Arlington is home to a FW149 piston engined trainer. I have seen a few over the years but they aren’t too common. This one is painted up in German colors too. I have only seen it flying from a distance but it has taxied close to me a couple of times while up there. Theses are the shots I have got of it so far. At some point I will get to see it flying in decent conditions. The original design is actually by Piaggio but it was license produced in Germany.
Another supercar at the opening weekend of Exotics@RTC was a BMW M1. This one was slightly away from the center of things but still in the premium area. However, I suspect it wasn’t getting as much attention as some of the other cars. I ended up chatting to the guy that owned it. He was from Sarf London but now lives out here and was a fun guy.
The M1 came out a while before I went to university and I recall that one of my aero professors had been involved in the design team. It has the look of a supercar from that era but that doesn’t stop it looking cool. I was particularly taken by the wheels which were made by Campagnolo – the manufacturer of the group set for my road bike!
Cars like this showing up are what makes Exotics@RTC such a fun event. There will always be a lot of super expensive cars on show – many of which are brought along from dealers – but there will be some unusual and interesting vehicles that are a bit out of the ordinary. For someone that knows their cars better than me, it would be a particular treat.
I got a notification of an Icelandair 757 coming to Boeing Field. It was not one of the regular airline jets but one of their charter fleet. It has winglets but not the scimitars that their mainline jets have. Indeed, it isn’t even painted in their colors. Still, as something unusual and having the time to go to get it, I figured why not? When it came down the approach, I could see that it was carrying some markings. It was labeled Abercrombie & Kent. That is a travel company that focuses on higher end trips. I guess it is being used to provide transportation for some of these premium vacations. I hope it is a bit more interesting on the inside than it is outside!
It wasn’t terribly long ago that I became away of a motor racing circuit not too far from home. The Pacific Raceway is down near Kent and is about 40 minutes from home if the traffic is moving normally (by which I mean moving and not bogged down with traffic which might seem normal sometimes). With one of the early events of the year coming up, I decided to pay it a visit. I was planning on shooting for a friend’s website but they limited media credentials to those that had shot there before due to a shortage of staff.
No matter. I figured I would go down anyway and shoot from the public viewing areas. As it happened, this suited the friend as he needed some material for an article on anyone shooting motor racing for the first time. The event was the SOVREN Spring Sprints. I got down there at lunchtime on the Saturday after visiting the opening event of Exotics@RTC. There was nothing happening when I got there and it turned out that there had been a fatal accident during one of the sessions. After a little waiting around, it was announced that there would be nothing further that day and they would start the following day.
I headed home and came back the following morning. A few of the competitors had gone home after the Saturday so the field was a bit reduced but there was still plenty to see. There were very few spectators so it was easy to go wherever I wanted in the public areas. The best shooting locations are on the south side of the course but that is only accessible with credentials.
The variety of vehicles was great. Plenty of single seaters but also lots of road cars modified for track racing. I am not familiar with all of the classes of car racing but I just get to enjoy watching them blasting around the course. I wandered from place to place to try different shots. The light was not ideal with backlighting for a large part of the day. I was messing around with low shutter speeds which, with the speeds they are at and how close you can be to the track, resulted in a lot of blurry images. You get parallax issues that close as well so deciding which bit of the car is sharp to be an acceptable shot is a bit of a taste issue.
The entry to the track from the paddock area is by a stand so I would often sit on the ground but the entry point as the cars drove in. It made for a slightly different view of the cars but the backgrounds can get pretty busy. I also went up in to the stands to get some shots looking down. The barriers could sometimes be a hindrance but they do have some platforms at ground level to get you close to the track which is handy.
I probably was being too aggressive on the shutter speeds which meant lots of useless shots but, to be fair, it was a day for playing around and, as long as you get some shots out of it, does it matter? I was getting a little tired in the afternoon and then realized, I wasn’t shooting for anyone else so I was free to leave if I wanted. Therefore, I decided to head off home. I took one more pass through the paddock area shooting people working on their cars or just hanging out and then I called it a day. I will aim to be back for some of the upcoming events, though.
They may not count as rare yet, but Falcon 50s are far from common at this point. They have been long out of production and the owners have progressively traded up to something newer. Consequently, when one shows up, it is a nice thing to try and catch and, if it shows up at a good time, on a reasonable day and with a non-US registration, that is even better. This example has an Isle of Man registration. The Isle of Man is part of the UK but is a tax haven and decided to set up its own aircraft registration system. I guess it has been quite popular. This jet came in to Boeing Field following is transatlantic crossing. I don’t know where it headed next.
A previous trip to Bellingham had included a walk in Whatcom Falls Park. At that time, I was quite interested in the shape of the falls and how the water had eroded the rock but there was a low flow of water that day. I wanted to go back at some point and see the falls with more water flowing over them. We headed up to have a stroll around the park and to see the falls again recently.
The water was certainly flowing more strongly. Plenty of people were out to see the falls in flow. I tried out the view from several different locations although avoided getting too adventurous. I didn’t fancy getting wet – or worse. I imagine that things could be even more powerful if the timing was just right after some stormy weather but it was still nice to see the water flowing so strongly.
Airline sponsorship deals around the Star Wars franchise are a big deal these days. I have shot a variety of them over time. The United Rise of Skywalker jet recently got repainted back in to standard United colors. Alaska Airlines has signed a new deal associated with the Disney park attraction and they unveiled the jet after it had been painted in Spokane. I missed its initial visits and then got it one weekend but only in some pretty dingy conditions.
Then I got a second chance at both the arrival and departure one morning when the weather was far more favorable. The airframe is mainly black with a variety of graphics across it. There is a graphic of a porg in a location that is designed to look like a front window. They are also on the winglets. I find that creature annoying so don’t have much interest. However, the addition of Tie Fighters and the Millennium Falcon are better from my perspective. I guess that shows my age.
The herons at Juanita Bay are not universally popular. The red-winged blackbirds are not keen on them at all and, since it seems that the herons may have raided one or more of the nests, it isn’t hard to see why. The blackbirds will get quite aggressive at trying to drive the herons away from their nests. I have seen them do this on more than one occasion. At one point, I got some video of a heron getting attacked by two of the blackbirds although it wasn’t keen on leaving its fishing spot. Usually, though, the herons decide to move on rather than take the abuse.
Over the many posts on this blog, there have been a few that involve hoping for great light at the end of the day. Some have been successful and others have not. This is one of the latter. An All Nippon Airways 787 was out on test from Paine Field. It was due back shortly before sunset so the potential was there for some lovely light. Unfortunately, the potential was also there for being slightly delayed and arrived after the sun had gone down. This is exactly what happened. I wasn’t going home, at this point, though. Instead, I shot it in shady twilight conditions. Assuming Boeing sorts out its issues, it won’t be long before the 787s are all gone so you have to enjoy the opportunity while it remains.
I had been chatting with the photographers I meet down at Juanita Bay and they kept telling me about the beavers that come out in the evenings. I could see the marks they had left so knew they were active but I had not had any luck seeing them. The timing of their foraging was not ideal since it matched quite well with my own dinner. With Nancy taking a trip, I decided to commit some time to trying to get some photos of them. I didn’t have to try too hard!
My first evening down at the bay, I had barely got there when I saw my first beaver. The head out of the water was easy to spot when the water was calm. It was slower than the otters which we see there often and noticeably larger. The lily pads are growing quickly at the moment and this is a snack of choice for the beavers. They don’t need to come ashore to eat and instead float around the inlet stuffing as many lily pads in to their mouths as they can.
I decided to move from the end of the trail around to another deck area in the hope that the beaver would come that way. Predicting the path of wildlife is a tricky game but this time I got lucky and it came right in to the spot I was standing. A couple with a screaming child approached the deck and I feared the beaver would scram but it didn’t seem to care about us at all. It was happy chewing on its dinner.
After a while, it swam across to the bank and disappeared – presumably to digest the huge amount it had just eaten. The question was how long would it be gone? The light was getting very nice but much later and the sun would be behind the trees. I thought we might have a long wait but it didn’t take long before it popped out again. Swimming around in front of us and then heading back across the bay meant I was very pleased with my luck.
