. Consequently, there will be more to share of this fantastic relic of a bygone era in passenger aviation.
Drake recently announced he was stepping back from touring, but this comes after he has been on quite a touring schedule. Seattle was one stop he made. He has his own 767-200 that is operated by Cargojet for him. It is painted in a distinctive sky-blue livery. It came into Boeing Field for the duration of his stay in the city. Sadly, his schedule means he finishes a show and jumps on the plane to fly to the next location overnight. That meant it arrive some time after midnight and departed at an inconvenient time too. I only got it while parked and the light was not great either. Still…
One of the reasons we get a stream of unusual freighters into Paine Field is the delivery of sections of fuselage for the production lines. This can include front fuselage sections, center wing boxes and empennage elements. One afternoon an Antonov showed up to deliver some of these parts. While getting the plane arriving was why I was there, it was interesting to see these chunks of future planes (I believe these were for the 767/KC-46 line) being offloaded and driven off to be used.
I’m heading back into the summer for an event that I have taken some specific topics from but for which the larger event has not yet been the subject of a post. We are back in Redmond for Exotics@RTC again and, specifically, for the Italian Day. This is always a popular day as it means quite the selection of the more spectacular examples of the Italian car industry.
I will always like to see some rare cars, even if I am not a connoisseur and I certainly am not able to identify which ones are particularly special. However, I am more than able to decide which ones I like the look of. Of course, when they are given pride of place at the center of the event, I am not going to fail to understand that there may be some significance to them!
Obviously, the sportier cars are very common at this event but there are others there too which are unusual and Italian. Some of these are the sort of car I might have seen a lot of as a kid in the 70s and 80s when they were just a usual vehicle in the UK – Italian brands were sold extensively in the UK, even if their design for warm Italian climate meant they dissolved in a UK winter! Here is a selection of some of the lovely vehicles that were in display for this year’s Italian Day.
A while back, I had a spate of photographing Lear 60s at Boeing Field. The Lear 60 is not a rare jet but nor is it particularly common so seeing a few in a short space of time, caught my attention back then. The 60 was Learjet’s effort to stretch as much as they could from what they already had. They took the existing wing and added a bigger fuselage. This was possibly the limit of what could be done with that wing.
I think it is a slightly disproportionate looking aircraft. The fuselage looks a bit chunky, the wing seems small for the fuselage, the undercarriage appears to have been carried over so the wheels look particularly small for the overall size. It is a bit of an odd one. Even so, I still like it when they show up. Since they have been out of production for a while, they will start to disappear. They will be around for a while but will progressively become less common. I wonder how many times I shall have so many encounters in a short space of time.
Earlier in the year, I was up at Juanita Bay before things got too warm to make it enjoyable. We get plenty of ducks and coots on the bay but, on this occasion, there were a load of grebes on the water. The types of grebes I grew up with a larger than the ones I saw here. To be honest, I am not certain whether these were adults or juveniles because they seemed to have very small wings. Maybe that is how they are, but it could be that they weren’t fully grown. Maybe some of you know your birds well and can enlighten me.
Anyway, they would periodically get excited and start zipping around the bay. They would be flapping these small wings furiously and just skimming across the water until they found somewhere that they were happier to be. I don’t know whether this is just normal movement or that they were spooked by something but it was fascinating to watch them hurtling around.
A while back I got a notification of an A320 departing SEA heading to Korea from an airline called AeroK. I didn’t have the chance to be there and wrote it off as a missed opportunity. Then, earlier this year I got a similar notification on a weekend, so I was able to make the trip down to see this depart. I hadn’t made the connection, but AeroK is Korea in reverse. It is a low-cost carrier that only recently started operations. I assume these were delivery flights for their new fleet since they won’t be operating to the US at this stage of their development. It would be good to see more of the planes at some point.
I’ve posted a few times about my experience with the drag racing at Pacific Raceway. One of the things that I particularly was fascinated by was the surface of the strip itself. I mentioned before the machines that they used for conditioning this surface to ensure that there was maximum traction between the tires and ground. Periodically, the staff would come on to the track to take samples and measurements to understand exactly how it was performing. What photos don’t show you, but video can, is just how anything on the surface would stick. Only when you heard people walking along the track could you get the sound of their shoes sticking to the ground. Here is a video to explain what I mean.
There are a few planes that showed up at the Concrete Fly In that I particularly liked and one of those was a Helio Courier. This is a beast of a plane but one that has some impressive field performance. The example that showed up was completely unpainted which made it look even better (plus shaved some pounds off to improve that performance even more). However, I was a little troubled by some of the flying. The pilot took it up for a flight while we were there, and they climbed up above the field. From the ground it is always hard to judge accurately what is happening so I will caveat all of this by saying it is how it appeared to me.
I don’t know what the winds were like aloft, but they seemed to be doing some slow flight above the field. There also seemed to be a bit of wing rocking going on as they maneuvered, and I did wonder just how close to the stall they were flying. Things might have been perfectly safe, but it did look odd from the ground. Then there was the landing. I don’t know whether they intended to land on the grass beside the runway but, as far as I am aware, that is not a designated operating area. I think it is used for taxiing. Anyway, they landed off the side of the runway and ran out on this area of grass. Was that intentional? Sort of didn’t look like it but I can’t say for certain. Was it a good idea? Probably not.
Let’s put all of that aside for now. The aircraft is a fine machine, it carries a decent payload, it can get in and out of short strips and it is not so common so all of that adds up to a cool aircraft to see up close – thankfully not too close!