In a previous post, I shared images of Hawaii Mars as it was moored up on Sproat Lake on Vancouver Island. Our plan had been to get it while it was taxiing out and taking off. Our understanding of previous flights was that they had gone a long way up the lake before turning around and taking off back towards their starting point. We had limitations on how far we were allowed to take the boat and also the time we had to get back to our drop off point.
The understanding was that they would fire up just after 5pm and be airborne at 5:30. With our rental ending at 6:00, this gave us a bit of a narrow margin for racing back. However, it should be able to work. However, that relied on them hitting those times. That wasn’t happening. We got a message that they were going to start just after 6:00. Now what to do. With no sign of movement, we headed back to the drop off to see if anyone else was renting the boat after us. No, they were shutting down for the day. We begged with the guy who told us he was due to end shift. However, he had a couple of things to close out so told us we could have half an hour tops.
We thanked him profusely and headed back out. We wouldn’t have the time for the original plan so, instead, we headed down towards the narrows that we anticipated they would have to come through and waited. We finally saw engines start cranking. With all running, they taxied away from us to the end of the lake. Then they turned and started back our way. As we watched, the spray on the fuselage grew larger and it became apparent that they weren’t going to be taxing past us but were actually taking off.
As they motored towards us and got larger and larger in the viewfinder, the question was how low a shutter speed was acceptable when shooting a moving plane from a boat bobbing around on a lake. Caution was appropriate plus a high frame rate. They roared past with gorgeous light on the airframe. A helicopter was filming them and also came in to frame which was a nice addition. A little beyond our location and they were airborne. What a result. We then high tailed it back to the dock where our excellent person was waiting for us. It could hardly have gone better.
Quite a while back, I made a trip to Abbotsford. In more recent visits I have created posts of their Q400 based airtankers out on some test flights. However, before they became tankers, these were all airliners that had been retired from passenger service. Conair buys up these older airframes when the price is right, and they come to Abbotsford to await their time in the conversion program.
A few of them were sitting on the ramp when I made my visit. Some were being worked on while others were just waiting for some attention. Various bits were missing – often the expensive bits like engines. It is possible that some of the airframes might only be acquired to provide a source of spare parts and they will never fly again. I have no idea whether that is the case for any of these. Hopefully they will have since made it back into the air and are now being used to fight wildfires somewhere.
