Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Florida rainy season is starting.....

We are getting to that point in South Florida where storms and rain blow up pretty quickly and can put (excuse the pun) a damper on some spotting - particularly if spotting time is limited like a lunch hour. So, to get a few good spots in the little time is great - even between the weather.

This G-II59A I've seen around a few times. Her home base is Boca Raton (KBCT). A bit of a smoky departure into the lunchtime sky - still a majestic lady though.



This Learjet is based out of Indiana. She's a relatively new aircraft built in 2008, and still looks pretty new.



This Dash8-Q400 has been on my wish list for quite a while. This is my first Q400 - and I can well believe the Q stands for Quiet! She really is a very quiet aircraft. Registered to the US Dept of Justice, a lovely color scheme and also a fairly young aircraft, having been manufactured in 2009.



And finally, I managed to get another off the wish list - the last of the special schemes for jetBlue - the New York Jets logo jet! I've seen her a lot of times in bad light, night light, when I haven't had my camera, but, finally, all the starts aligned and I finally caught her in good light. Now there are only two special schemes that I don't have - the airTran Orlando Magic B717 and the Delta domestic SkyTeam B757 - but - I'll be on the watch for them.



Some good light thank goodness, but who knows over the next few weeks....rain is welcome in the drought of South Florida, but - can it just stay away at lunchtime!

In the meantime, some more time spent behind the camera lens....

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Shooting the Super Moon...

Not the aviation pictures I normally post, but I was playing with some settings shooting the Super Moon on Saturday 3/20 - just thought I'd post a few....





Sunday, March 13, 2011

A quick Saturday afternoon visit to Ft Lauderdale.....

My son and I decided to take a short visit to Ft Lauderdale Saturday afternoon. There was one interesting possible sighting that was in the offing (see below), but the rest seemed to be the usual suspects. When we got to Ft Lauderdale, a fellow spotter told me that the airTran Orlando Magic special scheme was in - great I thought - it's going to be a productive afternoon. We were there 2 1/2 hours - the airTran never moved....annoying - I've never seem them do a 3+ hour turnaround - even on a Saturday!!!

But - there were a couple of interesting sights - the first this Westwind from Columbia. Westwinds are pretty rare at the best of times, but to have this clean looking version from Columbia made it a good catch. If I remember a fellow spotters translation, the company name on the plane is something to do with sugar.


The other good catch of the afternoon was this Condor B767-300ER. What was interesting about this visitor is this was originally a direct flight from Frankfurt to Cancun. However, after 10h 17m flight, they decided to stop at Ft Lauderdale for fuel for 20 mins before carrying on to Cancun. The only thing I can surmise is that when they loaded fuel and departed Frankfurt, they hadn't guessed the total affect of the winds across the Atlantic and so getting close to the US coast, they decided to stop for fuel. The decision must have been made a while into the flight as I saw this on Flightaware about 2 hours before the actual landing. But, it was literally a 20 minute fuel stop and then they were on their way to Cancun. But, it was nice to be able to catch Snoopy and Woodstock visiting Ft Lauderdale.


The sun is starting to get a little higher in the sky now which is causing a lot of the spotters to call it a season until probably September. Not me - I'll be there all summer - you never know what you are going to get - as witnessed by these two.....

In the meantime, more time spent behind the camera lens...