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Antonov Design Bureau Back at Everett

Once Russia went to war with Ukraine, the ability of Russian cargo operators to continue their US business went away.  Volga Dnepr had been providing a bunch of service for Boeing operations at Everett bringing in outsize airframe parts.  With them out of the picture, Boeing had to find an alternative.  Antonov Design Bureau designed the AN-124 originally and it has an in house airline, Antonov Airlines.  They seem to have picked up a bunch of work that Volga Dnepr previously had.  Despite the enthusiasm for various people calling them Russians, they are definitely Ukrainian!

They have been in and out of Paine Field pretty frequently over the last few months.  I have got shots of them at different times with the aircraft carrying various messages about cities in Ukraine.  Having got shots at different times, I also started shooting some video.  Here are some of the shots along with a video of one of the departures.

Deer Foraging in Juanita Bay Park

Much of the wildlife I end up photographing in Juanita Bay Park is the birds or the aquatic life.  However, I do occasionally come across some other creatures as I stroll through and one afternoon it was some deer.  I have seen deer in the park before.  They tend to stay away from the more heavily trafficked areas, but they do cross the paths when getting from one spot to another.  That was what happened in this instance.  They jumped out of the bushes ahead of where I was heading and across to more foliage.  I thought they would be gone but they stopped and munched on some of the leaves for a while.  Not clearly in sight but not avoiding me either!

Northern Air Cargo or StratAir

I was at SEA early one Sunday morning to try and catch a shot of Salmon Thirty Salmon before it was repainted.  Northern Air Cargo also departs at a similar time of day as part of its loop between Hawaii, Seattle, Los Angeles and back to Hawaii.  I assume one of the regular jets was in maintenance because they had chartered in some capacity from StratAir.  I was not familiar with this operator but I was happy to catch a 767 in new colors for me.

Cars With Fins

When it comes to classic American cars, I know next to nothing.  I didn’t grow up with them and I haven’t studied them since so put me in amongst a bunch of these cars as was the case for the Exotics@RTC Classics event and I will just focus on what I think looks cool.  These cars could be the rarest of items or the thing you could see at any local car meet and I wouldn’t be any the wiser.  The only clue to me that they could be a significant vehicle would be that a huge crowd of people was hanging around them.

The Classics Day certainly did bring out any number of cool looking old vehicles.  To be honest, some of them don’t even look that great to my eye but they are of an era and show where car design was at that time.  They might be chunky and huge but that was what cars were like back then.  Others have some more interesting styling features like the fins I mention in the title to this post.  That is something that I would previously have found rather crass but, as the time has passed, it is now more of a cool styling cue.

I know quite a few people that are petrol heads that will recognize these vehicles and possibly their years.  The only way I would identify them was if the name was written on the side – which it usually is – or if the owner has a sheet in the window with details of the vehicle and its history.  That will be plenty for me anyway.  Hope some of these chunky or swoopy shapes appeal to you.

Marine Corps Hornets Leave Boeing Field

It’s been a while since I posted some images of Marine Corps Hornets having issues starting up to depart from Boeing Field after a weekend visiting for training.  I didn’t include any images in there of them actually taking off.  I got a reasonable spot to try and see them take offs even though the weather was not really great.  I was surprised at just how quickly the jets got airborne.  They were already quite high by the time that they came by me.  I was still able to get some reasonable shots of them.  Fast jets are always a nice change to the usual Boeing Field traffic.

Old and the New in the Pattern Over Whidbey

I was down at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island one sunny afternoon.  I had been to Ault Field first thing in the morning and some of the shots from then will make it on here at some point.  I was down near Coupeville awaiting some FCLP training but, since I had time on my hands, I was wandering down near the shore.  The wind must have changed because some planes from Ault Field were coming down our way as part of their patterns.  One was a P-8 – the latest that the Navy has for maritime patrol – while the other was a P-3 – the type that the P-8 has almost completely replaced in service.  It seemed quite appropriate to have both of them working overhead at the same time.

American 777 On the Nose

Widebody jets coming into SEA are hard to predict.  If possible, all arriving traffic is sent to the outer runway to allow departures to proceed from the inner runway with little disruption.  However, if there is a lot of arriving traffic, the wake turbulence requirements for spacing behind a heavy jet can slow the arrivals flow.  In this case, sending the jets the inner runway is more efficient.  You never know what it will be until the plane is lined up on approach and you can see whether it is offset from the normal paths or not.

I wasn’t terribly bothered by this American Airlines 777-200ER when it came in as it is a daily arrival from London, and I have shot it on previous occasions.  However, since I was in a location almost on the centerline of its approach, I decided to go for more of a head on shot and then an underside shot.  If this was something I hadn’t shot before, I would be aiming to get the side of the plane in shot to show whatever it was but, in this case, no harm in playing around with different angles.

Bloody Great Bee!

The plants in our backyard attract a lot of insects and we get plenty of bees hanging out on sunny days.  One of our hanging baskets gets a reasonable amount of attention but not a lot.  However, one bee showed up on a Sunday afternoon and got our attention.  First, it stayed on the basket for ages climbing over the same flowers repeatedly unlike the usual bee behavior or constantly moving from flower to flower.  The other reason for our attention was the size of the thing.  It was huge compared to our average bees.  I wonder if it got so large by removing every morsel of nutrient from each flower!

Might As Well Wait For the Singapore 350

I made a mourning trek to SEA one weekend to catch the Salmon Thirty Salmon jet before it got repainted.  I shot a bunch of planes before it departed and one thing of interest after it left and was getting ready to head home.  A quick check of what else was due out showed me that the Singapore Airlines A350-900 was due out shortly.  It’s a nice-looking jet and the morning light was still good, so I figured there was no harm in waiting a short while longer to catch it.

Regular readers know I am partial to the A350 and some of my earliest shots of the type were operated by Singapore in to SFO when we lived in California.  Their livery has a classic style to it in my mind.  Besides, the trip to Singapore is a long one making full use of the A350’s range capabilities so it was likely to be heavy and would use a good chunk of the runway so would still be quite low as it passed me by.  All good reasons to get the shot.

Spencer Spit State Park

Come a short distance from the ferry terminal on Lopez Island and head left and you will soon be near the turning for Spencer Spit State Park.  There are camping sites throughout the park, but we were just interested in wandering down to the shoreline.  It isn’t a long descent from the parking lot to be down by the water.  It appears that the high tide can drive water into the area alongside the spit but that this then gets cut off as the tide retreats.  There seemed to be some algae on the surface of the water which didn’t look great close up but, step back a bit and it seemed more appealing.