I was on my way back from my pre-dawn shoot this morning when I caught a glimpse of a Stearman Kaydet shooting some landings in the early morning light. Did some quick calculations and figured that I could stop for a few minutes and still make church. Just as I was pulling into this little airport, the Stearman does a low "high speed" pass with smoke on, which put me in IFR conditions. I loved it, but regretted that I wasn't five minutes early for that pass, it would have been great in that light. I pullr=ed into the airport and booted up Flightaware to see if he might be coming back at some point. A nice looking Long Eze pulled up to the gas pump as I was tracking the Stearman. The new owner told me that he checked out in it yesterday and he was flying it home to North Carolina as soon as he topped off. I told him that I'd shoot him departing. This is where it gets interesting, he taxis out and lines up on the centerline, the pours the coal to it, I started to see a cloud of something rolling off the right wing and it was getting bigger as the aircraft gained speed. I couldn't figure it out for a second and then it hit me, his right fuel cap was not sealed. The faster he got, the lower the pressure was across the top of the right wing and the more the fuel cloud expanded. A fuel tank will empty itself in pretty short order when this happens, but the design of the pusher configured Long Eze makes this even more treacherous because the cloud forms right where the exhaust stacks are and the fireball will follow you to the scene of the crash, unless you pull the mixture. I've lost two friends in Long Eze forced landings, it's not pretty.
There I stood, not soul in sight and no way to tell that new owner that he was hemorrhaging 100LL and flying a potential bomb. I called McKinney tower to alert them just in case he contacted them to traverse their airspace. Haven't heard anything bak so they either ironed it out or somewhere along the line the pilot figured out that his fuel consumption was pretty substantial. Helpless feeling for sure.
Thanks Ray, we are going to shoot in and around Crystal Beach/Bolivar Peninsula area and at a couple of wildlife refuge areas. We will be very careful, and packing, not that I would want to be in a situation where that was necessary. We'll have JR as security and believe me when I tell you that he is "locked and loaded".
Can't be any worse than a dusk/dawn logistics center shoot in Del Rio...........of course I never would have risked taking JIII to anything like that. Sure is shame our world has devolved to what it has. We will go and try to find some of the beautiful part of it...................
Crystal Beach/Bolivar Peninsula probably isn't bad (from what I hear); It's that bastion of land called Harris County where they allow criminal activities to flourish. Hope you can avoid it.
Last year I drove my wife to Galveston so she could attend a reunion with some educators she worked with before she retired. We didn't even get to the downtown area when she told me how disgusting the areas looked and the roads were terrible. Houston was a great place to grow up in the 1950s and 60s. The crap has migrated to the outer limits of the county these days. I don't recognize it.
Had an assignment to cover the ceremonies opening the new UMHB golf facilities. The practice course architect was Ben Crenshaw. Along with receiving some awards and recognitions Ben made a ceremonial tee shot.
James and I never did make it to the wildlife sanctuary, but we had fun shooting around Crystal Beach. e were on the beach at 6:15 this morning getting ready to shoot the sunrise. I have never seen mosquitoes like that, but he toughed it out. We drove close to six hours coming home today, and I'm not sure that we killed all the mosquitoes in the car from this morning. We got some great shots over our couple of days. I have a dawn shoot in the morning here in Dallas so processing what we captured is going to have to wait a day or so. Here's a couple that I did get tweaked..........
Ray Swindle wrote:
Had an assignment to cover the ceremonies opening the new UMHB golf facilities. The practice course architect was Ben Crenshaw. Along with receiving some awards and recognitions Ben made a ceremonial tee shot.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
James and I never did make it to the wildlife sanctuary, but we had fun shooting around Crystal Beach. e were on the beach at 6:15 this morning getting ready to shoot the sunrise. I have never seen mosquitoes like that, but he toughed it out. We drove close to six hours coming home today, and I'm not sure that we killed all the mosquitoes in the car from this morning. We got some great shots over our couple of days. I have a dawn shoot in the morning here in Dallas so processing what we captured is going to have to wait a day or so. Here's a couple that I did get tweaked.............Show more →
These are just super Jim! #1&2 are wonderful!!!!
You must get James to become a FM member!
Again super photography!
Dan
JIII and I had a 6am departure for a commercial shoot this morning. I wasn't going to wake him but as I got ready to step in the shower he appeared, dressed and ready to roll, gotta love that spirit!
