Miscellaneous
Aviation Events
| Space
Shuttle Atlantis Departs from Edwards AFB (California, USA) |
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The
Indian restaurant where I was having lunch with work colleagues on June
22nd, 2007 happened to have a large screen TV tuned to CNN.
And
what should be on TV but the landing of space shuttle Atlantis in Florida
after 14 days in orbit during mission STS-117 - or so I thought.
But as it approached the runway I recognized the control tower at Edwards
air force base in California, not too far from my home in Los Angeles. |
A
few hurried emails and I was on the list to see Atlantis'
departure from Edwards atop one of the converted 747 Shuttle Carrier
Aircraft.
Due
to technical issues it was postponed from the original date of Friday,
June 29 to the next day, at 7AM. After a two and a half hour
drive I arrived only to find that departure had been delayed one more day
and was now due at 5:30AM. After an hour and a half of sleep
I again made the trip to Edwards. Thankfully the takeoff happened
just after 6AM, so there was now enough light to actually photograph it.
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The
space shuttle orbiter is a big aircraft, weighing 110 tons and measuring
124 feet in length and 59 feet in height. Flying at Mach 25
at the start of re-entry, it heats up to an incredible 2700 degrees Fahrenheit
as it "glides" to earth at an angle of up to 40 degrees, losing 10,000
feet of altitude a minute.
It's
an awesome piece of technology, and well worth seeing in action before
they are all retired in 2010. |
| Red
Flag 07-2 "Colonial Flag" Military Exercise (Nevada, USA) |
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The
Red Flag military exercise is held several times a year at Nellis air force
base near Las Vegas. It pits a "blue team" of fighters, ground
attack aircraft and bombers against a "red team" of fighters in simulated
soviet paint schemes and flying according to soviet military tactics.
Many
support aircraft such as aerial refuelling tankers and transport aircraft
also participate, providing the ultimate in realistic environments for
trainee aircrews.
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The
exercises aren't just for American forces, over the years aircraft from
many different allied nations have taken part. This session
included transport and ground attack aircraft from the United Kingdom and
Australia.
One
difference between seeing aircraft at an airshow and watching them at an
exercise like Red Flag is that all the planes are loaded with ordnance,
some dummy and some live. |
Red
Flag 07-2 featured a number of military aircraft which aren't commonly
seen by the general public. On the American side were planes
like the E-3 Sentry AWACS, RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic warfare platform
and the navy's EA-6 Prowler electronic countermeasures plane.
The
British Tornado fighter/bomber is obviously a rarity in American skies,
as was their unusual special operations C-130 Hercules, complete with refuelling
probe; however the aircraft which attracted most interest from enthusiasts
were these Australian F-111 Aardvark fighter-bombers, drawing photographers
not just from the USA, but also from Canada, the UK and Japan.
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| Collings
Foundation F-4D Air-to-Air Photo Shoot (Prescott, USA) |
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This
particular aircraft is the only civilian owned F-4 in the world, and is
painted in an authentic Vietnam war era color scheme commemorating Steve
Ritchie and his back-seater Charles DeBellevue, who were the only air force
crew to become aces during the conflict.
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The
photo shoot itself was a difficult affair, since the Phantom is a very
fast aircraft and keeping up with it is no easy feat. Flying
in the back of a Saab Metroliner with the emergency exit door over the
wing removed, we had to repeatedly bank and turn in often turbulent air
to cut across the Phantom's path. No wonder then that as soon
as the shoot was over I spent ten minutes dry retching into a barf bag,
but I've never regretted one moment of this experience! |
| Vietnamese
Air Force in Action (Danang, Vietnam) |
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Flying
into Hanoi's main airport in 2004, I was surprised to see revetments housing
Vietnamese air force MiG-21 "Fishbed" fighters, which were the most potent
communist aircraft of the Vietnam war. Since I was making an
internal flight from Hanoi down to Danang a few days later, I made sure
to reserve a window seat so I could photograph the MiGs.
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I
thought I was very fortunate to get these photos, but I really hit paydirt
a few days later when I returned to the airport for an internal flight
down to Cam Ranh. As I entered the parking lot a MiG-21 took
off with afterburner blazing and an enormous roar, lifting my hopes that
I might get some more photographs, but this time of the
Vietnamese air force in action. |
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With
thoughts running through my head of how a tyrannical communist government
might treat a spy photographing their aircraft, I decided to play the dumb
tourist by pulling out my camera and outsized telephoto lens in plain sight
while I was in the terminal and holding it very visibly in front of me.
I continued this little charade when we were taken out to the tarmac to
board our flight and was rewarded with several sequences of different MiG-21s
taxying, taking off and landing. The rarity of the photographs
lead to them being published a short time later in several British aviation
magazines.
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| SpaceShipOne's
First Flight Into Space (California, USA) |
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I
had no particular expectations when I took a day off work in the middle
of 2004 to see the attempt by SpaceShipOne to become the first civilian
craft to break the magic altitude of 100 kilometers, which would allow
it to claim the $10 million "Ansari X Prize" and a place in space exploration
history. As well as the opportunity to see history made, it
was also an opportunity to see three freakish aircraft created by maverick
designer Burt Rutan, a legend in the modern aerospace industry. |
SpaceShipOne's
first flight into space was certainly an event to behold and not without
its share of drama. Released from its mothership at an altitude
of 47,000 feet, SpaceShipOne turned upwards and fired its rocket engine,
reaching Mach 1 just 10 seconds later and its top speed of Mach 2.9 about
a minute later. However, although the huge crowd of spectators
didn't know it, SpaceShipOne experienced serious problems on its way up
which made the pilot contemplate a very risky high altitude bailout and
eventually resulted in a reduced final altitude of 100,124 meters, enough
to win the prize but well short of the intended goal of 108,000 meters.
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There
was more drama on the return leg as SpaceShipOne glided back down, again
reaching Mach 2.9 on the way down, which produced two clearly audible sonic
booms. Another loud bang which left the pilot "pretty scared"
was caused by a failure in the rocket nozzle, which had a large kink in
it which was clearly visible on landing. And there was one final
piece of excitement a few days after I uploaded the photos - to my surprise
my website rocketed into the stratosphere, going from a daily average of
2,500 visitors to a single day peak of over 36,000! |
| Phancon
2004 (New Mexico, USA) |
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Holloman
Air Force Base at Alamogordo in New Mexico was the venue for this year's
F-4 Phantom II Society conference. Holloman is home to the
F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter, as well as T-38 jet trainers and a German
Air Force detachment here to enjoy the wide empty spaces available for
combat training. It's one of the very few places in America
where one can see the European swing-wing Tornado fighter/bomber in motion.
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However
it's not the Tornado or the Nighthawk which is the focus of this event.
About 150 attendees came from Europe, Japan and even Australia to reminisce
and see the historic F-4 Phantom II fighter flying. This event
is one of the last places in the United States where it's still possible
to see F-4s flying, unfortunately all of the Phantoms here are configured
as QF-4 target drones which are used for missile testing at the nearby
White Sands missile range; even worse, a software glitch prevented the
QF-4s from flying during Phancon. |
The
Germans, however, do still operate the F-4F as a front-line fighter and
treated the dedicated Phantom Phanatics to a very good display over two
days of taxying, taking off and flying, both in formation and singly.
The weather gods also smiled briefly and allowed some good photos of the
aircraft.
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| Fire
Fighting Aircraft (Czech Republic, Russia and the USA) |
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Over
the last ten years I've had an opportunity to photograph many
different types of fire-fighting aircraft, both at airshows and in
real-life emergency situations.
The
S-64 Skycrane is the largest American fire-fighting helicopter, this one
was dropping water on a forest fire in southern California. |
The
Martin Mars shown here was also at work on fires in southern California,
a couple of years after I photographed the Skycrane.
This
huge world war two era naval seaplane is a legend amongst aviation enthusiasts,
the two which are still flying are based in Canada, so it was a special
treat to see one operating closer to home.
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The
eastern Europeans have spent a lot of effort developing and operating this
sort of equipment, from helicopters like the Polish W-3A Sokol and the
mighty Mi-6 "Hook" through to fixed-wing aircraft like the remarkable jet-powered
Beriev Be-200 Altair seaplane. In 2006 I journeyed all the
way from Los Angeles to the
Gidroaviasalon exhibition in the Russian Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik
to see Beriev's two jet-powered seaplane, and several other interesting
Russian aircraft. |
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