This is an ongoing tale of Alan and Jo's exploits in Austin, TX. Alan hopes there will be plenty of tasty beer involved, while Jo hopes to find lots of interesting aircraft.
Thunder over Cedar Creek is an airshow up near Corsicana, about 4 hours drive from my house. I believe it is the only one in Texas held over a lake.
I met Jim, Glenn and Nadya up there, and cutting a long story short, we scored the most fabulous vantage point for the show, on a private two-story boat dock overlooking the lake. We were right on the display line, just outside the aerobatic box. One heck of a great view!
Pictures from the show are still to come, but I had to share these. I took time lapse video of the final two performers of the night, flying aerobatics with lights and pyrotechnics.
Here is Matt Younkin flying his Beech 18:
This one is Otto the Helicopter (a Schweizer 300) flown by Roger Buis:
And finally, here is the time lapse video showing both aircraft:
We all thoroughly enjoyed this show and hope to return next year!
I wanted to see the Venus Transit, but I don't have a solar filter for my telescope. So I thought that a fun thing to do would be to go to the viewing party being held in town, by the Austin Astronomical Society, UT and Austin Planetarium folks. They were going to have a bunch of telescopes set up on the roof of the Robert Lee Moore Hall at UT, downtown.
In case you don't know, the planet Venus occasionally gets between us and the Sun, at which time we can see it as an eclipse. This happens at rare intervals; the last one was five years ago and the next one won't happen for another 117 years, so if you missed the last one then now was the chance, or not at all.
I arrived just after 5pm, when the transit was starting. The RLM building is 19 stories tall. There was already a long line of people waiting for the elevators, but the staff directed us to the staircase. They had a projection room on the 13th floor for those who couldn't access the roof, but the elevators could only take so many people. Thus it was we all found ourselves getting our exercise for the day, climbing up the stairs... to the twelfth floor, where the line started!
It then took about an hour and a half for the line to slowly crawl up to the 19th floor, where we then had to snake around the corridors before - finally - stepping up into daylight on the roof... There were a lot of people here! I get the feeling they weren't expecting nearly so many folks to show up. However everyone stayed in good humour and there was a bit of a party atmosphere.
My plan was to simply have a look at the transit with my own eyes, and leave the proper photography to the guys with the equipment and experience to do this stuff properly. That didn't mean I wasn't going to try, though!
Here's a couple of the telescopes in use:
This was my first and best attempt at taking a shot by holding the camera up to a telescope eyepiece. I couldn't focus close enough with the camera to match the eyeball distance at the eyepiece. You can see here most of the Sun, with the black dot that is Venus, although it's a bit out of focus. But there it is, look, it's Venus!
They had a pair of binoculars set up, projecting an image back into a shadowed box. This cast a very respectable image of the Sun onto a piece of paper taped onto the back here:
I took this shot and then found a couple of solar filters lying around, so tried a handheld shot with the camera, holding these up to cover the lens. I also used the Live View mode on the camera, so I was looking at the LCD viewfinder, not through the main viewfinder - if the filters slipped, I didn't want to get an eyeful of Sun.
Moments after I got this lot held up, the people behind me looking at the box projection all cheered as an aircraft went through the image. I didn't realise until processing my own images that I also caught it! OK, it's not a fabulous image, but you can see the contrails with a dot in front, and the faint dot of Venus in the 1 o'clock position:
If you want to see what a camera stacked with a long lens and multiple teleconverters could have done, click here! (not mine, obviously)
Here's a couple more of the telescopes. There were a variety of types in use. Too bad the observation dome behind us wasn't in use ;-)
By this time, the staff were urging people to leave if they'd seen the transit already. Apparently the line had now reached the ground floor! There were also clouds moving in, so I hope they didn't all have to leave disappointed. The transit was due to last for six hours in total, but we only got to see three hours since the sun set half way through. I'm glad I went; it was fun.
I leave you with a view of UT and downtown Austin from the 19th floor:
This year's Memorial Day air race was held in the shiny new terminal building at Terrell Airport. This is a great new facility that pays homage to the No. 1 British Flying Training School that trained British pilots before America joined the war, during 1940. The floor in here shows a replica of the maps given to the British, to show how big Texas is in relationship to the rest of Europe.
Texas is pretty big
The race was sponsored by Bobby and Ann Elise Bennett, who held a party on the Friday night at their private airstrip a few miles from Terrell airport. I flew up with Mike Thompson in his RV-6 and we landed in alongside another couple of RVs. The party was very cool :-)
Race 193: Bobby B
Next morning, I hitched a ride with Bobby in his Beech Bonanza. The flight took all of about three minutes, but it was fun. We landed in at Terrell and were soon followed by lots of racers. The ramp filled up until about thirty planes were present. Not quite all of them were in the races, some just came to watch. I am always impressed with the variety of types that take part in these events; there was everything from an Aeronca Champion to the Swearingen SX300 that always leads the charge.
Race 391: Jason doing a burnout!
The race started; I stood by the taxiway and got loads of shots of the takeoffs. Those with smoke systems -especially new smoke systems - love to use them! Stand up Race 391 and Race 77... It takes about 20 minutes to launch everyone, and it is not long after the last one has gone that the fast guys are back. It takes about an hour for everyone to complete the course and land back in. The slowest guys can opt to run the short course, and on this day the Aeronca and an Ercoupe did so.
Mike Smith was first back in his SX300, which is a very sweet airplane, and it was my lucky day, since he kindly agreed to take me for a flight in it :-) We snuck off before the prize giving, while the race organizers were determining everyone's times.
Race 35: The SX300
The SX300 is a kit plane, although only very experienced builders constructed these things as they are very complex. It has a Lycoming IO-580 engine that makes 380 horses at 2900rpm, which is about as big as it gets for normally aspirated single engine planes. It has a retractable undercarriage which looks like it's been stolen off an F-18. It is sleek and fast even standing still, with thin wings, a raked tail and few exposed aerials or other lumps or bumps.
Getting into the beast takes some balancing; you put one foot on the step and then climb up onto the wing, which in this case has been waxed and polished, so don't lose your footing! Step into the seat, ducking under the raised canopy, and slide down until your bum hits the leather. At this point, Jason came over and took a few shots of us in the cockpit.
Jason took this picture of Mike and I in the cockpit
Mike started the engine and we taxied down to the runway. He closed the canopy, lined us up and pushed the throttle forward. There is a proper throttle quadrant in this plane, and once we had some speed, he slid the ram air control forward as well, to add two inches of manifold pressure for extra power. We shot off the runway and into the air in no time at all. This aeroplane seriously moves! It has a 3,000ft/min climb rate without even trying. Mike pointed the nose up at a pretty steep angle and we took an elevator ride up several thousand feet in short order. This SX300 is a little rocket ship.
We leveled out at around 4,000ft and flew around the clouds a little, doing around 230-240kts. Mike regularly sees 300mph (260kts) in a race situation; this is a fast aeroplane. Mike explained how much he loves the airplane as a rapid cross country machine. He can cruise at 10,000ft doing 240kts indicated air speed, burning 15.5 gals per hour. It is very stable in flight, no vibration from the engine, and he can trim the controls for hands-free flight if he wishes. It's very comfortable too.
The panel; we're just at the top of the climb-out, here
Mike asked me if I would like to fly it, and not being one to turn down such an opportunity, I took the controls with delight. He warned me it was very sensitive in pitch, and he wasn't wrong. I tried some turns, and found the aircraft very willing to go into a steepish turn, but heavier on the controls when leveling out again. I also found myself climbing in the turns more than in other aircraft - there's that sensitive pitch, again. I enjoyed having my own set of controls on the right side of the panel - Mike has his instruments set up with the standard six-pack duplicated either side, and it's pretty much all analogue. My kind of panel! Nothing wrong with modern digital displays, but I like round dials and needles. His airspeeed indicator has an impressive amount of green arc before the yellow starts at around 245kts. Red line is at 272kts (313mph). I spent an excellent ten minutes chasing down cloud streets and valleys, before Mike took it back again.
Sleek Machine
He then demonstrated a couple of aileron rolls, which were beautifully stable and totally positive-G, so I did not fall into my straps at all, but could enjoy the view of the world spinning under the top of my head. Then he went for a barrel roll, which was very cool. I really could do these all day, I just love them! More and more these days, I am thinking that if I ever do get my pilot's licence, I want to do two things - take people for rides, and do aerobatics (not at the same time!). Lots of aerobatics. But I digress...
Ramp O' Racers
Pretty soon we had to get back to base, for the race prize giving. We made one pass over the airfield before landing, during which I was able to get some shots of the ramp full of race planes. I love to be able to do that, it is such fun to see them all together. The ramp was devoid of people though - they were all waiting for us inside so that Mike could be awarded his prize - oops! We dashed in and the prizes ensued, so I got busy taking photos of the winners.
Race 55: The Elyminator; Team Ely
After the ceremonies, Linda needed some filming done, so we rigged a couple of my GoPro cameras into Bobby's Bonanza and one in Linda and Mike's (yet another Mike) Grumman AA5A. We took off and made a couple of circuits, with Linda on the ground taking ground-to-air video. I rode in the Bonanza to make sure the camera angles were right. Linda wanted to get some footage of the Bonanza passing the Grumman over the airfield. It was fun to fly with Bobby again, he really knows his airplane - actually, I could say that of all the racers I have flown with, they are good pilots.
Race 26: Mike T
We landed back in and then it was time to leave. Mike T and I loaded up his RV-6 again and we set course for home. It had only taken us 40 minutes to fly north thanks to a stonking great tailwind, but going south it was on our nose and took an hour to fly back. We climbed to 6500-7000 feet where the air was cooler, just above the cloud tops. I was quite happy, watching the cloud banks slide up alongside us and drop away below. I looked at Mike and he threw in an aileron roll to liven the proceedings up... Oh yeah! So if anyone looked up in the Temple area, and watched a small plane do one solitary flip en route, that was us...
Chalk another very fun race day into my books, at least. I may not see the SARL guys until later in the season now; they fly races elsewhere in the country during the summer season and don't come back to Texas until October. So until then, I wish them happy, safe and successful racing.
Here's a video of several assorted clips from the day's flying:
As some of you may know, I belong to the International Society of Aviation Photography, more commonly known as ISAP. This is an organization of some of the best aviation shooters in the world, and they still let the likes of me in!
ISAP has been running for over ten years now, and I have been a member for six of those years. Each year there is an annual symposium; three days of presentations, showcases, tutorials and the ever popular field trip day, in which we get to visit interesting places that one might not ordinarily be able to visit. In past years I have attended symposiums in Pensacola, FL; Dallas, TX; Las Vegas, NV and San Diego, CA. This year, we headed east to Norfolk, Virginia.
It was really great to see everyone again, I have made a lot of friends in the years I've been going to ISAP symposiums. Although the numbers were a little down this time - some folks couldn't make it - there were plenty of new members, including some who joined after attending the Thursday night public session.
We had some excellent speakers, too. Scott Kelby boosted Adobe's profits by showing us all the new stuff in Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 - I came home and upgraded to LR4 because of this, and I know of several other folks who did similarly.... Carolyn Wright went over copyright law, while RC Conception explained lots of things regarding social media and maintaining an online presence. Scott Slocum demonstrated in-flight video techniques, Lyle Jansma showed his 360-degree cockpit photography. Jim Koepnik and pilot Bruce Moore showed their work from the last 20 years or so - Jim is the ISAP 2012 George Hall Lifetime Achievement winner this year, and his work showed why he deserved this. Canon and Nikon were both on hand to show their latest wares too, and both provided complimentary camera cleaning which I took advantage of.
A brace of FA-18s at NAS Oceana
The field trip day was a lot of fun. We started the morning at Naval Air Station Oceana, one of the main US Navy bases of which there seem to be many on the east coast here. Look on the map and the whole Norfolk and Virginia Beach area is a mass of military bases. Here at NAS Oceana, there were F-18s. Lots and lots of F-18s! More than I ever knew existed... We were guests of Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-31, the 'Tomcatters', who fly FA-18/Es. The squadron really looked after us. They let us go all over the ramp, as far as the last parked jet, which was very close to the taxiway. There were F-18s from many other squadrons taxiing past to the hold points, one of which was directly in front of us, and the other was down the far end of the runway. So we got to shoot jets at various points in their takeoff sequences. We could also get plenty of shots of parked F-18s, with the only stipulation being that we didn't take pictures directly down the air intakes. Everyone enjoyed being around such intense noisy action, and the Squadron sold plenty of T-shirts and challenge coins, too :-)
An F-18 in CONA colours
The VFA-31 squadron bird
Next stop was the Military Aircraft Museum in Virginia Beach, which is home to a startlingly large number of WW1 and WW2-era aircraft. They were gearing up for holding an air show at the weekend. We visited on the Friday, with the hope that we'd see some aircraft practising their displays. Unfortunately the wind that day exceeded their airfield crosswind limits, so not much flew, although a C-46 did a fast, low pass down the runway which was very cool. Personally, I hardly noticed the lack of flying aircraft, since there was so much on the ground to keep us busy. I have never seen so many WW2 re-enactors, and the line of aircraft along the runway was seriously impressive.
A FW-190 starting up
It would have been easy to miss the WW1 hangar. In fact I did walk past it, before someone told me to go inside. I am so glad I did! There were all kinds of things in here. Three Fokker Triplanes! A Sopwith Camel, an SE-5A, a DR-7.... The building itself was a replica of an original French hangar of the period, built to modern standards and with hurricane protection - not really a factor in northern France.
Hangar full of WW1 aeroplanes
The C-46 on low approach
On Saturday it was back to the classroom, before the banquet which finishes the Symposium. This is always an entertaining affair, with a paper airplane contest and plenty of door prizes. This year's guests of honour were two Tuskegee Airmen, O. Lawton Wilkerson and Hilton Joseph, who spoke about their wartime experiences in the only Black squadron of the time. These two gentlemen had spent the entire weekend with us, and were taking pictures and enjoying themselves as much as anyone else was doing. It was an honour to spend time with them and to hear their stories.
Normally, that's it for ISAP, and everyone scoots off home on the Sunday morning. This year, about thirty of us stayed, in order to attend the Virginia Beach airshow. As it turned out, although they had very fine weather on the Saturday, the rain and storms had closed in on us for Sunday. We got over there in the dry, but it was overcast and threatening. Not much was going on, except the re-enactors were staying busy keeping all their stuff dry. However, the grey and damp conditions in the re-enactor camp looked a lot like 1940s Europe... so what is a pack of photographers to do? We took some of the most unusual pictures to be had all weekend!
A pilot leans on the Hawker Fury wing
About two hours after we arrived, the rain started to come down, and most of us took shelter in the main hangar. However there were still plenty of pictures to be had, of passing aircrew and wet aeroplanes with reflections in the ramp concrete. The C-46 made a reappearance and landed in out of the mist, which was a sight to behold.
A wartime photographer
We finally bailed around lunchtime, but we all had some great images, of the kind we would never have taken were it not for the damp conditions. Just goes to show that a rainy airshow is not necessarily a disaster! We repaired back to the hotel and spent much of the afternoon and evening talking as a group about ISAP and photography and friends, which was a thoroughly pleasant way to finish a great weekend. Roll on ISAP 2013!
The Bluebonnet Airsho is held in Burnet, TX each year by the Highland Lakes Squadron of the Commemorative Air Force. It is always a splendid show, one of the smaller, local, shows but always manages to attract some interesting performers, including (this time) a Mi-24 Hind and a race between a Stearman and a Hot Rod - look for pictures soon.
This year, I was in for a special treat - Air Boss Vernon Rooze approached me on the morning of the show, and asked if I would mind flying in this L-17 Navion DURING the show, to take pictures of the crowd.
Ryan/North American L-17 Navion with Col Randy Wilson at the helm
Is the Pope Catholic?!! This is seriously cool; something I never thought I would get to do. Only essential crew are allowed to fly during air shows - this basically means pilots and nobody else, unless they're needed for some specific purpose. So with the FAA guy watching from the ground, this was a fabulous opportunity, and one I certainly appreciate.
Oh yes; and there's the small point that I get to fly in this really shiny Navion, a type I'd always fancied a ride in. I can report that it is very comfortable, it has a wide cockpit and good seats. I was kind of surprised to see yokes in front, but this was designed as a civilian plane before the military decided to use it as a trainer. This particular one belongs to the CAF and is based at Midland, TX.
So for ten minutes, I got to see what it's like to be an airshow performer! We taxied out in a lull during the show, sneaking out in front of the eight-ship Falcon Flight team. We took off (into the extra-bumpy strong winds of the day) and made two tight circuits of the show field, doing some lovely steep photo passes. As far as the crowd were concerned, here was a shiny L-17 to enjoy. And I discovered that photo passes are pretty good for getting pictures of the ground, whereas I'd normally be on the ground getting a nice picture of the plane... It was fun to be able to interact with the crowd as we taxied around after landing; I don't know if the announcer had told them it was a photo flight but both us and they were vigorous with the waving :-)
Crowd
Wider shot of the whole show field
I also managed to get a cool shot of the Falcon Flight team lining up for their takeoff, underneath us. You can also see the lead pair in the image above.
Falcon Flight
Here's one more shot of the L-17 departing later on, for good measure!
L-17 on takeoff
Many thanks to Vernon Rooze for this opportunity; it was a blast!
Wow, what a start to the Sport Air Racing League's 2012 season - both for SARL and for me personally.
It started on Friday, when I drove up to Taylor, from where Mike flew us in his RV-6 to Crandall, TX where the Bennetts live. They have a private airstrip where we landed, to spend the night there before the race.
Mike's RV-6
The next morning, Ann Elise flew me in her Cessna 182 up to Sherman, TX, which is right about as far north as you can go in Texas before crossing over into Oklahoma. We spent a pleasant half hour avoiding a large thunderstorm off to our right, east of the Dallas area. Mike had flown on ahead, and Bobby was parallelling us in his Beech Bonanza.
Ann Elise's Cessna
We got ahead of the low-level cruddy clouds that had formed over much of region and landed in at Sherman (KGYI). Soon, the ramp was full of race planes. About thirty racers made it in; another ten or so had signed up but were stymied by the aforementioned weather, a lot of folks just couldn't make it out of their airfields in that thunderstormy area.
Line o' Racers
The race was delayed and delayed to give folks a chance to get to Sherman, and we enjoyed lunch while we waited. But soon it was time for race briefing, and the pilots were getting ready.
I was lucky enough to find a couple of friends of one of the racers, who were not competing, but were just out to see what was going on. They kindly agreed to give me a ride over to the finish line, which was to be 16 miles north, across Lake Texoma, in Oklahoma. So I got into what has to be about the most immaculate RV-6A I have ever seen, and his friend in an RV-4 led the way.
Randall's RV-6A
Randall and Gerald like to fly in formation. A lot. And this flight was no exception; from the formation takeoff until break for landing, Gerald stayed on our wing the whole way. Which, of course, led to some photos :-)
Gerald's RV-4
It's not a long flight over to Texoma State Park (F31), so we were soon looking down the runway. The race timers had taken a Bonanza ride over here ahead of us, and were camped out at the end of the runway. They were going to be hitting their stopwatches as the racers cross the runway (right to left seen from this angle).
Approach to Texoma State Park F31
Soon, the racers started coming through. Zooming over our heads at top speed, and those with smoke systems tend to enjoy using them ;-) It takes about an hour for everyone to come by. The two slowest planes flew a short course, which was a good thing or we'd have been there for quite a bit longer. One of the Bonanzas landed in after his finish (the others went back to Sherman) to pick up the timers. But - drat - he only had two seats spare! So I spent a little time wondering how long it would take me to walk back to Sherman (16 miles and across a lake....!) when another Bonanza showed up, who had been dispatched to pick us up as well. *Relief*!
Dale's Bonanza
I enjoyed my first V-tail Bonanza ride; it was a nice fast and comfortable aircraft, I can see why they are so sought after. Dale had a treat in store for me too; he asked the Tower for a low pass and hard left turn over the ramp, which provided me the opportunity to get this shot of all the racers, which is a shot I've been itching to take for years!
Ramp o' Racers
Once everyone was back and the times had been calculated, it was time for the prizegiving. Race organizer Pat Purcell had done a fabulous job with all the trophies and some extra prizes (for kicking butt, for example!) which everyone enjoyed receiving. Gradually, the ramp emptied of aircraft as folks fueled up and flew away home. Suddenly, all that was left was Mike's RV and the two T-28s.
And what does one do when there's a pair of T-28s firing up to fly? Well if you're Mike, you talk to them nicely, and then fabulous things like this happen:
T-28 Pair
Big thanks to everyone involved in this story; you're all awesome! Race results can be found on the official SARL website, here: http://www.sportairrace.org/id461.html
Posts
