My current dilemma is that I've been working for three days on the logistics of capturing 41 air to ground sites around North Texas, each under it's own optimum light. Today was forecast to be clear and I have the helo scheduled, but it's the opposite of clear. A third of these sites require 24 hour advanced written request to ATC which rules out any spontaneity, ugh!
You have touched on a subject that has generated hours of conversation and strategizing. The T-38 is not comfortable, nor are it's pilots, below 200 knots. The B25, will not achieve 200 knots in level flight, and there is the rub. I'll save everyone the speculative time and effort, we have investigated just about every airframe that exists and might be appropriate for the mission and all have compromises. I'm headed to California later this year to get familiar with the team at Wolf Air, and their systems, that is the only air to air platform that doesn't have any upper end speed/acceleration limitations. There's been discussions about buying a Lear and creating a state of the art platform capable of 8K cinema and high res still work. What always seems to happen is that we find ourselves in a position with an immediate need and a three year R&D program doesn't fit the timeline. So, weebeesee...............Show more →
Ah So - would that be a remotely controlled camera(s) "pod" on a Lear? I'm not sure I have enough fingers to count the bill for doing that - what with certification and so on. Like you said, we've done this conundrum over and over. All the solutions have big gotchas.
Yes, and cool as that will be, I'm (up to now) a hands on kind of shooter, so that will be a bit of a old dog/new tricks scenario. As far as fingers, think in the neighborhood of 55,000 of them, per day..........no pressure there to produce.
You know how paranoid I am about backing up? Well imagine the system I'm dedicating to that footage alone!
JayDavis wrote:
(deleted) Allegiant does quite a bit of flying into St. Petersburg, can't imagine what it would be like to board them in the pouring rain. No jetways, at all. (deleted)
I've done that. But it wasn't Florida, it was Ketchikan, Alaska in the middle of winter. Imagine pouring rain, and mid 30's as the temperature. ( I got lucky, and flew on a "warm" winter day.)
Flew in once when it was snowing. That's not so bad. Once you get under the terminal building, just shake the snow off your clothes, and you are relatively dry.
The "bad" thing about Ketchikan is that the airport is on one island, while the town is across the straights on a different island. So you have to take a ferry to town. When I was there, the ferry was an open car ferry. There wasn't much room for walking passengers to get inside out of the weather. At least the airport did send a van down to the ferry landing to take you from the ferry to the terminal, or arriving passengers down to the ferry.
Remember the "Bridge to Nowhere". It was to connect Ketchikan with the island the airport is located on. It would have eliminated the need for the ferry service, and allowed the town to expand.
Edit: Got nostalgic, and checked out Ketchikan airport on the web. Since I've left, they have a new ferry that has more room for standing passengers to get out of the weather. Of course you still have to walk to the ferry, so you are going to get wet if it is raining, etc.
128GB of zeros and ones have been sacrificed this afternoon as I chased the retreating cloud layer across Texas capturing as many of my aerial projects as humanly possible. Thankful that only one site was not quite as bright as I would have liked, but it was west of Fort Worth and it will be fine with a little tweak I'm sure.
Tired, mildly nauseated, but glad to get some of these behind me.
I flew with a new pilot this afternoon, generally not something I'm fond of, but this young guy was extremely good. I walked in and he asked if we could sit down and do a pre-flight brief, I liked that, especially because a bunch of these parcels were smallish and peppered all around downtown Dallas, right in Love's departure lanes. We compared notes on our iPad Mini4's (the one I bought to dedicate to my Phantom 4 Pro) and our "pins" coordinated perfectly. There's few things I dislike more than circling and circling, looking for a site because something didn't match up. Every 60 seconds you spend doing that costs about 10 bucks in an R44, $30.00 in a Bell JetRanger, and $70.00 in a 429. I do my homework before the flight and these sites were so tricky I scouted each one on the ground and "pinned" them on my iPad, which was worth it's weight in gold on a mission like this one. I've found that ATC is normally very happy to work your flight if they feel that you have your act together, conversely, they will deny you access in a blink if you appear to be behind the power curve in any way. We even got access to a couple of sites in DFW's airspace that we didn't have prior approval for, very unusual. My pilot hailed from the U.K. which made him alright in my book from the get go and he just continued to prove my instincts correct.
Great mission, successfully executed, albeit with a touch of nausea toward the close. Circling that many sites on a 97 degree day with winds 11G18 will work on all but the most astronautish of middle ears, and I do not have one of those
Here's another version of the "Make A Wish" jet departing St. Petersburg yesterday. I checked on FlightAware and I think this jet had been into St. Petersburg about six to eight times the past three days.
Today, Tuesday, there were SIX Allegiant jets on the ground all at once. This is a "mini-hub" for them.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Sheila and I went to the game so my allegiances were divided, but I'm going back for the Yankees game in September to concentrate solely on shooting.
Do you think if you put the rear seat from a B-25 in the dugout, you will shoot better?
My friends normally play this gig in November, but this year it was bumped up to August for their appearance. Jazz, blues, and American Eclectic were played and a great time had by all. It's a two shot Pano
Thanks Laura. The sunrise is mainly down to pollution!
As far as I can tell the B52 is not so much an aircraft - more a National Monument.
The Sea King with the Radar Pod has it's origins back to the time of the Falklands conflict. We'd run ourselves out of the Cat and Trap carrier business, so where forced to load up a "through deck cruiser" with a bunch of Harriers, and sail south to sort things out. Just in time someone said "What about airborne radar?" So they hacked the radar out of a Fairy Gannet (one of our Jeff's fave subjects), and mounted it in a swivelling pod nailed onto a Sea King. I hope that the old gal I photographed today was only there for old times sake and that we have something a little more up to date waiting in the wings. On the other hand we have no F35Bs yet (will we ever?) so no need to worry. I wonder if Art will loan us his Sea Harrier - just to tide us over? ....... and so it goes.
I discovered yet another reason to love the resolution of the 5DSR. Yesterdays aerials were rapid fire and we shot five of the properties out of the sequence I had them written in, so identifying them as I sorted images last night was looking like a challenge......................until I realized that I could pull up the street signs and read them! That trick worked on all five sites, amazing, from a capture like this................
SO when someone asks the age old question, "How much resolution is enough?" The answer is, it's never enough!
Like you said, we've done this conundrum over and over. All the solutions have big gotchas. 
