Northwest Flying Photography Blog

I did a short (1.4 hour) currency flight yesterday that I was not happy with. I took off from Harvey and tooled around trying to decide where to go, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t flown into PAE in a while.

So I flew out east and kind of circled to PAE so I could use the long runway (better photos from the long runway.) Every thing set up nice and I entered the pattern for 34L and got some shots of the Boeing plant on downwind.

Here is where every thing went south (figuratively speaking…the downwind for 34L is south-bound so I was already going south.) I could not keep pattern alt, could not find traffic sharing the pattern, and was totally operating on memory rather than running my checklists. This is the hazard of flying and taking pictures at the same time.

I was cleared for my touch and go, and started my base leg when I realized I was still too high. Fair enough, better too high than too low. I added some more flaps, dropped some RPMs and the PAPI came up two white two red and every thing looks good until I flared too low and almost made a nose wheel landing. Ugly.

A couple more marginal circuits and I flew off to AWO for some time in an uncontrolled pattern. When I got to AWO I was surprised to find two aircraft in the pattern doing touch and go’s on runway 29.

Although the wind was out of 28, most of the time the folks at Arlington use the big runway (16-32) and take the crosswind. Naturally, once I got in the 45 for 29 a plane called in on the ILS to 32. Not to worry, everybody compensated. That is until every one decide to switch to 32 when I was in the downwind on my second touch and go, and a Meridian called in on the 45 to 29.

I could not see the Meridian so I climbed out of pattern alt and he came in under me, I picked him up off my nose and slid in behind him. I did my best landing of the day and headed back to Harvey, determined that I need to get in front of the airplane a bit more. I’m rusty in a way I have never been rusty. Maybe I need to save up some cash for while and do a hard core 3 day a week refresher for a month. Money and time…never the twain shall meet.

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I saw lots of airplanes, talked to a lot of folks about the FS Acceleration expansion pack and met some cool pilots. I also realized how inadequate I am at being a cool pilot. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pilot, and that has a bit of cool built into it. However, I don’t fly WWII fighter aircraft at over 450 miles an hour. Which makes my cool somewhat dim compared to the guys that do. During my two days at Reno, I met the pilots of aircraft that include the Yak 9, the Corsair, the L-5, the P-51, the Seafury and the Canadian CT-114 Tutor.

But when it all came down to the nuts and bolts, this was just a bunch of guys that loved aviation and flying. Lord knows that if I had the money I’d be right there with my F8F Bearcat, showing off for the masses. Well, I probably wouldn’t race it, but I’d fly the heck out of the thing.

The snowbirds were a great show. It was the first time I’d seen them perform and I was very impressed. They were a very tight formation team. I really prefer the formation teams to the aerobatic performers. I really think that once you seen one super powered aircraft being flipped around the sky, you have seen them all. Although I’m starting to like some of the slow speed aerobatic performers I’ve seen. Tossing a cub around tends to be graceful rather than gut wrenching.

I was also privileged to see the entire performance of the West coast A-10 demo team, which is almost a misnomer, but not quite. They are a one ship team, but they have a lot of folks supporting that team.

After the A-10 demo, the heritage flight joined up and we got so see Glacier Girl in the air. It’s always a treat to see a P-38 flying, particularly since there are so few of them in the air.

As always, it was good to see and hang out with the Flight Sim team again and my complete Reno Photo set is up on Flickr.

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The Reno air races that is. In another fit of generosity, my former co-workers at Microsoft Flight Simulator have seen fit to invite me to work the show at their booth, where they and I will be demonstrating the “Acceleration” expansion pack.

Due to work and home commitments, I only get to be at the show for Friday and Saturday, with Thursday evening and Sunday reserved for travel. I’ve never been to the Reno Air Races before, so this is a fun opportunity for me to hone my skills at photographing things moving very fast. Like 500 miles an hour fast. It will also be my first opportunity to see the Canadian Air force Demonstration team, the Snowbirds. I am somewhat ashamed to say that after living relatively close to Abbotsford for over 20 years, I have never made it up there to see the Snowbirds. I will casually also mention that I have never seen the Thunderbirds either. Although I did go to an air-show where the Thunderbirds were scheduled to appear, the show was fogged out. Suck.

Photos will be forthcoming, as always.

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