Up close with a Pitts

I spent some time up close with Noel Kruse's Pitts S2-S and took a few photos for the club newsletter, here for your viewing pleasure. This aircraft was originally one of a three ship aerobatic team, the Royal Jordanian Falcons. After a midair collision which destroyed two of he three, the remaining aircraft was sold, eventually to Noel. He brought it with him from Australia when he emigrated a year or two back.

Epic Fail with the Jungle Jet at NZHN

Hi all

Man this blog's a mess!!! I kinda screwed up with the photos of Whenuapai where I finished scanning them, posted them on Flickr, copied the links here, realised they looked horrid, edited them all in picnic, then realised it broke all the links here, furthemore realised I'd been using the scanning software wrong and need to rescan them now I've got the thing under control. And I kinda gave up on the reposting.. Also I have WAC open day photos I meant to post..

Anyway, this should keep you going.. Pacific Blue brought their Jungle Jet, aka Embraer 190 to Hamilton today, and I tagged along behind the invited guests and managed to get inside and even onto the flight deck. Then I got booted out when someone figured out I wasn't invited :)

The epic fail in the blog title?? Let's see.. Bring your nice shiny jet to Hamilton, park it in front of a crowd of dignitaries and important people, then find the air stairs don't fit and you can open any of the doors !!!! Hahahahaha!!!!

Had my own epic fail though - the carpark pay machine ate my change and I wasn't leaving without it!! The fire rescue guy had to walk over because the ute's in the shop and the fire truck won't fit through the gate!!!! And he had to disassemble the machine to extract two very sorry looking notes :)

Anyway, on with the photos..

Whenuapai photos..

Well, one minute they were there and next they were gone... I managed to break every single link about an hour after posting the last image. Oh well...

Since nobody commented I can only assume that.. a) nobody reads my blog now or b) the photos sucked... Probably b) :-)

I will look at reposting the photos here tomorrow. Sorry about that folks!!!

WAC Open Day

The aero club had an excellent open day this weekend just gone, lots of nice aeroplanes on display and we had some excellent pilots passing through who did a little display practise... Good number of people turned up, probably 400 or 500 at any one time. I spent the day up on the tower balcony, got some decent shots which I'll post tomorrow for you all, until then please have a look at my flickr set

Whenuapai last weekend

Sorry to take so long to report back folks, been a crazy week.. I've just about processed all my photos, will post them as I get them through Photoshop.

This is the quick version as I'm still short of time, sorry.

Euan and myself, plus a couple of pax planned to go to the Whenuapai open day in Auckland last weekend, at the last minute getting aircraft switched for the one that's just come back from major repairs after being crashed into with a truck. Anyway, I digress. The weather was good, Euan flew well, when we got to Auckland I offered to do the radio, so he flew and I talked. Not sure I helped much but there you go.

The aircraft displays, both static and flying were mighty impressive! C-17 and F-18 kicked ass, the F-18 was so loud I think my eardrums gave up and went home :)

I didn't get to the C17 cockpit but did get into the Herc left seat, w00t !!!! Good stuff...

The c17 was handy as a sunshade all day as it was a touch warm there, and I had a great day shooting.. What more could you ask for??

Our trip back was slightly slower due headwinds, but we still got home before most of the cars got out of the car park...

I've been culling images but still have a shitload so I'm going to split them up and post by subject aircraft. Technical details for any film camera geeks out there: All aerials and long shots - Nikon F5 / 300 F4 / 1.4TC, all interiors shot with Nikon F80 / 20-35 F2.8, film was a mix of Superia 200/400, Fuji Pro400, Kodak Portra 800, and my fav, Kodak Ektar 100

Interesting video on tailplane icing

Here's a video from NASA about tailplane icing, which may well have caused the recent crash in the USA. Check out at about 11:00 where they take an aircraft up with bits of foam strapped to the hori stab to simulate icing. at 13:00 minutes they tell you not to try this yourself and about 15:00 they experience a full blown tail stall.

Good thing for all us to watch methinks..

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2238323060735779946

More photos of our new Archer III