Amateur Aviation Photography

A rare visitor .. and .. a rare plane in the US...

2012-01-23T21:36:00.002-05:00

A lunchtime spent at Ft Lauderdale today revealed a rare visitor to Ft Lauderdale - not only a rare visitor, but a very rare aircraft type in the US now - a British Aerospace BAe 146-100. I personally haven't seen one of these in about 10 years - not since Northwest last flew them into St Louis on occasion. This perfect specimen - N114M titled "Lucky Liz" came through Ft Lauderdale on its way from the Bahamas to its home base - Ft Worth Meacham International Airport (KFTW). Another of those - perfect place at the perfect time in perfect weather.....

Some more time spent behind that camera lens...

Miami Slide Fest 2012 - Ramp Tour of MIA

2012-01-14T22:53:00.003-05:00

Every year at this time, photographers from all over the world gather in Miami for the Digital and Slide Festival. Each year, thanks to great organization, we are privileged to get access to the airport grounds and get some awesome pictures. This year, unfortunately, the weather didn't play along with the tour - two cold fronts caused cloudy conditions for most of the day, but, any day on airport property with a camera is a great day! Still, I managed to get some decent shots...

The major attraction was the arrival of the "whale" - the A380 from Frankfurt - and we managed to get right next to runway 27 for the arrival. This was one of the latest A380s in the Lufthancsa fleet - D-AIMG "Wien".

A couple of attractions that were around the field were the classic Boeing 727s - both cargo planes - the first being this visitor from Brazil.

The second being this local aircraft from Amerijet - this we were able to shoot close to the runway as she completed a long take off roll down runway 27.

One of the other major attractions was the ability to photograph right next to the arrivals on runway 30 - on westerly operations at Miami (which is was this day), the majority of the European arrivals land on runway 30 and getting close to the touchdown point made for great shots. I could live in a tent next to this spot on westerly operations!!!!

Virgin 5 from Heathrow - recently changed from an A340-600 to the Queen of the Skies - this is G-VHOT "Tubular Belle".

Iberia brought in an Airbus A340-300 instead of the usual A340-600 from Madrid.

One of the many American jets to land on runway 30.

TAM from Brazil with it's regular A330-200.

Hopefully, next year's festival will bring better weather - I really could live right next to this runway! A lot more time spent behind the camera lens....

New airline - new scheme - old plane

2012-01-04T19:50:00.002-05:00

Suddenly it appeared at Ft Lauderdale - parked over by National Jets - something that I haven't seen before - and - it turned out - a brand new airline - Fly Jamaica Airlines - with it's plain but interesting scheme. The airline plans to fly from Kingston, Jamaica to Georgetown, Guyana, New York and Toronto. The plane itself is an older Boeing 757-200 that previous served with ATA (callsign AmTran).

A really nice special catch for me...

Some more time spent behind the camera lens....

A very special visitor to Ft Lauderdale....

2011-12-24T16:59:00.001-05:00

I eluded a little to this in yesterday's post, but I didn't want to say much unless I got the shot today - well - the special guest was still there today - so I can only guess that members of the United Arab Emirates Royal Family is visiting Ft Lauderdale for the holiday season - here is their ride...

The season has gone so quickly.....

2011-12-23T21:42:00.002-05:00

I just realized the last time I updated my blog was back in October - and - it is two days before Christmas - that's a heck of a time to neglect it. I will say that there have been a lot of circumstances that have distracted me over the last couple of months, but, in the meantime, I have had some time to shoot, and here are some of the best of this time. The Canadian visitors have really started fairly late, with Sunwing only starting in the last couple of weeks, Canjet doing the same, but Air Transat and Westjet (special below) starting quite a bit earlier.

This Westjet special scheme had been just a wish - Westjet hadn't brought the -800 series into Ft Lauderdale in all the time I have been shooting here. But, for the beginning of the season, they changed their schedule, and one particular lunch time, out came this beauty. There is a story to this shot too - it was a cloudy day (not evident from the picture, but to the south of the airport - a lot of clouds) - and when I first saw this, I thought- no chance with the clouds. But - there was one ray of sun that shone through the clouds. The plane stayed in that ray all the way down Taxiway Charlie to the end - and - at the end of the taxiway, the Captain even waved. Now - I'd like to think the Captain saw us photographers at the end and stayed in that ray just for us - now - if it wasn't that - well, I'm not going to think about that - but - I'm thankful for the wave - these Westjet crews are always friendly.

I've been searching for this US Airways special scheme for the longest time - this is the last of the special schemes on US Airways A319's that I hadn't got. Thank you US Airways for replacing one of the Boeing 737-400's flights with the A319 - it's brought back a lot of the special schemes.

Of course, a couple of days later, the Star Alliance scheme came taxiing out.

The early morning light on some days has been wonderful as well. I haven't been able to catch a UPS Being 757 in ages - the last one was in Fort Myers a few years ago - so it was great to be able to catch this one in some lovely early morning light on it's way back to Louisville.

Frontier had brought the A319 to Ft Lauderdale for all except a couple of flights in the past years. This year however, the lunchtime arrival has been the A320 - giving us photographers a whole new range of their great tails for our photography pleasure. This one, one of my favorites - the bald eagle.

This jetBlue A320 - I love New York - is alwayts a welcome sight at any airport - but - in the glorious Florida Fall light, it really is a great picture.

Delta's SkyTeam colors are also a great sight at most airports. Since Delta have pulled the Boeing 737-800 flights, there hasn't been a chance to get that version of the SkyTeam colors, but fortunately, with the domestic SkyTeam (below - N659DL) and the international colored aircraft, we are lucky to get them once in a while.

The one European international scheduled flight is Condor with their Boeing 767-300ER's that come in on Friday afternoons. I'd caught one of these before when on a Frankfurt-Cancun flight, the headwinds had caused them to stop for fuel, but, this is the first time that I'd managed to catch one of the scheduled flights - Snoopy and Woodstock in their glory on the side as well.

They have been late in starting this year, but Sunwing will hopefully have all different types of hybrid schemes this season - I know there is a yellow painted aircraft around, but so far in the season, we have only seen the regular Sunwing colors and the blue British-registered Thompson Fly hybrids - still a long time in the season though.

It's two days before Christmas and a little bird whispered in my ear that there is a special in Ft Lauderdale for the Xmas - I'm not going to reveal what it is at the moment - just in case it has already left, but if I can get it on Christmas Eve, I will be sharing it here.

While I've been lucky to spend some time behind the camera lens, I still would like to wish my readers a wonderful, peaceful and very safe Holiday Season...

Fall weather has arrived in South Florida....

2011-10-26T20:40:00.002-04:00

The fall weather has finally made a showing in South Florida - cooler days, blue skies, westerly operations (well, ok - not all of the time), and perfect photography light. Thirty minutes at the viewing park at Ft Lauderdale yielded these shots in perfect light - I can't wait for the rest of the fall/winter shooting season in South Florida - the Canadian charters will hopefully be starting soon and if the light is anything like it was this day, it's going to be a wonderful season!!

More to come over the next weeks - in the meantime though, more time spent behind the camera lens....

LAX - Part 4 - United (Continental)

2011-09-21T20:46:00.002-04:00

United has the most different color schemes at LAX - from the old gray, to the blue/white to the new Continental merger color scheme - a lot of movements from United too...

LAX - Part 3 - Delta

2011-09-21T20:44:00.002-04:00

Some of the Delta movements - it was interesting to see SkyWest still has some CRJ's in the old Delta colors - Delta mainline is completely in the new color scheme.

LAX - Part 2 - American

2011-09-21T20:35:00.004-04:00

A lot of American movements at LAX - these are a few of the ones that I took.

LAX Part One

2011-09-16T11:48:00.004-04:00

As mentioned a couple of days ago, I managed to spend some wonderful hours at LAX - sitting at the Proud Bird Restaurant on the south side of the airport.

LAX is so totally different to a lot of places that I have been to before - there is so much traffic that I don't normally see and so I took full advantage of it. These are some of the shots that I have edited since I got back - there are many more to come....

Volaris is an airline that I have never seen before - they don't seem to come to the East Coast of the US - so I was happy to get 3 of their aircraft on approach.

While I've seen lots of United jets, their B744's have eluded me - so I was really happy to catch this one - still in the pre-merge (with Continental) colors.

I've seen Turkish Airbuses before - but - never their B773's - so this was a lovely one to catch too..

This private/corporate B762 was one of the highlights of the day - I've never seen or heard of this one before, so to get it in lovely light was a bonus - one of the catches of the day for me.

This Tahiti A340 is another of the catches of the day - I've heard of them - seen others pictures of them - but - never shot it - until now...a really lovely color scheme.

Air New Zealand is another first timer for me. When this B744 came in on the south side of the airport - I had all hopes for the B773 as well - unfortunately - that came in on the north side - well away from me.

This Aeroflot A332 is another first timer for me - soon after this came in - the famous LA marine layer came in with clouds - bringing an end to the spotting day - but - what a great day it was.

More will come as I edit more and more of the 500+ shots from that day - concentrating more on the local airlines....

A lot of time spent behind the camera lens....

Watch this space.......

2011-09-13T22:51:00.001-04:00

I'm about to enjoy my first spotting trip at LAX. I'm going out to Southern California for another reason - but - will be able to enjoy a few hours spotting at a couple of locations close to LAX. So - hopefully - weather permitting (and it looks nice at the moment), there will be some shots here over the next week or so....

Rain..storms...and ...surprises!!!

2011-08-22T21:16:00.004-04:00

Rainy season has struck hard here over the last couple of weeks - the winds have been coming from the west - which means the storms come from the west too - and - that basically shuts down spotting at Ft Lauderdale. Only in the last few days though - has the wind turned, the rain held off for a while and I've finally managed to get out to see what has been happening. Of course, even though the winds are right - the storms are around - they just stay out to the west....

The big surprise today was this little beauty from Canada. I'd seen it once before - but in really terrible cloud and couldn't get a decent shot of it. This time, it nearly caught me by surprise. For those that don't know, the viewing park at Ft Lauderdale has a public scanner that broadcasts the tower frequency. I normally have my own scanner as well, but didn't today. I thought I heard the Air Canada callsign but I saw the grey off in the distance - I thought I must have mistaken it for a Spirit A319. I took my eyes off it for a while - and when I turned again - I saw what it was - it was a frantic scramble to get the camera up .. but I got it and I am very happy!!

Sun Country is still traversing the airways from Jamaica to Ft Lauderdale - substituting for Caribbean Airlines.

Nice to see some classic Southwest colors flying around still.

I added one more...another with the storm in the background

So - now that the weather has turned a little I hope - except for Hurricane Irene this week - I should be able to get more time out and get some more shots.

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

Fort Lauderdale is back to normal operations....

2011-07-30T18:36:00.003-04:00

The extensions to current high-speed exits and the new large high-speed exit on runway 9L are now completed, and Fort Lauderdale has resumed normal operations on the two 9/27 runways. This will carry on for a little while longer; the extension and widening of 9R/27L is the next large operation which will turn Fort Lauderdale into a single runway airport. When the work on 9R/27L starts, runway 13/31 will close completely. It certainly served well during the closure of 9L/27R.

This means that in the hot lunchtimes of Fort Lauderdale, I've been back to the usual viewing spot at the end of runway 9L to see what has been about.

The first is something I've been trying to catch for a couple of years now ever since Delta took delivery of their 737-700 aircraft - they have not been operational into Fort Lauderdale at all until now - operating on a Cincinnati-Fort Lauderdale-New York JFK routing which has them leaving FLL around lunchtime - so I was glad to check this off the list.

Virgin America is always nice to catch - their clean crisp colors are great to see.

For a couple of days in a row, it seemed like Fort Lauderdale was Learjet city - every business jet that seemed to be taxiing out was either a LJ45 or a Lj60. Lovely aircraft they are!!

With the final merger of Air Jamaica into Caribbean Airlines and the operation on a single operating certificate, the Airbus equipment that Air Jamaica used to operate has been returned to the lessors and Caribbean's all Boeing fleet has taken over. However, there has been a shortage of aircraft to operate all the flights, so there have been fillers in from Miami Air International (seen below), Sun Country (seen below as well) and North American for the JFK routes. For the Miami Air and Sun Country aircraft, this has been a chance to get some rare visitors to Fort Lauderdale.

The end of summer will hopefully be coming soon as we move into August and with that, hopefully the hot summer lunchtimes will give way to some cooler temperatures!

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

Finding Nirvana......A Shuttle Launch

2011-07-08T20:38:00.003-04:00

I finally got to see something I have wanted to see since the first launch 30 years ago - the launch of a space shuttle. Friday July 8, 2011 will be a day I will remember for many many years to come. Two days before the launch date, a friend of mine called and said they were going to the launch with an arranged group and had a spare seat in their car. I couldn't say "YES" fast enough. The evening before the launch had me driving from home to the Space Coast knowing that there was only a 30% chance of the launch. Friday morning had us driving towards the facility watching patches of blue appearing in the sky. It was still touch and go the whole morning until the T-9 minute hold which lasts for about 45 minutes. During that hold, NASA announced that weather was a "go" - there were no technical issues. So, at 11:29 - 2 odd minutes after the scheduled launch time, Atlantis took to the skies as STS-135 - the final shuttle mission. For me who has followed this program since it's inception, this was the ultimate, Nirvana, whatever you'd like to call it - it was - a launch - my first ever, and the last ever - nothing to take that away....

Learning to fly the 747....a first hand account...

2011-06-28T20:57:00.002-04:00

I have been following the blog of Capt. Rand Peck for quite a while now. A long standing NWA captain, now with Delta, in the time I have been following his blog, he has gone from the Boeing 757, to the Boeing 767 and is now qualified on the Boeing 747-400. For those that would like to know what is involved in getting rated on a new aircraft, head over to his blog, Rand Pack, A Life Aloft. He is going into great detail about the training and it's fascinating reading!

Thank you to the crew......

2011-06-21T18:16:00.004-04:00

Ever since the runway change at Fort Lauderdale that I blogged on a while back, I've been trying to find the best spot for the departures and arrivals - going to the park on the south side of the airport, going to the viewing park and trying long range shots, and nothing has seemed to work totally the way I wanted it to. So finally, today, I thought I'd try the south west corner of the Hibiscus parking garage as that is pretty close to the end of runway 13 for lift off shots. It worked out a lot better than I had originally thought and while I still have a lot of shots to edit from that spot, I couldn't help but edit this one - Spirit flight 180 to La Guardia. The take off instructions to the vast majority of the aircraft are "fly heading 090, runway 13 clear for take off". Well, for the most part, they have been flying runway heading (heading 130) for a couple of miles before turning left onto heading 090. I don't know why this crew decided to do this, but pretty much immediately after take off, they started the left turn - I want to think it's because they saw me with my camera on the garage and wanted to give me a GREAT shot. Well, whatever the reason, they did give me a GREAT shot! The left bank in front of the clouds was spectacular and made the day for shooting! So, if any of my readers happen to know of the flight crew that flew A320 N607NK as Spirit flight 180 to La Guardia on Tuesday 6/21/2011 departing around 12:25pm, please thank them for me or even have them contact me through my blog - I'd love to give them a printed copy of this shot for their walls!

I'll hopefully get more of the shots edited over the next few days and get them up here too - another highlight for me was the Delta Boeing 737-700 that has now started to fly the CVG-FLL-JFK routing that leaves FLL at lunch time - the -700 was something of Delta's that I hadn't been able to catch before....

Some more time spent behind the camera lens......

A special day - Lufthansa brings the A380 to MIA

2011-06-15T18:56:00.003-04:00

I know that blog entries have been a little sparse lately - the heat of the South Florida summer has really set in along with dreaded heat haze and the still in effect cross runway operations at Ft Lauderdale. When this opportunity presented itself, I was very happy and I was very privileged to be part of the media contingent on Friday June 10, 2011 in witnessing a new part of South Florida Aviation History with the inauguration of Lufthansa's Airbus A380 service from Frankfurt to Miami replacing the Boeing 747-400. It also happened to be the very first landing at Miami of the Airbus A380. The press was met at the meeting area with the poster announcing the arrival.

As part of the ceremonies, the "A380's" of their day made their entrance in a procession prior to the arrival of the real thing. First was the American Airlines DC-3 Flagship Detroit,

followed by the restored Eastern airlines DC-7B.

The two "oldies" were lined up at the gate to await the arrival of the A380.

The A380 - D-AIMD "Tokyo" - made it's grand entrance on runway 9 to lines of spectators on the perimeter road and surrounding areas, it's two engine in reverse thrust.

Following which it taxied towards the terminal.

Through the salute of 4 water cannons provided by Miami-Dade Fire Department.

To it's parking gate at the J concourse.

Once all had deplaned, the crew was introduced to the media.

It really was a special day and the ability to see the first landing of this quiet giant was something I'll remember for many many years to come!

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.....

A temporary change at Ft Lauderdale...

2011-05-07T08:58:00.003-04:00

There is a temporary change in place at Ft Lauderdale at the moment - the main runway 9L/27R is currently undergoing repairs and so the cross runway 13/31 will be in use for the next couple of months. For anyone that knows the spotting areas at Ft Lauderdale, the use of 13/31 is not really good for either the viewing park or the parking garages as they are just too far away and in the warm spring/summer temperatures of Ft Lauderdale, the heat haze is terrible! So, last week I went scouting a new location for the use of this runway and came across a public park that is located on the south of the airport that offers lovely shaded viewing locations, and, more importantly for photographers, some good access to lift off shots from 13 and what will be good arrival shots on 31 should the winds turn that way. Of course, as soon as I found this spot, the next 3 days were terrible weather days - clouds, rain, etc, but, at least I now have a decent location for the use of this runway configuration, and here are a few shots from that spot....

This Southwest B737 was up way early - probably a short-ish flight and a low load....

This US Airways B734 got a decent run down the runway, lifting off just in front of terminal 3 - home to American and jetBlue.

jetBlue's 10th anniversary A320 gets a good liftoff.

The B738's always seem to roll a lot longer - this Delta B738 was the longer roll of the two I shot - unfortunately, neither was the SkyTeam color scheme that I am looking for.....

This B753 really surprised me - being up so early - the power of that aircraft is amazing...

The second Delta B738 - up a little earlier...

This American B738 was the long roll of the photo session for me - off to Chicago with a pretty good load I can guess as she rolled and lifted just before the piano keys at the end of the runway..

Hopefully there will be some more trips to this location over the next couple of months while it is in use - I really like the different angles with the airport in the background compared to the usual shots from the viewing park and parking garage...

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

Quick visits yield good results.....

2011-04-20T20:41:00.002-04:00

Over the past week or so, ever since the Iron Maiden arrival, I've been taking short, quick trips to Ft Lauderdale focusing on some specific catches. The first one was a quick lunchtime visit, and while I did not expect this, it was a great sight to see. I've seen this twice - the first time, it was in line for departure one morning while I was on my way to work and while I tried my best to get to the viewing park at Ft Lauderdale in time to catch it, I just saw her powering down the runway and it was terribly heat hazed. The second time was coming home from work late one evening and in the last light of day, there she was departing. This time, it was different - 20 minutes out of a lunchtime, I was about to leave when the lunchtime Delta flight called in - it was a little late - I saw the winglets in the distance - thought the gray color was from the cloud cover - but - fortunately, it was not - the domestic SkyTeam in all her glory!!

I was alerted by a very good friend that the next one was an equipment sub for the usual early afternoon Delta flight from Atlanta - my first catch of a Delta B767-300ER with winglets! I love the size of those winglets - it's almost like they dwarf the plane as a whole!

While waiting for the B763W above, I heard the "Ruby" callsign - unusual for Ft Lauderdale - Vision has had a few flights into here, but I've never seen the B737-800 - but - the additional surprise was the Direct Air titles. She came in from Punta Gorda (the other side of the Florida peninsula) and what was fun after the landing was the tower asking where they were parking. The captain replied that they had been trying for the last 45 minutes to find that out - so they stopped close to the terminal while he made a call! I got distracted by the B763W to hear the final outcome of parking.

The last one over the past few days was another quick visit at lunchtime - and this time, a very rare visitor - a Lockheed Jetstar II in immaculate condition! A bit of research found she was built in 1977 and she is actually for sale according to a website - don't have the money at the moment, but what a buy she could be for someone!!

Hopefully some more quick visits might yield another few good sightings soon!

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

A VERY rare Heavy Metal Visitor....

2011-04-15T20:27:00.004-04:00

Ft Lauderdale was graced with a very special visitor today, Friday 4/15 - Capt. Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden and Ed Force One graced the Ft Lauderdale skies as a stop on the Final Frontier tour. Of course, when there is a special visitor like this, there was perfect sunlight 5 minutes before landing and perfect sunlight 5 minutes after landing, but during the approach and landing - there were a couple of errant clouds that obstructed direct sunlight, but, still, there was enough good light to be able to catch this rare visitor. On this trip, there are only 2 US dates - Ft Lauderdale on 4/16 and Ft Myers on 4/17 before they head back to Europe, so to catch this is for me is a once in a lifetime experience and I was glad to be able to get it! She leaves Ft Lauderdale sometime on Sunday morning - I'd like to try and get a departure shot, but, that depends on the weather and the time...but...who knows!

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.....

A welcome return....

2011-04-13T18:09:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I've seen a Viking in Ft Lauderdale - and - in this case, it's the call sign of Thomas Cook Scandinavia. A year or so ago, they used to be a standard charter every two weeks, but this winter season, have been conspicuous in their absence. However, last Monday, I saw the VKG (Viking) call sign on Flightaware coming in from Stockholm and after a short visit, heading out to Aruba. Not sure if this was a one off charter or if it's going to turn into a regular charter again, but it sure was a good sight on a perfect day.

A little more time spent behind the camera lens....

Florida rainy season is starting.....

2011-03-30T20:02:00.003-04:00

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....

Shooting the Super Moon...

2011-03-20T20:14:00.002-04:00

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....

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

2011-03-13T20:12:00.002-04:00

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...

Biz-jets again...for the Miami Boat Show

2011-02-28T18:49:00.005-05:00

Recently, the Miami Boat Show was held and that brought more than normal General Aviation traffic into Ft Lauderdale for a few days. I managed to get up there for an hour on one of those days and was rewarded with some very nice sights.

This is the first time I've seen one of the Hawker 4000's - looks very much like an extended 125-700 or 125-800 series - but a very nice looking biz-jet!

Three in a row for Gulfstream G550's each with their own unique color scheme - but still looking stunning!

Then a couple of Canadair Challengers - unfortunately, no Global Expresses, my favorite biz-jet.

Some more time spent behind the camera lens....

Another Miami visit...another Transaero missed....

2011-02-08T20:21:00.003-05:00

My son and I went down to Miami to again attempt to catch the Transaero B777 from Moscow - and - again, we missed it. After seeing the Lufthansa B747-400 arrive on runway 12, fellow spotter Matt Smith and I headed from the south side and runway 9 to the holes spotting location and runway 12 thinking this was the first of the European arrivals setting the precident. Of course, what came in on runway 9??? The Transaero - EI-UNW with the Cyrillic titles as well. When it left at 4:40pm, it was in cloud - this plane eluded me again - but - there has to be one day where I can get it in good light - and - hopefully, that will be soon.

But, while the clouds came and went, there were some decent catches to be had as well - mainly we stayed on runway 12, but went around to the south side and runway 9 for one visitor. This first catch, the World Atlantic is a newish airline operating out of Miami to the Caribbean and it made the catch even better by going off on runway 12 right in front of us.

More and more Continental aircraft are getting the United titles with the merger going ahead - this Boeing 757-200 came in on runway 12 right in front of us.

Another catch that has eluded me for a long time is any of the British Airways or American Airlines aircraft in the oneWorld titles, and again this was true - the regular colored British Airways Boeing 747-400 landing on runway 12.

I've been trying to catch one of these Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737-800's with the small air Jamaica titles for quite a long time - after catching the air Jamaica Boeing 737-800 in January. Fortunately, this one did the same as the World Atlantic MD-80 - it left on runway 12.

The one time that we did go back to the south side of the airport to runway 9 was to get this Aerolinas Aergentinas A340-300 - normally I miss this - so it was good to get it.

Another that came in on runway 12 - and something I've been wanting for a while as well is the new Air France colors - this Boeing 747-400 obliged us.

Finally, and the treat of the day was this Royal Netherlands Air Force KDC-10 that came in, sat for a couple of hours getting gas and then departing again to Haiti - it was the highlight of the afternoon - being such a rare catch.

Hopefully, another trip to Miami will allow me to get the Transaero Boeing 777 soon, but, in the meantime, some more time spent behind the camera lens....

Two 707's in one hanger......

2011-01-23T10:20:00.002-05:00

Part of the 2011 Miami Airline Collectibles Show and Aviation Photography Fest Ramp tour of Miami involved an area on the north side of the field where repairs, painting, etc are done. As YYC Dispatcher had asked on the previous entry on the blog, did we see the Democratic Republic of Congo Boeing 707 - 9Q-CLK - the answer is a definitive YES! Not only that one, but there were two Boeing 707's in the same hanger - the other being N88ZL that I had previously captured at Opa-Locka.

First - here is the Congo Boeing 707 in it's Dreamliner type color scheme. It still has no engines on it, so no idea when it might be flying - I'd love to catch this in the air and landing.

I'd caught this private Boeing 707 - N88ZL - at Opa-Locka before as mentioned above - she now has a new color scheme - unfortunately, she was blocked so a clearer shot wasn't possible, but again, this is going to be another great one to catch in the air, on the ground and landing! I love this new color scheme.

Finally, and this was taken from the bus so excuse the window glare, but these A319's all came from Mexicana when it shut down. So far, there are 4 going to Aerogal (Galapagos) and two going to Brussels Airlines. I couldn't make out who the DC-9 on the end was going to, but it certainly looked interesting!

I've only been to Ft Lauderdale once in the past week - I got a couple of decent things that I'll try to post in the next few days.

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

2011 Miami Airline Collectibles Show and Aviation Photography Fest Ramp Tours

2011-01-16T17:13:00.003-05:00

Every year, this show comes to Miami - from what I remember, for the last 21 years! Each year, there has been a ramp tour of Miami International Airport. This year, for the first time, there was an additional ramp tour of Fort Lauderdale International Airport and I was lucky to be able to go on both tours this year. It's an amazing show organized by Joe Fernandez of Air 72 Aviation Photography and between him and Eddy Gual, they organize the most incredible ramp tours, as well as an amazing Collectibles Show and Photo Fest!

First, the highlights from Fort Lauderdale apart from the air Jamaica Boeing 737-800 that I added to the blog the day of the event. The airport was on westerly operations and so the first photography point was at the end of runway 27L. Capital Cargo operates a daily Boeing 727-200F into Ft Lauderdale.

Another of the Sunwing hybrid schemes - another from Thomson aircraft still retaining it's G- registration.

Being so close to the runway allowed us good access to some nice take off shots.

Another of the great take off's - this time a Continental Boeing 737-800.

We then spent some time over on the north side of the airport - somewhere where we normally get no decent shots at all because of the distance and the heat haze that messes up the shots. This time, close to the Monarch Air Freight area, we got their really nice Swearingen Merlin "Spirit of Freight Dog".

And on the Monarch ramp was their old DC-3.

A little bit further down the north side was this glorious float plane - first time I've seen this and I love the name - Whale Force One!

On Friday, it was on to the ramp tour at Miami. Just as well organized and co-ordinated, we got amazing access on Miami International Airport - and the first part of this was at the American Airlines Maintenance Center where we had total access to a Boeing 777-200ER and a Boeing 757-200 - thanks SO much to the great staff at American who left the APUs running so the cockpits were lit up.

First the cockpit of the Boeing 757-200.

Then the cockpit of the Boeing 777-200ER.

And thanks to Bryan Rivas who was on the tour with me, this is me in the important spot of the Boeing 777-200ER. Now hear this - this is your captain speaking!! :)

Then it was off to runway 9 - the South runway to get some landing shots. The first being the Lufthansa A340-300 from Munich.

Then a Miami Air International Boeing 737-800 coming in on a charter.

Air France with their Boeing 747-400 from Paris.

And British Airways with their first of two Boeing 747-400's from London Heathrow.

This Kalitta Air Boeing 747-400F was amazing. It taxied out from the cargo area, and so I assumed it would be a long roll and off carrying it's cargo. But, when it started it's roll, we could see it was empty of cargo - not sure where it went, but in just over 2,000' of runway, it was in the air and climbing like a rocket.

Another cargo plane - this time a very loaded Korean cargo Boeing 747-400ERF that took a lot more to roll than the Kalitta - unfortunately, it's roll took place when the sun was covered by this big dark cloud!

We also managed to get some unique shots as well, as we did at Fort Lauderdale. This Hewa Bora Boeing 767-200 was painted and destined for it's owners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but never left Miami - it's now stuck here.

There are so many more that I haven't had a chance to edit or get on here yet. But, for any aviation photographers that are wanting to explore Miami and Fort Lauderdale, this event is one of the best to by able to see everything. Keep an eye on Joe Fernandez' web site - and sign up when you can!

A lot of time spent behind the camera lens this week!!!!!

New Air Jamaica.....

2011-01-13T19:36:00.003-05:00

I happened to be in the right place - at the right time today! As part of the Miami Slide and Collectors Show in Miami this weekend, a ramp tour of Ft Lauderdale was organized (with great thanks to the Ops Staff at FLL and the show organizers!). Lots of great time was spent talking with fellow photographers from all over the world. In the distance on downwind, I saw this brightly colored aircraft - that I'd never seen before. What it was, and what we were very privileged to catch was this brand new Boeing 737-8Q8 registered 9Y-JMA in a brand new color scheme! Definitely the highlight of the day!

Friday is the ramp tour at Miami International Airport - and - with the hopes that the weather is going to hold, it should be an awesome day!

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

A visit to Miami - in great weather..

2010-12-30T18:01:00.006-05:00

My son and I had the opportunity to spend a long afternoon at Miami (KMIA) - we again tried to go and get the Transaero B777 from Moscow, but it was not bad weather in Miami that got us missing the plane - but the bad weather in Europe - it was over 3 1/2 hours late coming in, arriving after dark. But there were some good sightings to be had on a great afternoon with a few clouds about to start increasing into the late afternoon.

This is the first time I've been able to catch the Surinam Boeing 737-700 - a nice first time catch.

Lufthansa had 3 flights this particular day - this Boeing 747-400 coming from Frankfurt landed on the south runway (runway 9) - the A340 from Munich and the A330 from Dusseldorf both landed on runway 12 - the cross runway.

Sky Lease Cargo has one MD-11 in full colors - the other two are plain white at the moment, and by chance, we got the full colors.

My first time getting a Korean Cargo Boeing 747-400 at Miami - the other plane from this cargo carrier I caught in Anchorage.

Insel Air operates MD-80s from Curacao - the second time I have caught this airline - the first time with the large titles.

Avianca brings so many different types into Miami, A320s, A319s, Boeing 767s, but it's been a long time since I've seen one of their A330s in Miami.

Amerijet is famous in South Florida for their Boeing 727s - but have recently received a couple of Boeing 767-200s.

There must be a story behind this Atlas Boeing 747-400 - yes - it is a -400 even if you don't see a winglet - on the other side - there is one. This has been operating a few weeks now without the winglet on the right wing. I'm not too sure how it was lost or when it is going to be replaced, but there must be some kind of performance degradation without the second winglet - I would think they would want to have it fixed.

The last two are things I have wanted to get for a long time - the first being the American Eagle Embraer E145 with the pink Susan G. Komen sash - I've caught the Boeing 757 with the sash, but the Boeing 777 still eludes me.

Finally, I've been wanting the get the Air Berlin A330 for a long time but each time I've been there - it always goes to the runway on the opposite side I have been standing at - this time though, she came in right in front of me...

The Transaero still eludes me - one day I will get it - in perfect weather I hope. But, in the meantime, the first of many trips to Miami in the future I hope seeing as it's now just a quick 35 minute drive from home to Miami.

In the meantime, wishing everyone a Happy New Year, and, some more time spent behind the camera lens....

Merry Christmas to all!

2010-12-24T23:46:00.003-05:00

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year!!!

Amazing what can happen in 10 minutes.....

2010-12-21T21:23:00.004-05:00

Today was quite a special day - first off, the weather was absolutely perfect! Blue skies, a coolish day, a few small clouds in the sky, but the main reason was a couple of very special captures, and they both happened within about 7 minutes.

Knowing that there are hybrid schemes all over the place at the moment for the Canadian charter airlines, the South Florida spotters always try to keep an eye out on what is around when Canjet or Sunwing come around - today was no different. Having received an email that a special was around, I headed to FLL to get it - a Jetairfly B738 that is leased to Canjet for the winter season. Thursday is the next big charter day, so hopefully there will be others around - Sunwing has the Hapag Lloyd retro orange scheme from Germany and it's been seen in South Florida already...so...here's hoping...

The second catch was something that I have wanted to get ever since I heard about it and saw the first pictures - the American Airlines tribute to the troops - Flagship Liberty - with the subtitle "In support of all who serve" . Particularly at this time of year, the holidays approaching, there are many men and women servicemen who are far away from home serving their countries. It's small things like American has done with this B737-800 and the other aircraft they have, a B767-200 called Flagship Freedom that remind us of those who serve to protect us.

In case I don't get to post another entry before the holidays, wishing all my readers and visitors a very peaceful time with family, a Happy Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or Happy Kwanza.

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

Introducing.....The Bandit.....

2010-12-15T20:16:00.005-05:00

This has been a very long wait - something I've been trying to catch for a very long long time - The Bandit - the private jet of Russian billionaire and businessman, Roman Abromovich, a Boeing 767-33A/ER registered P4-MES (home country Aruba) - he is also known in the soccer world as the owner of Chelsea Football club in the English Premier League. While I've seen her once before at West Palm Beach, but she was not in a shootable, and not even very viewable position, so when I looked at Flightaware this morning and saw a flight plan from St Maarten to Ft Lauderdale, I was keeping a keen eye on the time. Operations at Ft Lauderdale were westerly, so I knew I was going to be on the top of the parking garage to get her arrival. And, on time and using the callsign P4-MES Heavy, she approached runway 27R in what were perfect conditions on a cool Fall day. Fortunately, the approach was high so it offered a great shot in front of the refinery towers.

Then the even approach to the landing on runway 27R.

I'll have to get down and edit the last few in the sequence that I took because, while the approach was graceful, the landing certainly wasn't as there was bogey bouncing (left main gear, then right main gear, then back to left main gear) down a long section of the runway, accompanied by the obligatory tire smoke, before rolling out all the way to pretty much the end of the runway. I'll try and edit that section and get it posted soon....

But in the meantime, welcome to a view of one of the ultimate business jets plying the routes around the world.

Some more time spend behind the camera lens.......

Raining in Miami, Sunny in Ft Lauderdale....

2010-11-28T08:46:00.002-05:00

Well, this day didn't work out as planned - and in some ways I was glad. The plan was originally to spend the day in Miami, shoot the Transaero 777 and what ever else was around. When I left home in Fort Lauderdale, the sun was shining, but as I got closer to Miami, I knew the day wasn't going to go well with westerly operations and a cloud base that letting intermittent sun through. I headed for one spot on the south side of the airport that allowed the viewing of operations on runway 27 and spent a little time there. I did manage to get one new capture that I've been looking for for quite a while - a LAN Cargo B777-200LRF landing on runway 27.

There were also two Centurion MD-11's around as well, one lifting off runway 27

And the other landing on runway 27. I was hoping one would have been the new Sky Lease Cargo - but no such luck.

After spending a few hours at Miami hoping that the operations would change to easterly and the cloud would lift, shooting the Transaero 777, Alitalia B777 and LAN 767 with winglets in heavy cloud, I looked to the north and the sun was shining, so I headed off to Fort Lauderdale for the rest of the afternoon. And, I was glad that I did with some special operations, easterly operations and glorious afternoon sun (I'm sure that Miami changed right after I left as well....)

I've managed to catch one of the Continentals with it's new titles - that being a Boeing 737-800, this time was a Boeing 757-200.

Another of the rare catches - the Delta Boeing 757-200 with Dali titles on the nose.

This is the second year that I have managed to get a Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737-800 with in Transavia colors. From talking to several people, Caribbean has leased two of these aircraft from Transavia this year - this one was PH-HSA when home in the Netherlands.

Finally, this is not so much of a special scheme or capture, but the second approach of this Allegiant MD-80 that afternoon - the first attempt was a go-around with a Southwest Boeing 737-700 still on it's taking off roll.

I'll definitely be heading to Miami again some weekend to try and get the Transaero in better light and better conditions. In the meantime, more time spent behind the camera lens.....

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T08:45:00.002-05:00

To all my readers - hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving.

The past week or so have been very busy with a trip to the last NASCAR race of the season and a few lunchtime trips to Ft Lauderdale. This long weekend has a plan to go to Miami on Saturday - Transaero has a new flight into Miami from Moscow that has been operating for a few weeks now, so I'd like to catch that and I'm hoping the spotting gods will also allow the skies to be graced with one of two oneWorld special schemes, maybe an American Flagship Freedom scheme, whatever they would like to pass my direction! Pictures and a normal blog entry will follow soon!

Fall weather has started.....

2010-11-13T09:21:00.005-05:00

The weather has started to change - we have had a week of totally fantastic weather and light for photography. The movements have been a little slow - with the exception of "The Herbert D Kelleher" - a Southwest classic in gold - named for the founder of Southwest - seen here in perfect light.

Spirit has been getting it's A320's and they come into Ft Lauderdale with great regularity.

This week has also seen a substitution of the lunchtime Delta flight from Memphis - for two days in a row, a MD-90 has been operating instead of the usual A320 - the first picture was taken from the top of the Hibiscus parking garage as she flared for landing on 27R - westerly operation that day - the second approaching 9L with easterly operations. Having flown on one of these, they are a really comfortable ride.

The great weather and light showed off this jetBlue Embraer 190 as it approached runway 9L.

Another shot from the top of the Hibiscus parking garage shows this Delta B737-800 flaring for landing. The lunchtime flight from Atlanta has been really varied this week - one day this B737, the next day a B757 - that's quite a capacity change.

Not often you see these A320's in the old US Airways colors these days. This approaching 9L on a day of easterly operations.

And finally, one of my favorite biz-jets - a Bombardier Global 5000 - this model, with her larger sister, the Global Express have the most amazing take off performance - I just love watching these aircraft with their minimal take-off rolls before they seem to head straight up into the sky.

I'm hoping this weather lasts for a while - so we can keep getting all these wonderful days. There are a lot of overseas spotters in South Florida at the moment from Europe and they seem to be enjoying the great weather as well - just wish I could spend the same time at the airport during the day that they can.....but...during the week, it's lunchtimes. Hopefully there will be a trip to Miami on a weekend day in the offing soon...

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

New blog coming soon.....

2010-11-11T23:24:00.002-05:00

Hooray....the weather has been awesome! The fall season has started and the weather has changed - stunning lunchtimes...I'm still in the process of editing pictures, and that's why the blog is a little behind...please check back in a couple of days though....

A little travelling.....

2010-10-29T19:14:00.002-04:00

This week was my first business trip in a long time - a trip to one of our subsidiaries in Nashville, so it was time for some Southwest hospitality again. Direct flight from Ft Lauderdale to Nashville and back home via Jacksonville.

On departing Ft Lauderdale, I managed to get a fairly decent shot of the UPS Boeing 757 in their new parking spot - they moved a few months ago down towards BAX cargo in the middle of the field.

I've always enjoyed travelling on Southwest - I always find their flights comfortable, the attitudes pleasant and generally a good trip. This time was no different - we had a great flight up towards Nashville. I'd seen on weather web pages during few days prior that there might be some bad weather approaching Nashville when we were due to arrive. And - there was - a line of storms and tornado warnings in the air had the captain have the cabin crew in their seats at around 20,000' on approach. The approach itself was bumpy with strong winds and when we got to a few feet (maybe 15' or so), the captain decided this was a good time to get this aircraft on the ground - no graceful smooth landing - put it down - and keep it down!!! The crew really earned their money that day!! The preceding picture was obviously taken during the pleasant section of the flight :)

When we were leaving Nashville, I managed to get a couple of shots - firstly, this Compass Embraer 175 that is still in NWA colors - I'm sure some people really miss these colors and they are a rarity these days, it was good to get it.

After lift off, we passed by the Tennessee Air National Guard station, on the ground were 4 C-130's.

The rest of the week has been a touch of the "same ole same ole" at Ft Lauderdale during the lunchtimes with the exception of Friday - I was about to leave with the clouds coming over when I saw this white airTran B717 taxiing out with a big black area on the fuselage. When I realized it was the Harry Potter special scheme - I was praying that the clouds would not arrive before the plane - and - fortunately, they didn't....

Another week over - and some more time spent behind the camera lens...

It's still....very quiet in South Florida

2010-10-22T19:49:00.004-04:00

It is still really quiet - the Canadian charters have still not started, because of economic times, traffic is less, I'm just hoping it's going to pick up soon. Talking the other day to a fellow photographer at Ft Lauderdale, we were discussing how the times have changed. This time last year, we could spend a full hour at Ft Lauderdale and have something on the go the whole time - even lines of 6 to 10 aircraft waiting for departure. There was lots of action, even if it was the same old stuff all the time. Today, we spend a full hour at Ft Lauderdale and we get times where there isn't a movement for over 5 minutes! The times really have changed.

There have been some interesting planes around though. The one that I have really wanted to get since I saw it's release just over a week ago is the new jetBlue New York Jets plane - and - I can say I've seen it - while driving along I-95 on the way home - the end of one day while driving home. Hopefully it will be seen through my lens soon though. However, I have caught two different aircraft with the new "Barcode" tail - one on departure and the other on arrival.

Something that has always been seen at Ft Lauderdale with great regularity has been the Beech 1900D's of Gulfstream International that were always painted in their Continental Connection color scheme. However, today, I saw this one - a brand new color scheme for this airline - and it seems the end of the Continental Connection colors. I'm not sure if this is going to be a permanent change or if it's a transition while Continental and United merge, but, it is the first time this color scheme has been photographed from what I could find - so - a good catch.

Quite a while ago, I did a post on special color schemes and one of the ones that I pointed out in that blog was the Southwest special Silver One scheme - that was a celebration of their 25 years. This week, while spending a little time at Ft Lauderdale, I saw this Southwest regular blue scheme come out but with the titles on the nose. I shot it quickly to go and have a look later on my computer at what the titles were. When I did look later, I saw the 25 and the Silver, and then when I checked the registration, I realized - Silver One is no more - she is been repainted in the regular Canyon Blue - but with the titles - what a sad color change for her - the Silver One scheme was a nice scheme!

Hopefully, and I really mean hopefully, things will start to pick up soon, and we can start to get a little more action...

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

Fall is starting to show in Florida....

2010-10-06T09:42:00.003-04:00

The weather has changed in Florida - hurray!!! It seems like the hot sticky heat-hazed days of summer are a thing of the past. The lunchtimes are more pleasant to spend time out at Ft Lauderdale. Also, the sun is starting to get a little lower in the sky and the usual darker underside pictures of the summer are starting to be a thing of the past as well. However, as is usually the case in the fall, the winds can turn a little more to the west, making westerly operations more the norm for a short period of time. So, the usual viewing park at the end of the runway turns into sky shots of the planes in the air and with the weather being cooler, they are fairly high in the sky. So, the viewing area at the top of the Hibiscus garage is the more preferred area for westerly operations. This does allow for some smoky touchdown shots with the viewing area looking down on the runway. It's interesting to see the different amounts of tire smoke that are generated with each different touchdown. One note to all the pilots though: please if you are landing on 27R at FLL, land a little closer to the threshold of the runway, it lets us photographers get better shots without having to catch you between the light poles *LOL*. Below are a few taken one day last week...

Continental B737-800

Aires Columbia B737-700 - if I remember, this bounced a little as well...

Smooth landing of the jetBlue Embraer E190

Another smoky airTran landing - their 737-700's always seem to land fairly hard..

There was one special scheme that I did manage to get after a long time of searching - the Allegiant Blue Man Group color scheme - here heading down to Sheltair after landing to operate a charter flight.

Now that the season has started, we will hopefully be seeing a lot more of the Canadian charters starting, maybe even a charter or two from Europe - last season Thomas Cook Scandinavia was operating an A330 into Ft Lauderdale for seasonal charters - it would be nice to get those again.

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

A father/son day.....at Ft Lauderdale

2010-09-19T21:46:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday turned out to be a nice father/son day for me as my son and I headed out for a little excursion time at Ft Lauderdale. For a little while, it almost seemed like Fall is on the way with a cooler day, little humidity, but, later in the afternoon, the summer returned. However, we got some nice sights while we were there....

We took this as we were leaving - a Columbian Air Force Boeing 707 - I'm going to see if this is still there on Monday - would like to catch this on a take off roll...

A rare sight at Ft Lauderdale - an American Airlines Boeing 767-300ER - this one on a charter flights - taking the Miami Dolphins to Minneapolis for their Sunday NFL game against the Minnesota Vikings.

An aging Saab 340 parked without propellers

My first catch of a jetBlue Embraer 190 in new colors.

Miami Air brought this Boeing 737-800 in from Las Vegas - an other charter...

Canjet operating one of their two weekly flights from Canada during the non-season - soon, these will be overseas leased aircraft operating three times a week - some special schemes to catch soon...

A very nice private Gulfstream G-IV taxiing out for departure.

Some more time spent behind the camera lens......

Boeing 787-8 At Ft Lauderdale

2010-09-11T20:07:00.002-04:00

I managed to get shots of her on the ground today - she landed at 11:53 on Friday night and is flying at night again this evening, Saturday. Hopefully over the next couple of days, we'll manage to get some daytime action shots - in the meantime, here is one shot of this beauty.

BREAKING NEWS for Ft Lauderdale

2010-09-10T18:33:00.003-04:00

This...is...BIG NEWS! As I write this, BOE3 (Boeing Commercial Airplane Group Flight 3), A Boeing 787-8 is on her way to Fort Lauderdale for 4 days of hot and humid testing. This is one that I will definitely going to catch while she is here!

Flightaware has her tracked and she will probably use the same flight number while she is here:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BOE3

A quiet week at Ft Lauderdale again...

2010-09-02T18:04:00.004-04:00

Things have been really quiet again this week at Ft Lauderdale. The most interesting of movements this week has been the NASA DC-8 that I first introduced a few weeks ago - she has been in and out with Hurricane Earl - that's her job this hurricane season - tracking and getting statistics and information on the hurricanes. As I type this, she is one her way back after a long mission over Hurricane Earl.

However, there have been some fairly strong winds this week which has made for some interesting approaches. This Delta B757-200 made some interesting corrections on approach flying into a 19 knot headwind gusting to 25 knots. This was just at the end of correction before a very smoky touchdown on runway 9L.

Southwest hasn't had many of their special schemes into Ft Lauderdale recently - I was able to get this one - A 737-300 series - Triple Crown is the special scheme. Today, California One came in (I still have to edit the picture) and as I was pulling away from the airport, Southwest Classic, the only mustard brown color scheme left in the fleet came into land.

I used to see these quite a while ago - the Air Canada Jetz aircraft. The Jetz logo'd aircraft usually operate for the charter service of Air Canada and they operate with 64 business class only seats. However, this one, and I saw another one today (with the white fuselage and blue tail) have probably been re-configured for regular travel with the peak travel season from Canada approaching. I must say, I'd love to travel on one of the 64 seaters though - that has to be very comfortable - a'la Privatair overseas with their A319 CJ's and Boeing BBJ's.

There was one pretty rare sight this week - it's unusual to have two Continental Boeing 737-900ER's in at the same time - this week it happened - they followed each other out - the first going to Cleveland and the second to Newark. The nice catch on this, apart from the two -900ER's was the first one being the Continental retro scheme that I introduced quite a while ago.

A freight company that I have not seen before has started flying into Ft Lauderdale - Monarch Air Freight - call sign Freight Dog with some interesting aircraft - the one below is a Beech TC-45J. They also have a Beech 19 and a DC-3 that I saw today, but was too far away to get a shot of.

Hopefully, with the Fall season due to start soon, we will start getting some more interesting special schemes and charters. We can only hope.....

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

A quiet Ft Lauderdale week....it's been HOT HOT HOT!!!

2010-08-20T20:24:00.002-04:00

This week has been a very hot week in South Florida - on several occasions I have found the ambient temperature on the dashboard of my car showing 3 digits - highest was 104 degrees and that held for about 10 minutes. So, there haven't been many trips up to the viewing park at Ft Lauderdale this week, but, when I did go, there were a couple of really nice catches!

The one that I have been trying to get for quite a long time in decent light - the two occasions I have been at Ft Lauderdale when Falcons One has been in town - have both been in cloudy conditions. But, this time, I got her in great Ft Lauderdale light and I was very happy with the result.

While listening to the scanner during the second lunchtime visit, I heard a very curt English accent, but couldn't catch the call sign. Only when she got close, did I realize it was a private B738-800/BBJ2 that was using the call sign VQ-BOS. Registered in Bermuda she is listed to Bayham Holdings.

Lunchtimes in Ft Lauderdale seem to have become quieter - not as many movements - sign of the times I guess, but, it did let me on one lunchtime take the scanner off the tower frequency hold and scan the channels. I'm not sure how often this has happened at Ft Lauderdale in the control tower before, but I was privileged to listen to 3 very professional ladies handling the Ft Lauderdale tower north, Ft Lauderdale south and ground frequencies. I know there have been quite a few ladies working over the years at the tower, but I've never heard them at the same time. It's really great to listen to them as they are so professional, but have been at times, quite funny! Great work ladies!!!!

Hopefully this hot weather isn't going to last much longer - in a few weeks time, the Florida fall season will be starting, and hopefully, along with it will come some great light.

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

KFLL - Ft Lauderdale - Friday the 13th was lucky!!!!

2010-08-14T12:29:00.002-04:00

For all the superstitious people, Friday 13th turned out to be a good one for me! Talking to a colleague at the office, he'd received a call from one of the alert people that track special aircraft - a NASA DC-8 was heading for Ft Lauderdale - this was something not to be missed - it arrived right on time in the late afternoon sun...

Also caught while there - an Embraer Corporate jet and a Caribbean B738

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.....

LSZH - Zurich - August 5, 2010 - Wash out

2010-08-14T09:40:00.004-04:00

All vacations have to come to an end (unfortunately) and our 3 week vacation in South Africa was no exception. My wife and I had previously agreed that on the trip home to Miami and we had a 6 1/2 hour layover in Zurich, I could take the time to go to one of the spotting locations at Zurich to had some spotting time. It was something I was looking forward to a great deal. However, it was not going to be - when we boarded the plane in Johannesburg and the captain was giving his introduction, he said - the weather in Zurich tomorrow is going to be cold and rainy - not a typical summers day. I still hoped that when we got there after the 10 hour flight, something might have changed, but, unfortunately not - even looking on the entertainment system on our A340 at the forward facing camera (a neat thing they have on Swiss!!), I could see it was still raining. After deplaning, it was evident that the day was a wash out. So, I was relegated to watching from the terminal and taking a few shots from there. I saw a whole lot of Star Alliance special schemes - Contact Air, TAP, Swiss, but couldn't shoot all of them from the terminal. Here are a few that I did manage to get close to the terminal. Hopefully, another day, another time, different weather......

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.......

Back from vacation......

2010-08-07T12:19:00.002-04:00

Finally back home after three wonderful weeks of vacation. Not so much spotting was done because of doing other things - I mean what can be more important than spotting - well....let's see...seeing the South African "Big 5" (Elephant, Rhino, Lion, Leopard and Buffalo)..seeing lots of other animals...having an awesome time with family - there really is nothing better. I did manage to do a little spotting at Zurich and Cape Town while flying through the airports there and managed to get a few good shots. However, my 4 hours of spotting at Zurich on the way back home to the US got totally thwarted by rain, clouds and a generally not nice day. I did shoot some things that I have never seen and I will be trying to see what I can edit on them - those are a few days away though. In the mean time, here are a few..

Zurich on the way through:

Turkish carrier Sun Express with it's 20th anniversary logo

Finnair's Embraer 190 in oneWorld colors

Turkish's Manchester United logo plane

Cape Town (FACT):

1Time's new Quagga livery to celebrate the opening of the Livingstone service.

This is one that I really wanted to get - the Kulula.com Flying 101 livery - not only did I catch it - we flew on it too

A very light SAA A340-300E lifting off very early

More will come later......but - a little time spent behind the camera lens.....

Offline for a little while.....

2010-07-07T20:09:00.003-04:00

I'll be offline from the blog for a little while to take a vacation - my family and I are heading to South Africa. Hoping to shoot Johannesburg International (OR Tambo or JNB), Lanseria (HLA), Cape Town (CPT) and Zurich (ZRH) - but if I get 2 out of 4, that will be good - Zurich is definitely a possibility as we will have a layover there.

Watch this space in a few weeks - hopefully there will be some shots here....

Until then......

PBI is becoming a Volga-Dnepr hot spot.....

2010-06-28T17:06:00.005-04:00

After having an Ilyushin IT-76 in Palm Beach International a couple of weeks ago, I was very surprised when I drove past the airport on Saturday morning to see the distant shape of an Antonov An-124. Later on in the day, I had the opportunity to go up to the airport to get a shot of it. It was in the same position at Signature that the IL-76 was, but this time, it's a much larger aircraft and I couldn't get a decent enough spot to get a full shot of it. As far as I know, it's still at PBI, so who knows if I might be able to get a departure shot of it when it leaves, but in the meantime, getting this shot is better than nothing.....

I'm in the process of moving to Ft Lauderdale from West Palm Beach, so there might not be a posting for a little while - however, being a lot closer to Ft Lauderdale, Opa-Locka and Miami might be bringing a little more to the postings soon....

A little more time behind the camera lens....

A quick post.......

2010-06-24T20:47:00.004-04:00

Weather in South Florida, as I think I might have mentioned, has been terrible of late - stormy, hot as heck, heat haze all over the pictures - it's been downright nasty. However, the last few weeks have started to bring one hybrid scheme into Ft Lauderdale that I have been trying to catch ever since I saw the pictures from others - Aires Columbia has a couple of Boeing 737-700's that are in Globespan hybrid colors. I've seen them from a distance a couple of times, but never up close. The other day, I was heading to Ft Lauderdale to try and catch it - when I saw it on approach while I was close to the airport. I knew I would get a touchdown shot, but knowing where it parks, I headed for the east side of the airport and down a little side road, I caught it approaching to the terminal. The light just happened to be good at that point...it was another stormy day, but another of the wanted pictures taken from the list....

There are some good shooting opportunities coming in the next month or so - can't share them at the moment, but, as soon as I can post the results.....I will....

A little more time spent behind the camera lens....

Tis a rare thing.....at Palm Beach

2010-06-11T18:24:00.004-04:00

I got home from work early this afternoon to a message from a friend of mine telling me about an Ilyushin IL-76 at Palm Beach International. Russian jets are pretty rare at Palm Beach International, although I have on one other occasion seen an Antonov AN-124 arrive (in the dark of night - so no decent shot could be had). Although the original source said it would leave either Saturday or Sunday, and I will be watching the flight trackers to see if I can get a departure shot, I could not resist jumping in the car quickly to try and get a shot of it while I could. The result is shown below, and I'm glad I got to get this, my first shot of an Ilyushin.

Every time I got to the airport to get some shots, or just to see what is around, I always see this glorious Boeing 727-31 sitting on the ramp blocked either by another plane, a hangar or cars, or anything! While I was on my way home from shooting the Ilyushin, I couldn't resist passing by her to see if she was open - and - to my shock and horror - there she stood in the open - I couldn't resist getting to the shot. To the best of my knowledge, she is owned by billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein and just seems to sit on the ramp at Palm Beach International all the time - I haven't seen her move in months. Would be nice to catch a take off shot of this beauty sometime though...

Some more (but not a whole lot unfortunately) time spent behind the camera lens

Delta B767-322 N127DL

2010-05-28T21:11:00.002-04:00

I shot her the other day as an equipment sub for the regular B757 lunchtime flight from Atlanta to Ft Lauderdale. She is one of the few non -ER Boeing 767's that Delta still flies on domestic and the Hawaiian routes. She seems to have suffered an engine issue on Thursday shutting down an engine on take off. If you want to ready first hand about flying one of these, head over to Captain Rand Peck's blog - he is a captain flying for Delta and recently flew a sister B767-322.

"That" season is approaching.....

2010-05-25T20:39:00.003-04:00

For those that live in South Florida, a lot of us know it is the windy season, "that" season, lots of other names (some I couldn't put on a blog either!!), but, to the rest of the country, and the world, it's known as Hurricane Season. It starts in a week or so's time and that's when we all start stock piling water, supplies, etc. This year, there have been the spots on the television telling us of the approaching season, the TV stations running seminars, etc. But, today I finally got wind (excuse the pun) of the impending season - and that is - nothing like seeing a Hurricane Hunter taxiing out at your local airport. Today was the day - I took a little break from work - headed to FLL and as I'm sitting in my car watching the world go by, the sound of propellers (a few of them) can be heard and out on taxiway Charlie comes the WP-3D Orion. First time I have seen one up close and very sharp looking with all the antennae. I have to admire the pilots that fly these into the center of hurricanes - they have to be strong aircraft too!

Today also brought in one of the sharpest BBJ's I've seen in a while - I got to FLL a little too late to catch her landing, but I caught a shot as she came past the customs building. She is registered to a company in Miami - I'll need to look a little more into this....

Last Friday, I was out at FLL for a little while with a friend who was in town for the day - got two shots that I was happy to get. The first is, from the best of my knowledge, the only Saab 2000 in the US. Owned by Hendrick Motorsports, this aircraft had been loaned for relief flights to Haiti shortly after the earthquake there. She came in again today and went to customs, so I'm assuming they might still be doing some flights there and back.

Lastly, I'd seen this on Flightaware, but wasn't sure whether it would land on the left or right runway. We were so happy to see it come on on the left - a NASA T-38 Talon - first time I had seen one of these as well - and a civilian one at that!

FLL is quite hot at the moment - heat haze is quite bad at the moment and so shooting is the best that we can get, but, it's worth it for the ones that I have been getting...

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.

New Southwest logo jet - Florida One

2010-04-23T18:37:00.002-04:00

Southwest unveiled its latest logo jet today - Florida One - A Flying Salute to the Sunshine State. After being unveiled in Tampa this morning, it departed on a "round the state" tour going from Tampa to Jacksonville then West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Fort Myers before heading to Dallas, the home of Southwest. I was lucky to be able to get out to Fort Lauderdale for her arrival.

Nice to catch such a special plane on a lovely day!

Ft Lauderdale - I must have done something......

2010-04-15T18:49:00.007-04:00

And - I don't know what. I wonder if the spotting gods decided to listen to my "Ft Lauderdale is getting boring". Or, maybe they liked the diet that I started and saw my salad that I took to Ft Lauderdale for lunch and liked it, or someone reading my blog contacted friends to get some schedule changes. I don't know what it is or who did it, but all I can say is THANK YOU!!! :) For the last two days, I have taken my lunch and headed up to Ft Lauderdale for about 30 minutes over lunchtime to take a break from work and on both days, there have been special schemes all over the place.

It started on Wednesday with Southwest's Nevada 1. There is a little story behind this one. Several years ago when I started spotting a Ft Lauderdale, I used to stay to the last possible moment before heading back to the office. One particular lunchtime, I did decided to head back a little early as all I saw in the distance was a blue aircraft - obviously thinking it was a regular Southwest. As I headed over the bridge over I-95 back towards the office, I turned and saw it was Nevada 1 - it was blue - it was a special blue! Ever since then, I have wanted to catch this - and - finally Wednesday was the chance again!

There is a difference between the special airTran sports colors and some of their other special schemes. Usually, the sports special colors can be seen a long way away - Falcons 1 with it's read and black, Colts 1 with it's blue with white writing. The other special schemes have to be searched for - like the one below - Orlando makes me smile.

Two days after this jetBlue special scheme went into service, I saw it on a terrible day at Ft Lauderdale - cloudy, dark, no hope of a decent shot. Wednesday was totally different weather, and I'm glad I finally caught it.

Those three all came in a matter of 30 minutes. So, salad in hand, I decided to test my luck again on Thursday lunchtime - again - 30 minutes was all I could spare. And, testing my luck was really worth it again. First of all, this Sunwings with it's Viking hybrid scheme came out. Sunwings has been one of the regulars this past winter season, sticking to their regular schedule, but always with the regular color schemes. Finally, the Vikings scheme came today. Now there is only one left that I need to catch of theirs - the Travel Service hybrid. Anyone have friends at Sunwings? Next Tuesday - Sunwings 025 - lunchtime - Travel Service??? I wish!! :)

This Continental started taxiing out during a dark cloud period, and I thought it was just a regular -800 or -900 color scheme until it got closer to the end of the taxiway and then I finally realized it was the Eco-Skies color scheme. The cloud was still covering the sun and I was starting to wonder if I would get it in decent light. But, thanks to landing traffic, it stayed on the taxiway, the cloud disappeared, and it's green winglets stood out in all their glory! Another nice job Continental!

Finally, as mentioned above, the non-sports airTran special schemes can be a little difficult to tell from a distance, and again this was the case. As it taxied out, I could see something on the fuselage, but thought it might be the Orlando scheme again. And, I'm glad I was wrong! Little Debbie adorning, interestingly, only one side of the aircraft - if you saw her from the other side, you wouldn't know - it's a plain scheme on the other side. So, if you see N950AT from the wrong side - try to get to the other side!

I guess the next few days, I'll be filling up the salad bowl, packing the ranch dressing and see what hopefully the spotting gods might reward me with again. Greedy? Sure - why not - lots of special things still to catch......

Another few days spent behind the camera lens....

Right place...right time...right airport..Opa-Locka

2010-04-10T21:31:00.002-04:00

This was definitely a case of being at the right airport at the right time and in the right place. My son and I had been down in Miami for something apart from aviation photography. It was a cloud day today but on the way back from Miami to West Palm Beach, there were breaks in the cloud, so we stopped off at Opa-Locka to see what was around. The one thing about Opa-Locka is always expect the unexpected. The first thing that struck me is the S7 Airlines A310 that I'd shot in various states of dismantling has now totally gone - they didn't take too long to break that ship up at all. We drove around to the top of the airport, and this little thing caught my eye.

It's nice to see rare aircraft like this - this a private L-39 that was parked on the ramp. While shooting this, I heard the sounds of powerful engines starting - not the normal sound you hear at Opa-Locka, so turning around and looking, on the main ramp were three US Navy Northrop F5-N Tiger II's. I quickly jumped into the car and headed over to the ramp and managed to get them departing the ramp and taxiing to the runway. We saw their powerful but low take-off's to the east. This was definitely being in the right place at the right time! I'm not sure why they were at Opa-Locka - my guess is a refuel in between training sessions, but if any of my readers happen to know, I'd be interested.

Always expect the unexpected.....at Opa-locka....

A real special visitor to FLL

2010-04-07T19:23:00.002-04:00

I haven't been around for a while, because, it has been one of the worst winter shooting seasons in years - many people have said that. A lot of westerly operations because of cold fronts, airlines going out of business, like SkyService, and generally lower volumes of operations.

However, at the end of March, there was a really special visitor to Ft Lauderdale. I missed it on the way out - it was in transit from Russia to an airshow in Chile. After missing it on the way out, I was hoping that it would come back through on the way back to Chile, and on Tuesday, April 7, 2010, it did - and - I was able to catch it - a Beriev Be-200Chs from the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations - here is the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_Be-200.

I'm hoping that we are going to get some better traffic soon - Ft Lauderdale is getting a little boring :)

An event I was happy to witness....

2010-03-04T20:46:00.003-05:00

Wednesday March 3, 2010 was a special day for someone - and I got to witness a little part of it from a distance. Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger retired from US Airways after a long and of course, we know, distinguished career. Who will forget the "Miracle on the Hudson" - that event that stands out in aviation history for the sheer magnitude of what took place.

But, back to Wednesday March 3, 2010. I don't know who chose the final flight or how it turned out this way, but, the last flight was chosen as US Airways (Cactus) 1167 from Ft Lauderdale to Charlotte. What was planned in this flight was that First Office Jeff Skiles, the first officer during the Hudson flight was in the cockpit for this final flight. Being very close to Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale International Airport, I was able to go and witness the departure of the final flight. It was a cold, cloudy Ft Lauderdale afternoon and the wind was cooling the temperature quite a bit on the top of the Hibiscus parking garage.

Just after 1:10pm, Cactus 1167 pushed back from the gate. This was in a little bit of sunlight, the last we would see with this departure.

Once the taxi clearance was given, it was a pleasant but very nice surprise to see them given a clearance across the active runway 27R and down taxiway Alpha to the holding point of runway 27R. Needless to say, there were no complaints from the line of about 6 aircraft that were on taxiway Bravo waiting at the holding point already.

At the end of the taxiway, the tower controller read a very nice tribute to Captain Sullenberger on behalf of all the staff at Ft Lauderdale and then clearance was given to line up and hold. In his normal professional voice, there was an acknowledgement of "Thank You" and then a few seconds later, "Confirm Cactus 1167 cleared to line up and hold". As the landing jetBlue Airbus cleared the runway, take off clearance was given. No waiting - just a straight throttle up and the Airbus A321 powered down runway 27R.

The cloudy skies greeted the Airbus as it lifted off the runway and powered into the gray afternoon sky.

After the final tower communication was given and acknowledged, the airwaves were filled with comments of "Bye Sully" from several other crews on the frequency, and then there was a quiet "Thank You" and the flight was on it's way to Charlotte.

For those that are interested, I have downloaded the ground and tower communications for this event from LiveATC.net. The communications file is here. Cactus 1167 communications begins at around 15:08 into the MP3.

I have to add a personal note here. After listening to all the communications involved in this event, the whole "Hudson Miracle" event and aftermath and having just finished reading Sully's book "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters", I have nothing but admiration for a person I consider the consummate professional. I wish him well in his retirement - a retirement that I think is only from US Airways, but not from the industry.

Another note - these are the first real pictures from my new D200 - its taking a little bit of getting used to! But, some more time spent behind the camera lens....

Opa-Locka and Miami on a cool day...Superbowl Sunday

2010-02-08T22:29:00.004-05:00

It's early in February - we still get some nice cool days from the cold fronts that tend to drop down our way and on those days, the sky is clear, the light is perfect and it is worth getting in the car to drive down and spend a few hours at an airport. Superbowl Sunday was such a day - temperatures in the 60's and a clear day. My son and I headed out to start the day at Opa-Locka. There was one main reason for this - one of the few flying private Boeing 707's and when we got there - there is was in all it's glory. I've been trying to find this fine specimen for quite a while, so it was really nice to get a decent shot of it.

From there, we headed down to Miami to spend the afternoon looking there. This was the first time that I had shot Miami for any length of time with westerly operations. Thank goodness for a conveniently placed shooting shot and a wonderful view of runway 27. When Miami is on westerly operations, there are a lot more departures from the south runway and still a few arrivals. Hopefully, they roll long enough to get airborne just in front of the viewing spot like this Avianca A320.

Or, they land and roll long enough like this Cathay Pacific Cargo B744.

Caribbean has been leasing aircraft for a while to compliment their fleet. This is the latest one that has come from Transavia in Holland and still wears the hybrid color scheme.

With the cargo operations being on the south side of the airport, it's always nice to get these heavies lifting off in front of you.

However, if they are fully loaded like this World MD-11 (in their hybrid color scheme), then the rotation is a lot further down the runway and the lift off shots are not as spectacular.

My trusty Nikon D50 that has been shooting for almost 4 years is about to pass into my wife's hands and I am soon going to be the owner of a Nikon D200 - more megapixels, more power, I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this upgrade - watch this space....

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.....

Tis the season - at Opa-Locka (OPF)...

2010-01-17T16:57:00.003-05:00

I'd promised previously to post some of the season goings on at Opa-Locka. There hasn't been the level of activity that there has been at Ft Lauderdale, but there were certainly some nice sights to see at Opa-Locka over the season. This was all shot in about a 15 minute period - not a lot of time, but Opa-Locka is like that - it's an easy compact airport to shoot at, but the shots can be very rewarding.

The first shot is something that I had been hearing about from various sources and some pictures of it that were already posted. The Mexican Air Force had brought their Boeing 737-200 into OPF for some refurbishment and work. I had been wanting to go down to OPF to try and shoot is and as time rolled by, I was wondering if, by the time I got to OPF, it might had departed already. However, the day I was there, it was standing right next to the fence with the APU running and some technicians going back and forth between the aircraft and the hangar. I managed to get my shot in perfect light and came away very happy.

Sitting right across the apron from the Mexican Air Force B732 was this Global Air Boeing 737-200 with it's engines removed. This Mexican registered B732 is very plain in it's color scheme with just the 3 stripes of color. This B732 started it's life at Southwest Airlines and has gone to Japan, Kazakhstan, and many other destinations before arriving back at Global in November 2009. I'm guessing that soon enough, it will have it's engines restored and will be back in the air, but I might be wrong on that.

Talking of Boeing 737's, another model that has been making final visits to OPF have been the Boeing 737-300's of Brazilian airlines GOL and Varig. There are probably a total of 6 or 7 from the 2 airlines at OPF - sent here to end their life and be broken up for parts. This particular aircraft, PR-GLH I had seen at the customs building at Ft Lauderdale when it arrived in the country from Brazil. It then flew from Ft Lauderdale to OPF to probably end it's flying life.

Finally, I'd noted the first Siberian S7 A310 that had arrived at OPF in my last posting about OPF. Since then, that first A310 VP-BSZ has been moved out to one of the remote parking areas and it is currently having it's wings disassembled. This is the second S7 A310 that arrived at OPF not long after it's sister ship. VP-BTJ is now sitting out on the apron, it's titles covered and most likely to suffer the same fate as her sister ship.

The weather starting 2010 in South Florida has been unseasonably cold and the winds have been consistently out of the west. I'm hoping that soon enough, we'll be back in the glorious light sunny days so that a lot more time can be spent behind the camera lens. I'm also trying to work on some options to have a few special features on the blog over the next year or so, so please keep checking back..

'Tis the Season..well...it was...

2010-01-08T12:13:00.003-05:00

First of all, Happy New Year to all - I hope the festive season was peaceful and the New Year ahead is everything that you all hope for.

Ft Lauderdale has been interesting this festive season. Having worked through the working days of the season, I was able to take advantage of some of the stunning Florida season weather to catch up on some on my list of want to have's, and there have been quite a few of them!

Canjet, the Canadian charter company always seems to get some interesting schemes for the aircraft that they lease over this busy period. Two schemes that I knew were flying for them this season were both from Germany - one from Tui and the other from Hapag Lloyd. Both are yellow schemes so it is quite a change from their usual blue and white scheme. One of them I have been able to get - the Tui. I'm hoping the Hapag Lloyd scheme comes into Ft Lauderdale sometime before it gets returned to Germany, so I'm keeping my eye out for it.

airTran has painted several of their Boeing 717's in special color schemes for NFL teams and one for a NBA team. I've seen the Atlanta Falcons jet, but in terrible weather, so when I saw the Indianapolis Colts jet, Colts 1 in perfect light, I was a very happy person. I have to get the Falcons jet, the Baltimore Ravens and Orlando Magic jets in just the same light to complete the collection.

One very interesting catch of the season was a US Airways B767-200ER that came into Ft Lauderdale on a maintenance ferry. Apparently, something had gone wrong with this aircraft at San Juan, Puerto Rico, and it was ferried back to Charlotte via Ft Lauderdale. The very interesting part is that the flight from San Juan, about a 3 hour flight, was completed at 10,000' - well below the pressurization level.

Continental, for a while, has been equipping their Boeing 757-300's with winglets. Since my first Boeing 757 with winglet view, I've always loved the look of them. Now to get their -300's with winglets as well was a prize for me - interestingly enough, I caught two of them two days in a row - almost the exact same shot. I hope that Northwest (Delta) does the same with their -300's - those will make for a great shot as well

Northwest (Delta color scheme) did grace Ft Lauderdale with one nice surprise of the season - the football charter bringing the Pittsburgh Steelers in for their post New Year game against the Miami Dolphins - and - they did it with style - an Airbus A330-300 in Delta colors - I think this aircraft is probably the best for the new color scheme after the Boeing 747-400's.

Finally for this post, I always love to see biz-jets, and this one is a classic. This Lockheed JetStar was manufactured in 1966 and still flies with great regularity. I've seen flying in and out of Ft Lauderdale a few times - this is her home base, but each time I manage to catch her, there is bright sunlight, or heat haze and as you can see from her color scheme, bright light and heat haze do not do her justice.

That was just a sampling of Ft Lauderdale over the season. Watch this space as some time was also spent at Opa-Locka over the season, and there was at least one very special catch there.

More time spent behind the camera lens.....

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T10:17:00.002-05:00

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Prosperous 2010!

Opa-Locka - Florida's Boneyard

2009-11-19T19:03:00.003-05:00

After hearing about Opa-Locka for a long time and never getting there, I recently finally made the trip. Really , it was only a 10 minute diversion off my normal route to Miami, so now I know where it is, I'll be going more and more often as there are always amazing sights at Opa-Locka (KOPF). There are old retired B727's (Champion Air was one I remember), old retired DC-8's, old retired DC-10s - so many I can't remember them all now and I didn't get them in the camera lens as I had a 5 year old that had been for a photo shoot himself that morning and by the time that we got to OPF, was already dozing off - and we still had an hour plus drive home to West Palm Beach. I can tell you this will not be the last blog entry about OPF.

I will start by saying that OPF is not just a boneyard though - it's a great operational airport that happens to have some interesting airworthy aircraft too. The first one that I managed to shoot is a first for me - my first Russian-made aircraft. This AN12-B was one of 3 on the ramp that Sunday afternoon. From what I have heard, the 3 are still operational operating to the Caribbean and South America.

Gulf Air has their home base as Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. For quite a while, they operated B763's all over Europe, the Middle East and Asia and then started to phase the B763's out and replaced them with Airbus equipment. This ex-Gulf Air B763 has been at OPF for a while now, rumored to be going to a private owner, but the colors still remain for the moment.

One thing that is very evident at OPF are a lot of the old propeller engined aircraft. I saw so many, old DC-3's and this one was one of a few DC-7's that still seem to be airworthy and have been restored to their old glory. Next time I go to OPF, I'm going to try and catch more of these old graceful ladies of the skies and get a lot more information about them. In the meantime, this old lady proudly wears the colors of Eastern Airlines.

When talking to some of the other local photographers about OPF, there was a lot of talk about a new arrival at OPF that had arrived in the last couple of days. A S7 Airbus A310 from Russia. I'm not sure at the moment if this is a maintenance call or if she is here for the boneyard or fitting out for a new owner. I'll try and find out what is with her.

A few weeks ago while I was at Ft Lauderdale for a lunch time, I happened to see a Varig B733 taxing out for departure and wondered where it was going for scrapping knowing that Varig had phased out their B733's. Well, I get to OPF and am driving around looking when lo and behold, there is PP-VOZ right in front of me, along with a sister ship from Varig and another B733 from GOL also from Brazil. A little further around the airport, there were another 2 B733's from GOL - one white and one in full orange colors. The engines were being removed so I am guessing they are destined to be broken up here at OPF.

Look for more pictures and associated stories from OPF in the future....

Biz-jets - or how the other 1% flies...

2009-11-19T12:27:00.003-05:00

Ever since I started photographing at Palm Beach International (PBIA), I have developed an affinity for biz-jets. For those of us that normally fly cattle...I mean....coach (economy, the back of the plane, etc), it can only be a dream to be able to see the inside, let alone fly in one of these dream jets that can transport the few as far as a regular commercial jet can take the rest of us. Recently, I spent a Saturday afternoon at PBIA just shooting biz-jets and, it was a busy afternoon.

Now, to start, there are the higher end biz-jets - old commercial airlines that have converted to luxury transports for those that can afford to own and operate one - some that come to mind are Dallas Maverick's owner Mark Cuban and his Boeing 767-200, Russian billionaire Roman Abromovich and his Boeing 767-300 aptly named "The Bandit" for it's color scheme (search any of the regular aviation photography sites for the registration P4-MES) and of course local entrepreneur Donald Trump with his Boeing 727 shown below (which is apparently up for sale - search Craigslist for VP-BDJ).

The rest of the biz-jets are purposefully built for the task. I will say that I have my favorites. The Bombardier Global Express has to be probably my favorite of all. It is one of the largest biz-jets on the market, but from what I have seen of their performance on take-off, it is probably one of the most powerful as well. Every time I see one of these power off a runway either at PBIA or Ft Lauderdale, I always have to go back and try to find a flight plan to see where that one has departed to. I have seen several power off runway 9L at PBIA in just over 3,000' of runway, and it's flying an overnight flight to London Stanstead - they simply are amazing. This one I caught recently at PBIA. If any of my readers is a GLEX pilot - or knows a GLEX pilot - I'd love to talk about this amazing jet.

For the longest time, the Gulfstream seemed to be the best known biz-jet. They were everywhere and so many of them still fly all over the world, from the G-II to the now G-550 and if my memory serves me, the G-650 is the next variant. This G-IV I shot at PBIA last weekend is a visitor from Canada.

Also from the Bombardier stable is the Challenger series - smaller than the Global Express, but still a very sharp looking biz-jet. They come in the -600 and -300 series - this -300 I shot at PBIA the past Saturday as well. It's a plain white color scheme - but I think it makes it all the more sleeker.

One of the first biz-jets I became interest in many years ago was a South African Air Force Falcon 900 registration ZS-NAN. It was the Presidential aircraft at the time, before the BBJ ZA-RSA came along. I had a friend who was the flight engineer on NAN and they were always off taking the South African President all over the world. The Falcon has also come in a lot of variants - the latest one being the 7X which has the blended winglets and an amazing wingspan when you stand in front of or behind it. This one below is a 900EX that passed through PBIA last weekend - going to Customs after landing and then heading off to some other location.

The last one I'll mention in this blog entry has it's roots in England, the land of my birth. When is came out originally, it was known as the Hawker Siddeley HS-125. These I also used to see a lot in South Africa as they were the executive jet of the South African Air Force. Now, they still carry the same design as the original HS-125 and still carry the Hawker name. The one pictured below is a 800 variant.

I must say, it's been so nice being back behind the camera lens in such lovely fall Florida weather. The shooting season is also getting into it's swing - I saw my first foreign charter of the season a couple of weeks ago - a Thomas Cook Scandinavia A330 at Ft Lauderdale - can't wait to see what the rest of the season holds.

Visitors from the North

2009-11-07T13:59:00.003-05:00

Come the cool down of fall, the number of movements at Ft Lauderdale always increases. The charters from the cold of Canada as well as the increase of regular commercial traffic adds to the increased traffic. During this time, there can be some interesting schemes to be seen. Here are some that have been seen over the past years, and hopefully will be seen again this winter season.

Air Transat brings in their Airbuses - the A310 and the A330-200 and A330-300. What is always nice about their A310 is they get the Christmas treatment

Canjet got a new color scheme a couple of years ago and since then, I always wanted to get the new scheme - finally last year I did. Canjet sometimes also lease a B737-800 from Transavia in Holland for the season and hopefully this year, they will again and I'll be able to catch that one.

Skyservice is one that operates on an irregular basis and so when they can be caught, it's always nice to get them. Last year, they had just received their B757's from Thomas Cook.

Sunwings are regular visitors in the season. They normally have 3 or 4 different color schemes on their B737-800s. This one is the basic XL color scheme that their lease during the season.

Westjet is really not classed as a charter into Ft Lauderdale as they do operate a scheduled service. However, sometimes, it's nice to get their aircraft that don't normally operate to South Florida - in this case, their B737-600 - they are the only commercial operator of this B737 variant in North America.

Air Canada is the only year round regular scheduled commercial airline from Canada. However, in the fall and winter season, they also start to bring in some of the aircraft that are a change from the normal Airbuses. In this case, their B767-300ER.

Now that the fall and winter season is starting, it's going to be interesting to see what graces our runways and taxiways.....who knows.....

The new season has started......

2009-10-28T20:35:00.002-04:00

The new spotting season has started. Already around Ft Lauderdale, there are visitors from all parts of Europe. Interesting things have been happening at the airport as well. There have been two very interesting equipment subs - Continental and American both bringing in B767's for B737-800's - Continental a B767-200 and American a B767-300ER with winglets. Both are very rare sights at Ft Lauderdale.

And then today, while at the airport for a quick lunch time break, a C-17 appeared on approach - my first time to see one in flight - and a very rare sight for Ft Lauderdale.

The season is starting with promise....there must be more to come....

Short Hiatus....

2009-10-07T21:00:00.002-04:00

Apologies for the lack of posting - it's the end of summer hiatus - waiting for the decent fall weather to start and the hot summer to end - in between, there are funny weather patterns, westerly operations...bad light. But, soon it will be a thing of the past - and - it will be shooting season again. There is already a Miami trip planned in early November. Normal posting will resume soon.

Miami (KMIA) - A change of scenery

2009-08-27T20:20:00.004-04:00

Every once in a while, I like to head down to Miami on a weekend day to spend some time getting shots that normally are not available at FLL or PBI. Last weekend I had the opportunity to go down there. My friend Andy was down in Florida taking a break from his studies and so we headed down to Miami to give him his first taste of the Miami traffic.

What makes Miami so different from the other airports in South Florida is the wide range of cargo aircraft, and there are a great deal of the South American carriers that always provide for good shots - there are some very unique color schemes from South America as well. This visit to Miami did not disappoint.

First port of call was the cargo plaza. This affords a great view over one of the cargo ramps. I've been trying to get to catch the new Centurion Cargo MD-11 for quite a while and when we got to the cargo plaza, there is was. Only later when I got home and started to edit the pictures did I realize that this registration (or only partial registration that I could get) wasn't on any of the Centurion Cargo MD-11's that have been caught already. The way a lot of the maintenance doors were open made me think that this is another new MD-11 for Centurion. I'm going back to Miami this weekend - maybe I can get a better shot of it then.

A lot of people ask the question "Where do aircraft go when they leave an airline?". Well, one answer is they go to the graveyard in the desert at a place like Victorville. The other answer is they get sold to a cargo carrier and then go for a cargo conversion. A example of this is the Capital Cargo International Boeing 757-200F. From the registration of this aircraft (N620DL), it's a give away to determine where it was in it's previous passenger-bearing life - Delta.

Something else that I have been wanting to catch for quite a while is a Boeing 767-300ER with winglets. Delta and American are the local carriers that have installed these massive 12' winglets on their variants. And - a big thank you to American, they brought one in right in front of us in very nice light. Have a look at the size of these winglets - compare them to the winglets on the Boeing 757's and Boeing 737's that fly the skies every day.

One of the more exotic South American airlines that is a regular visitor to Miami is Aerosur, the airline of Bolivia. They seem to have some very classic aircraft in their fleet, but have some nice color schemes on them. The last time I was in New York, I had been wanting to catch their classic Boeing 727-200 that was flying charters into JFK on alternate weekends. Of course, the weekend I was in New York was the off weekend for that charter and I missed it. Imagine now my excitement as Andy and I spotted a Boeing 727 on approach. At first we couldn't see the color scheme and thought it might be a DHL or Amerijet aircraft. However, as it got closer and closer, we saw the green and purple color scheme and knew exactly what it was!

If that wasn't enough, a while later, the second Aerosur plane made an appearance, this time it was their Boeing 767-200. This time, it wasn't the colorful scheme of the Boeing 727, just the plain green tail, but, as I'd never caught Aerosur before, to get two on one day, I was VERY happy!

A lot of people might not know, but very quietly it seems, American has retired their Airbus A300-600R fleet that has been flying with the carrier since 1988. They were a workhorse of the Caribbean routes and the high capacity routes in the US like the JFK-MIA and JFK-MCO-MIA routes. The final flight of the type was last Monday, so it was nice to catch one flying on the last weekend of operation. I've never flown on an American A300, but I did fly on the type for Emirates many years ago and found it to be a very comfortable aircraft. They had a huge cargo capacity as well which was one of the reasons American used them on Caribbean routes. Sad to see a type retired from a fleet. RIP the American A300's.

As mentioned above, this Sunday I'll be back in Miami spotting with a visitor from the UK. Hopefully there will be just as good things to catch this weekend as there were last weekend. I know that Andy and I had a great time last weekend.

Some more time behind the camera lens over..

A new 2nd favorite special scheme

2009-08-15T09:56:00.003-04:00

I caught this yesterday at Ft Lauderdale - and it's now my 2nd favorite special scheme (behind Delta's Breast Cancer Awareness "Pinky"). Continental has embarked on a series of retro schemes from years past. The first one started revenue service a while back - and this is the first time I managed to catch her.

Can't wait for the next ones to come out and start flying - great job Continental!

Photographing.....the airports

2009-08-13T20:04:00.003-04:00

Hopefully very soon, the harsh sunlight, alternating with rainy afternoons in South Florida will be a thing of the past and the easier days of Fall will allow the shooting season to begin. The Fall season, along with the arrival of the snowbirds from up north tends to bring the special schemes, rare catches and great photography back to this area of the country - I can't wait!

So, for this blog entry, I thought I'd move the focus away from the aircraft, and concentrate a little on where the take off from and land at. One my second trip to the New York area, I flew into LGA instead of JFK and it was on the way back home that I got my first shot of an overview of an airport. Thanks to runway in use, winds, and the shooting gods all aligning perfectly, after take off, we turned back over Rikers Island and looking out from my seat, I saw the whole of La Guardia airport below me. Quickly unpacking the camera, I started to shoot down, hoping that there was no dirt on the windows - and editing later - I was very happy with the result.

After seeing this, every time I have flown out of or into an airport where these types of shots can be taken, I've tried to get a decent shot.

The next one to get was after departing my home airport, Palm Beach International on the way to Houston. I'd tried several times to get a Palm Beach overview and was always stumped by bad light, clouds or just plain bad weather. This time, I thought the same was going to be true when I saw the clouds in my view finder. It was a week before I was able to get home and look at the shots, and, out of the 10 that I did shoot, one finally I was able to get the airport in. Clouds nearly took over again, but, I was happy with the shot.

Houston was one that I had been trying to get for a long time as well. Travelling from Florida to the north west of Texas where we have family, we always try to get through Houston on our favorite domestic airline (no hints of course :) ). Again, it took quite a few visits at different times of the day before I finally got a shot I liked. It seemed like the runway in use, winds, etc also finally aligned to get this one.

One shot that I have been trying to get for the longest time was a decent shot of a ramp or the whole airport at New York's JFK. Again, it takes the winds and runway in use to be able to get some decent shots of the airport at JFK. On my last trip to New York, I got lucky again. A departure off runway 13R, a seat on the left hand side of the plane and a fairly short take off roll lined up one of my favorite shots in my collection - the international ramp and jetBlue ramp at JFK.

One thing that the Fall tends to bring to Florida as well is the ability to get some night shots. I'm not too experienced at this, only having a couple of attempts, but, one of my to-do list items this fall is to try to start shooting the airports a little more at night - not too sure how well it's going to do - but - watch this space.

Some more time behind the camera lens over....

An Always Wanted......and got (almost all)...

2009-07-22T08:21:00.012-04:00

Weather in South Florida has most certainly not been conducive to photography. The mornings have a very harsh hot light, then the clouds roll in and it's a wet lunchtime, afternoon and evening. Hopefully this is going to change soon - it's the longest pattern of this type of weather that I have seen since I moved to Florida. So, I thought about a question, got my own answer and then contacted some of my photography friends and here are the results.

The question:

“What has been the hottest shot you have always wanted to get, actually got and why?”

My answer was a very easy answer. Ever since Delta (and it's sometime subsidiary, Song) rolled out the Breast Cancer Awareness aircraft, I always wanted it in my collection. Because of some scares with that exact issue in my family, it made it all the more important. I was always stalking the flight tracking sites searching for that single registration N610DL. When she was in her Song colors, I saw her from a distance while I was driving - cursing for missing her. Finally, one day, I happened to be working from home. By this time, ACARS searches had become a reality and it was easier to track where the registration was flying. I happened to go onto one ACARS search engine, typed in the registration, and there was a flight plan for that day. I did a real double take when I saw KPBI in the listing - finally, she was back in my area, and it would be over lunch time. I got to the airport spotting area with plenty of time to spare and with camera eye-piece glued to my eye, started shooting as she was on her take off role and took to the air. After getting home and looking at the results, I finally had that one perfect shot for myself - "Pinky" in all her glory.

Phil Derner, founder of NYCAviation.com, my favorite website wrote the following.

Before I got my first DSLR, I've been watching the skies for a several years, planning my shots before I knew if/when I'd ever even get a camera. In the Spring of '04, I got a Canon 10D and went to work.

One of those hopeful shots was an LGA sunset shot with a Delta 767.I knew a spot that I could perch myself up on to line myself up with La Guardia's runway 13/31, and I waited until the end of June/early July so that the sun was setting as far up north on the horizon as it would to be behind planes departing toward me on rwy 13.

My variables were the weather, runway usage and Delta 767 schedule, as they were the only airline that operated the larger 767 at LGA, and I needed a sizable aircraft as I'd be pushing the limited of my 100-400mm lens. I spent two weeks monitoring cloud coverage and LGA ATIS until July 8, and I made sure I was ready. The sun was fading fast and the 767 to ATL was taxiing out slowly. It finally turned onto the active and came towards me. I fired off a few shots and only one came out properly exposed because of the varying sunset light intensities. I knew I had the shot I wanted and I had a big grin on my face the whole way home.

Looking back, the quality isn't the greatest on the shot. I wish the shadows were darker, that there was less grain and that it was a tad more crisp. Regardless, I can still feel the warm air from that day and how excited I was, and I'm still proud of the shot.

Another shot that I had planned for a while was of an American 737 against a larger NYC skyline. I had grown up playing on the College Point shore overlooking La Guardia and in my photo-planning, I knew that I could get a runway 31 arrival at LGA passing right in front of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings if I worked it all out properly.

There were several challenges here. First I had to find the specific shoreline spot that offered me the right angle and aircraft height in the glideslope that layered the buildings into the frame just so. Some of the shoreline was at sea level, and some spots were on high cliffs 25 feet above the rocks. The other issue was sun position; I needed a very clear day in the Spring when the sun rose further to the north and crossed the sky slowly, because nothing larger than a regional jet arrived until 9:30-10am, and that was also about the time that aircraft became backlit, potentially ruining my chances.

I chose the 737 because it's a little smaller than the 757, which would allow for a tighter shot against the skyline which was a bit in the distance from my shoreline, allowing it all to fit just right.

May 29 of 2004 was the day for this one. Weather and runway usage working in my favor, I picked my spot and hoped that any AA737s that came in were not too high or too low, and I got one that did just what I'd hoped. I knew I had created what I envisioned.

I have many photos that are of better quality, more crisp, better colors, more "alive", but this is still my flagship photo. American Airlines, my city skyline, taken from my town. Doesn't get much better for me.

Adam Trilling wrote:

I'm not sure this qualifies as "always wanted to get", but the story of how I spent a whole weekend trying to get a usable shot of N106US might be interesting...it's definitely my hottest shot.
Thursday afternoon, about 3:30 PM. I'm at work, and we start hearing rumors that there's a plane in the Hudson. At that point, nobody really knew anything...like what kind of plane it was. My co-workers, who know what I do in my spare time, were all asking why I was still at work instead of running out to take pictures. There was a simple reason why: my camera was at home. After a couple of hours, I found out that the plane had been moored near Battery Park. The chase was on.
On Thursday night, the plane was indeed there, but the entire surrounding area was roped off by the police. I went across the river to try to get a better view.
The next morning, I tried again. The plane hadn't moved, and the surrounded area was still roped off. So, again, I took a trip across the river, and learned a very interesting lesson...heat haze can be a serious problem even when it's 12 degrees outside.
Various emergency authorities spent most of Saturday trying to get the plane out of the water without breaking it. Not an easy thing to do :) They didn't make much progress...they finally got the plane out of the water and on to a barge well after midnight, and well after most of the spotters had given up and gone home. Sunday morning, it was fortunately much warmer outside. The plane was on a barge, and there was a much smaller area roped off, but I still couldn't get a clear shot from the Manhattan side, so one more trip to New Jersey. As it happened, I ran into Moose, who gave me a ride.
Finally, I got my shot.

And finally, Andy - is still searching for the shot...

I would say the shot I will always lust after will be "the one that got away" from me, Wunala Dreaming arriving on 31R at JFK during a perfect sunset. We were spotting at Firestone and were approached by one of the Nassau County PD's least finest officers who became very aggressive and practically ordered us to leave, lest he pursue "further investigation" against us. We left and I drove some fellow spotters back to JFK to catch the airtrain, when who shows up landing on 31R in this gorgeous golden sunset lighting? Yup, Wunala Dreaming. There were hearts breaking in that car, lol, but especially mine because now that I live in Atlanta, I have no hope of getting a shot of Wunala unless I head to LAX. It will be a shot I will long seek again, but will likely never have.

Here is Wunala at JFK - sorry Andy, I had to post a shot (credit for the picture to Eric - another of our website crew).

Thanks to my friends for their input - all are great photographers and even more, great friends. Hopefully, the weather in South Florida is going to improve soon - the lucky guys in New York have been getting tremendous weather. I need to get out shooting again...the shutter finger is itching.....

A photographers pet peeve - called - Epic Fail

2009-06-30T21:01:00.002-04:00

As I sit to write this, the rains of South Florida continue to beat down on the windows of the house. This is the time of year that makes it difficult for pictures in this part of the world - continuous rainy days. So, I thought I'd devote this blog entry to the real pet peeve of a photographer -the Epic Fail pictures. In this day and age of digital photography, it's not so much of a problem as it used to be in the days of film shooting. There - you could not have the do-overs that we get in digital photography. But, they still are a pain when you think you have the perfect shot, only to find out later - the one you wanted is the Epic Fail. This really is a tongue-in-cheek poke at myself because the majority of Epic Fails can be avoided by really checking your location and conditions.

There are two main categories I place the Epic Fail pictures into - man made and nature. To start with the nature, the leader in this category is weather. While we know when the weather is bad and we don't go shooting, there is always the errant cloud or rain storm that can sneak into the picture and just when you think you have that shot....darkness - and all the editing in the world will probably not save the shot.

Just as clouds can be the cause of the Epic Fail, the lack of clouds and heat can be another cause. Heat distortion is the enemy of the photographer. It is really only discovered when you get back to edit the shots. There are the obvious heat distortion shots that you won't take - aircraft on an obviously heat distorted runway. But, those in the sky don't obviously show until editing, and then, when you think that you have the perfect shot....distortion lines everywhere...

The rest of my definitions of Epic Fail fall into the man made variety. This can be anything from an errant road sign to a tree, another aircraft in the way to equipment. Road signs are everywhere. Roads are all around airports - it's how we get to our photography locations. So, oblivious of location, you are panning some shots of an aircraft.....sign blockage...

In the same way that signs are on roads close to an airport, so equipment is all over an airport. This can range from baggage carts, to fuelers, or, and I hated this this week, machinery repairing runways and taxiways. Here I was, shooting the brand new jetBlue logojet, I get back to look at the pictures....and....Epic Fail....machinery.

The same goes for trees, that tend to shoot up around airports as well....

Finally, there are the two Epic Fails that are totally man and photographer made - but Epic Fails still. The cut off....

And the aircraft obstruction.....

The Epic Fail - something we always try to avoid, but sometimes can't.

There is one good bit of news for the photographers around the country - the first Continental retro colors jet is plying the airways of the country - we will all be out trying to get a decent non-Fail shot of her. All we need in South Florida now is the rain to go away....

Another week behind the camera lens over....

Searching for.....the story on special schemes

2009-06-17T21:35:00.004-04:00

One of the more interesting sides of spotting and photography is the search for those special schemes that airlines have out there. What is a special scheme for a spotter/photographer - very simply put (and this is my definition :) ), it's a color scheme on an aircraft that isn't in the normal color scheme of the airline. These special scheme can range from something simple like affiliation to an alliance like Star Alliance (as shown below on a US Airways B757), SkyTeam or oneWorld to a specific scheme that an airline paints on a plane to honor a special place (as shown below the Star Alliance - Southwest's Shamu honoring SeaWorld).

Some airlines honor sports teams like US Airways with their series of NFL teams that are located at their hub airports - Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers and Carolina Panthers (shown below)

Southwest, apart from the Shamu planes, has a great deal of other special schemes, honoring states (as shown below with the Arizona One aircraft), but they take special schemes a lot further. They have Silver One which represents their 25th anniversary and others in totally special paint schemes. However, they also name the standard Canyon Blue and Yellow color schemes with names on the planes - such as the "Nolan Ryan Express" which honors that great baseball pitcher, a decal honoring the Tuskegee airmen, the "Southwest Classic" decal that bears the registration honoring executive Colleen Barrett and things like "Adopt-A-Pilot" decals. That's the one thing about spotting Southwest - you never know what will come in and if it isn't an obvious scheme - only when they get close will you see lettering on the nose and the camera has to come out quickly.

One deviation from the "special" scheme aircraft is Frontier. What makes them so unique is that every tail on all of their aircraft is painted with different animals (as shown below with the Walrus scheme). It makes it very interesting to catch them because of the diversity of the schemes. However, you can make sure you don't go running out for each Frontier flight. A novel innovation on their web site Frontier Airlines is when you track the status of the flight, they will show the tail scheme that is meant to be operating that flight. Very rarely is it wrong - a little spotters trick I found out about!.

There are three other types of special schemes that I want to touch om. The first is one that I think is close to a lot of people's hearts and those are the schemes that honor special causes. Delta, American and Quantaslink (you'll have to go to Australia to get this one) have honored the Susan G. Komen Foundation with different breast cancer awareness schemes. The first to do this was Delta with a pink Song aircraft that with the demise of Song became pink Delta, or as she is known in our family, Pinky. For the longest time, this was the top of my hit list of special schemes until one very special day at Palm Beach International when I caught her.

American have pink sashes on several different aircraft types and they are always a prized catch. American has followed another cause of the soldiers serving overseas with a lone Boeing 757 with yellow ribbon on the tail. Delta also has a single Boeing 767-300 honoring Habitat for Humanity.

Next, there are the alliance schemes - I noted above with the US Airways Boeing 757 in Star Alliance. All the members of the alliance have at least one aircraft in this color scheme and they are always a great catch to get. Next was oneWorld with a single title on the aircraft of members of this alliance. American has gone a little further with this and have a glorious paint scheme for oneWorld on a Boeing 777 (N791AN), although I have heard this scheme is going to go on a few other different aircraft types. The last of the alliances to get scheme planes has been SkyTeam. Delta's first aircraft was a Boeing 767-400 (N844MH). I'm not sure if the scheme is going to go on any of their other types - I can only hope because N844MH only seems to be on international routes and if you can't get to JFK or Atlanta, you won't catch her. Continental is due to join Star Alliance last this year - I only hope they paint different types with a Star Alliance scheme.

The final type of special schemes that I want to note is the retro schemes. Airlines have been absorbed into other airlines, or old schemes seem to be a favorite. A large number of the worlds airlines have started to introduce retro schemes. US Airways have some of the airlines that were absorbed over the years, PSA, Allegheny and Piedmont (shown below).

American also has a Boeing 737 in retro Astrojet colors that is a great catch. It's rumored that Continental is going to paint 4 B737-900's in retro colors - I hope that going to be a reality as I'd love to get those in my collection,

Hopefully that gives a little insight into the special schemes that daily ply the skies - they are rare to catch, and when you do get them, it makes it some much more special.

Weather is still a bit of a downer at the moment - FLL has been mainly cloudy. Hopefully, it will get a little better over the next few weeks. Another week behind the camera lens over....

Introduction to PBIA - Palm Beach International Airport

2009-06-07T19:56:00.004-04:00

With the weather this week not playing at all with the ability to spot and a lot of things going on like my son's Pre-K graduation, I'm again forced to go to a back up topic. A little while ago, I gave an introduction to Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale International Airport - where I spend a great deal of my spotting time during the week. My actual home airport (about 10 minutes drive) is Palm Beach International Airport. This is where I spend my spotting time when at home - weekends and holidays.

The airport is located a few miles south west of the center of the city of West Palm Beach. It is bordered by Australian Ave which becomes Congress Ave on the east, Military Trail on the west, Belvedere Road on the north and Southern Boulevard on the south. There is really only one official spotting/viewing location and that is a viewing park very similar to the one in Ft Lauderdale. It is located on the south side of the airport just off the perimeter road that runs parallel to Southern Boulevard. However, I have also spotted in a couple of other locations and been successful in some good shots. From the viewing park, you look north across the main runway 9L/27R towards the terminal.

There is a smaller second runway (that is currently undergoing discussions on lengthening and widening to a commercial runway) that handles small propeller driven aircraft - that is 9R/27L.

From the viewing park, the typical pictures that will be taken will be for runway 9L, departures to the east, similar to this Continental B737-500.

Also taken from this spot for the 9L departures will be all the biz-jets (and there are PLENTY) of them at PBIA taxiing from some of the stands out to the runway.

Typically, if the operations are landing/taking off to the west, this isn't too good a spot as due to the usual heat haze that exists around the Palm Beach airport, the pictures suffer from the same heat haze. With the easterly operations at PBIA however, the viewing park doesn't allow for landing/approach shots at all. There used to be the most amazing restaurant located next to Flight Safety International that has unfortunately closed. However, the parking for the old restaurant still exists and I have had some luck, on quiet weekends in getting some landing shots from here, as seen with this Sun Country B737-800.

To the west of Military Trail as some roads that travel west/east and a couple of them run perfectly parallel to the approach for 9L. There unfortunately is no real place to park so parking for long periods of time is not really a possibility. However, I have managed to catch some quick approach shots from these side roads, as with this US Airways Pittsburgh Steelers logo jet.
As noted above, when the operations are westerly, there is no really good spot next to the airport that allows for decent shots. However, to the east of Australian Ave/Congress Ave is the Airport Hilton. It does have a lovely big parking lot and I've sat there for short periods of time to catch some arrivals, as shown with this Kalitta Charters II B727-200F (which is a frequent visitor to PBIA in November through May with the whole equestrian circuit that moves to the Palm Beach area).

The final spot that I have had pretty good success with has been on the top of the parking garage at PBIA. This is right above the terminals and affords good photography access to the ramps and the active runway. The only downside is that the photography window on top of the garage is very small. It can get very top lit very quickly and as with the westerly operations on the other side of the field, heat hazed very quickly as well. It does however tend to lead to some good opportunity shots, as with these three Delta MD-80's that I caught lined up one day.

A final note about PBIA - always expect the unexpected! A very frequent visitor to PBIA is Donald Trump with his Mar-a-largo mansion being close by.

But, there can be some amazing sights to be seen. Unfortunately no picture, but on a couple of occasions I have seen the large Russian Antonov AN-124 Ruslan's in PBI. Earlier this year, Vice President Biden made a weekend trip to PBI which brought in Air Force Two.

But, most of all, with all the bizjet traffic into PBIA, you can see all sorts of different types of bizjets - from the Gulfstreams (as above) to the old B737-200's

Hopefully, I've been able to give a little insight into PBIA and the happenings at the airport. Hopefully, this week the weather will improve a little for some shots at FLL and maybe even some back at PBIA and another week behind the camera lens will be done....

Air France 447 - RIP

2009-06-01T21:26:00.002-04:00

I am not an expert - I am not a pilot - I cannot even begin to imagine what happened, what forces existed in those thunderstorms, what caused this terrible tragedy. There are a number of pilot blogs that I went straight to this evening to see what comments were posted. From all that are out there, I found a great deal of sense and straight thinking from Captain Dave's blog.

Our prayers and condolences go to all those affected by this terrible tragedy. Normal blog service will resume later this week.

Weather, NFL Owners, weather, weather and weather...

2009-05-27T12:49:00.004-04:00

Well, the Memorial Day weekend with the trip to St Louis is over - what a wonderful weekend and like all wonderful weekends, they have to come to an end. I will say that the hospitality on Southwest, albeit timing a little off because of weather (see below), was great! Everyone was very friendly, the seats comfortable, and, the most important of all, we got to our destinations with our luggage!!

Before the weekend weather saga though, last week, for those that follow the National Football League, the owners held a two day meeting in Ft Lauderdale. Whenever the owners are in any town, there is always a very nice parade of expensive metal in town. This meeting was no different. While I was able to capture 5 of them in the camera lens, I did see about 4 others. The five that I was able to catch were:

Jerry Jones (Dallas Cowboys)

Dan Snyder (Washington Redskins)

Jim Irsay (Indianapolis Colts)

The Wilf family (Minnesota Vikings)

Alex Spanos (San Diego Chargers)

The weekend trip to St Louis started off on Thursday evening with an hour delayed flight due to weather. I will say that Southwest did keep us well informed of the delay, when boarding would start, etc. The flight itself was a very comfortable 2 1/2 hour flight and getting in later wasn't too much of an issue except for a 5 year old that fell asleep 1/2 hour before landing and was very difficult to wake up! After an amazing weekend, we ended up back at Lambert St Louis International airport for the return trip home on Tuesday. Again, the plane was late - this time 45 minutes because of bad weather when the flight left Houston, but the interesting part was after we took off. Two comfortable hours down to Florida and then the captain announced that we were going into a holding pattern over Fort Myers as weather (big storms!) had closed both Miami and Ft Lauderdale. We would have been happy to divert to West Palm Beach and get off and go home from there but no luck. After 30 minutes of the holding pattern, the captain announced we were going to land at Fort Myers for fuel as he was getting a little low and not knowing when Ft Lauderdale would open up again. So, a smooth landing onto runway 24 at Fort Myers and of course, you can imagine the volume of talking on the plane as everyone took out cell phones to let family, friends, offices know we were going to be late. After about 30 minutes on the ground at Fort Myers, the captain announced that we were cleared to go to Ft Lauderdale and off we went, followed by a US Airways A319 that had obviously suffered the same kind of delay as they landed behind us at Ft Lauderdale. So, finally, 3 hours late to the minute, we were heading off the plane, to the car and the wet road home to West Palm Beach.

One thing about both flights reinforced to me how much people totally ignore signs, warnings, verbal commands, etc, and I'm sure that all flight crew (cockpit and attendants) will agree! No matter when the seat belt sign was on, no matter how many times people were asked not to form a line at the front of the plane when the front lavatory was in use, no matter how many repeated announcements over the intercom, it is truly amazing how many people think it does not apply to them. You only have to look out of the window to see how threatening the weather is or how close we are to landing and there goes Joe or Sally Public traipsing up the aisle because they are more important than any safety sign/warning/announcement and are going to burst. There is already one case under investigation by the NTSB of warning signs and the outcome of them, yet most people do not think further than 2 seconds ahead. I really take my hats off to flight attendants who have to deal with these people - I can only imagine the comments/abuse/threats they get because someones bladder is about to burst - such a silly thing that can have such a potentially life changing outcome. Okay - I'm off my soap box now.

The weather in the south of Florida continues with rain, rain and more rain - I can only wonder the next time my camera lens will be pointed at aircraft. In the meantime, another week behind the camera lens over.

Florida rainy season has started, ATC, and some information...

2009-05-17T19:30:00.008-04:00

Well, according to the National Weather Service, the rainy season in Florida has started - it started last Monday. And, what has been evident is that it has decided to show itself at the most inopportune moments - like my lunch times that I get to go spotting at Ft Lauderdale!!

This week however, I was able to get out for a couple of days and it made for some interesting times. On one day, Tuesday, a rain storm formed to the west of the airport and aircraft were starting to fly through the storm. It led to one interesting conversion on the scanner:

FLL Lady Controller: Cactus 1995 (US Airways for those that don't know the calls signs - A 737-400 on approach), how was the rain storm?
Cactus 1995: Wet.
FLL Lady Controller: (Laughing) I guess I deserved that.
Cactus 1995: If you wanted to know the conditions, it was moderate rain and no speed variation and no turbulence

After the flight landed,

FLL Lady Controller: Cactus 1995, exit at Bravo 4, dry off, turn on Bravo and contact ramp control.

The storm was very evident as it grew in intesity a little, as shown behind this Air Canada A320 that was landing.

Which brings me to an interesting topic - the subject of air traffic controllers. I happen to know one who works at Newark and is one of my New York photography friends. Having a scanner makes it more intersting for spotting as I get to hear all the conversations, and there are funny ones, frustrated ones, angry ones and the normal run of the mill conversations which are by far in the majority. However, there are always controllers that seem to go the extra mile for crews - wishing them good flights, safe flights, thanking them for help, etc. At Ft Lauderdale, I have come to recognize two voices in particular, the lady from the conversation above and one gentleman who is always friendly. If anyone knows any of the people in the tower at Ft Lauderdale, I'd love to get a chance to meet these folks sometime - maybe even an interview for the blog - please contact me. Another case in point this past week, with the same lady controller, a US Airways A320 was on approach and a Southwest B737 took a little longer to role and take off, so she was forced to call a go-around for the US Airways flight.

As soon as the flight came around and landed, she gave them runway exit instructions and then immediately apologized for the go-around - at which point, the reply from the flight crew was "No problem". In a world where a lot of common decency has gone by the wayside, it's so nice to see things like this happen.

Special schemes this past week - only two that I caught, US Airways brought in the Carolina Panthers scheme

And Southwest brought in the Triple Crown plane - this I have shot before, but it has grown a pair of winglets since I last saw it.

Finally, this week, I got a new piece of equipment for my camera - a quick draw strap.

I have an Uncle (related by marriage) that is a professional photographer and adventurer. He sells these straps on his web site Roger Moore Photography and has some very interesting videos about the strap and the technique of hip shots - something I am going to try while we are away in St Louis for Memorial Day weekend. The strap is cheap at the price (I definately think) for $22.95. I urge all photographers who hate the strap around your neck to go right over to Roger's web site and check the strap out.

As noted above, this weekend is a holiday weekend in the US - Memorial Day, and our family will be sampling some Southwest hospitality between Ft Lauderdale and St Louis, so the blog may be a little later next week....

Another week behind the camera lens gone.....

Introduction to Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale International Airport

2009-05-09T08:50:00.004-04:00

It has been a very uneventful week as far as special schemes or events (apart from one at the bottom of this entry), so I thought I would introduce you all to spotting at Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale International Airport (KFLL).

The airport itself is located just south of the city of Ft Lauderdale in the suburb of Hollywood. It is bordered by Interstate95 on the west side, US highway 1 on the east, Interstate 595 on the north and Griffin Road on the south. There really are only two spotting locations at FLL - the viewing park on the south west corner of the airport just off Perimeter Road and the parking garages at the terminals, which are on the south east side of the airport. The viewing park is best for landing shots and departure taxi shots for runway 9L and take off shots from runway 27R while the parking garage is best for take off shots from runway 9L, landing shots on runway 27R and then general taxi and ramp activity.

On the whole, FLL likes to keep activity on the east bound runways (9L and 9R), so the viewing park is the preferred spot. This is the viewing spot.

The park bench that is on the right side of the picture is usual the congregating point for photographers. From this point, you can shoot over the fence (usually with a ladder or standing on the bench) or through the fence for taxi shots. As mentioned before, FLL is bordered by I-95 on the west side, and the approach is right over the Interstate.

Unless the photographer has a very long lens and no heat haze, close up shots over the Interstate are not the best. We usually wait until they are over the threshold of the runway or close to touch down shown here (with the Frontier Hare tail scheme).

Most of the landing shots at FLL will be in the area of this shot. There are two taxiways for departures to taxi to the runway holding point and these afford great close up shots - as seen with this very shiny American B738 (if anyone knows any of the crew of flight 711 FLL-DFW on 5/8/2009 and they would like a larger shot of this - please have them email me!) as it taxies over the holding point to the runway.

The parking garage can allow for some great take off shots, particularly if it's a long take off role and the city of Ft Lauderdale is in the background. The hangars on the north side of the airport also allow a nice backdrop, as shown with this airTran B717 lifting off.

I hope this has given a little introduction to FLL where I tend to spend the majority of my spotting time.

I did mention one special spotting scheme - this week, after having missed it several times recently, I did manage to catch Southwest's 25th anniversary Silver One scheme.

Another week behind the camera lens over.....till next week.

Quiet week after New York..

2009-05-02T08:55:00.006-04:00

It's been a very quiet week this week. After coming home from New York last week with so many pictures to edit, I got laid low by the flu as well (not "that" kind thank goodness), but enough to keep at home for a couple of days.

So, I thought I'd post a few more of the pictures from the New York trip. I've shot at quite a few airports around the world (and hope to shoot a lot more over time!) and I have to say that New York's John F Kennedy International is my favorite so far. There are a lot that I have not shot at that I think would top JFK at some point (Innsbruck, London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dubai are a few that come to mind), but there is such a variety at JFK that always makes it interesting - one of note even this week (although I hear the weather was the worst) was Etihad changing from the A340-500 to the A340-600 and bringing in it's Formula One color scheme (A6-EHJ). I'm sure there are plenty of other world cities with this amount of variety (Heathrow immediately comes to mind).

But, for now, JFK has to be my top airport. If I were to rank other's I've been to, Anchorage (PANC) would be second, Miami (KMIA) 3rd with Johannesburg (FAJS) and London Gatwick (ECGG) rounding off the top 5 of airports I've been to and shot at.

So, the variety at JFK. There is the old

The New

The small

And the huge

Next week, I'm sure I'll be able to get back to FLL for some more of the regular shooting.

New York's John F Kennedy International 4/25-4/26

2009-04-27T21:37:00.002-04:00

Well, unfortunately, the weekend is over and I sit back in West Palm Beach editing the pictures and reminding myself of all that I saw over the weekend - and what a great weekend it was.

The weekend started with the first flight of the day from PBI to JFK. The flight on the whole was great - just one flight attendant brought a bit of a downer to the flight - I won't go into details here but needless to say, jetBlue have heard about it already. I'm not one to normally complain, but, in this case I felt it was warranted. My friend Andy picked me up from the new T-5 at JFK - wow - what a nice terminal! I really like it! And - so the weekend game of runway hunting started. We started off at Bayswater Park and were there 5 minutes before the first runway change happened - and so off we head to the spotting location for runway 31R. There it was time to hook up with some more friends to enjoy the morning/afternoon.

We spent a good deal of time there - a lot of arrivals - some old - some new, before the obligatory runway change to 22L (22R was closed for repairs). Off to a location called the Mounds to catch the European arrivals - and - hopefully the A380. I will say that the minute I heard the callsign "Emirates 201 Super" and the landing instruction "VOR/DME runway 22L", I was - well, my friends will say- I get a little over-excited! And, she came in - right in front of us in perfect light.

After the runway change again to 13's, we headed back to Bayswater park to catch the international departures for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, it turned out that all the pictures were heat hazed - a pity - we got some lovely departures - A340's that crawled into the sky at such a low vertical rate, some that literally jumped off the runway and climbed straight out. Total variety! It was time for dinner after that - and - another great evening of conversation and editing and another great day was over.

Sunday morning was a glorious morning - and they were on the 31's from the start. We tried one new location that yielded some great shots - like the Air India B777-200LR arriving from Mumbai.

Once the light was off for that location, we headed off to the same spot as Saturday morning to get some more arrivals.

Then - of course, the runway change happened - and off we headed to the Mounds again for the European arrivals that yielded another A380 and a whole lot more of the same stuff as normal.

In no time, it was time to head back to the airport and catch my flight back to West Palm Beach - this time an awesome flight! We followed out the NWA Amsterdam flight (this picture is for the NWA captain that will soon start a few of these legs) and a busy international ramp taken on our departure.

The above are just some of the 40+ pics that I have edited for upload to jetPhotos - please check the link on my profile to see the rest when they are uploaded over the next couple of weeks.

It really was another fantastic weekend - to all the guys - Kenny, Moose, Tom, Joe, Nick, Adam, Sergio, Gordons (Jr and Sr) - it really was a great weekend again! Andy - of course- thanks for everything my friend!

For anyone considering a spotting trip to the New York area - go to http://www.nycaviation.com - all of us are on there - ready to help anyone coming to town!

Not totally quiet this week

2009-04-25T05:08:00.003-04:00

This is written as I sit at gate B2 at Palm Beach International awaiting the departure of jetBlue flight 830 to New York's JF Kennedy International for another spotting and shooting weekend in New York - it looks like a really good weekened weather-wise, so I'm hoping for some great shooting.

This week, 3 lunch times were spent at Ft Lauderdale International - two at the spotting location at the end of runway 9L and one at the Hibiscus parking garage. The lunchtime I'd spent at the parking garage started out as westerly operations using 27R at the arrival/departure runway - as soon as I got to the top of hte parking garage - of course - they did a runway swap and seeing as I was there, I thought I might ats well stay. This was of course, the more interesting of the 3 days - the other two were the usual departures/arrivals - no special schemes or anthing like that. However, Wednesday (the garage day) was more interesting. As I got onto the top of the parking garage, I could see an interesting Embraer E-190 parked at Sheltair - I've never seen a private E-190 before - as it turned out, it was one of the Embraer corporate jets - and departed while I was there which gave this nice shot.

While watching the rest of the arrivals/departures, I happened to turn around and see a C-130 Hercules on approach to runweay 9R. For anyone that knows Ft Lauderdale, 9R is usually for B-1900's, smaller corporate jets, propellor aircraft and things of that size. So to see a C-130 on approach was very interesting. I think he realized the size of the runway as he executed a go-around at about 500ft, circled and landed on 9L. Now - these C-130's are very rarely in private schemes - usually assicoated with the government somehow - this is registered to an obscure LLC based in Wilmington, DE

Finally, flying high above Ft Lauderdale that was was a sky writer - not too sure what type of plane was doing it - but - they left a great images in the sky at one point - I think this will become the new header picture for the blog soon!

Now it's almost time to board for NY - I'm hoping that Emirates has put the A380 on todaty - it's the last chance I'll get to see it - hopefully Quantas has put Wunala Dreaming (search for that one - it's a stunning scheme) on, and the rest of the spotting gods will be good to me as well!

I'll post more from NY when I get home on Sunday evening.

April 19....quiet week

2009-04-19T18:59:00.002-04:00

It's really been a quiet week this week past. A couple of days have not even been worth going to Ft Lauderdale at lunchtime because of the weather - there has been a great deal of down weather - clouds - even rain.

One slightly brighter day was Friday. Finally, we were off the westerly ops - back to 9L (pretty much the whole week has been 27R - westerly operations) and so headed up for a quick lunchtime. On getting there, there was one other person with a Canon with a big lens and we struck up a conversation pretty quickly. It turned out to be Mark Taylor from Sydney Spotters group who was in town working in Miami and had taken some time to travel up to Ft Lauderdale. He showed off some of the great pictures from his trip to South America and the US (I think he was heading back to Sydney today on V Australia). It turned out to be a great lunch time talking about locations, cities, and just generally planes. The only real thing of interest was jetBlue's 100th A320 which was departing.

From talking to some people earlier in the week, I wish I'd been at FLL last weekend - there were Southwest special schemes, an Air Canada Star Alliance, Belgian Air Force A310 - a really busy weekend it seems.

This week, hopefully the weather will play along for some lunchtime trips and hopefully some nice sights. In the meantime, the countdown is also on for next weekends trip to New York (leaving on jetBlue 830 at 6am on Saturday morning - anyone with contacts get me a jumpseat trip??? *LOL*...just kidding!!). So far, the AccuWeather forecast looks ok for Saturday (I HAVE to get the Emirates A380 - it will be my last chance at JFK to get it) and not too good for Sunday - but it's a whole week ahead - hopefully it will change for the better!

My Top 5 Favorites To Date

2009-04-11T08:54:00.003-04:00

Having gotten a little more used to posting on here, I thought I would add my top 5 favorite pictures that I have taken to date of the 502 on http://www.jetPhotos.net with a little explanation as to why they are my favorites.

Taking advantage of 3 frequent flyer miles tickets, our family took a trip to Alaska - somewhere we wanted to explore and the pictures I have seen from Anchorage (PANC) have always been spectacular. At first on this trip, I thought I would never have a chance to shoot PANC as the weather was not friendly at all - a lot of cloud and rain, but as this was fall (September), I guess it was a little expected. However, on the Sunday morning of the weekend, there was some sun in the sky, so camera bag in hand, I headed up to one of the spotting locations for what turned out to be 2 hours of great activity. I shot a lot of stuff that I wouldn't normally see - Alaska (including the Disney and Boeing Dreamliner special schemes, Asia cargo, etc) but, this shot was probably one of the first I shot that morning. I didn't have a scanner with me and the first part of the runway was totally hidden, so all you hear is engines in reverse thrust and wonder what is it. A rain shower had just passed and the sun was out again and I hear 4 loud engines in reverse - pick up the camera and get ready to shoot. As this Cathay B744BCF appeared, I just started shooting. When I got home and started editing the shots from PANC, this one in particular took me right back to standing at that spot shooting the pictures. Full right rudder and heavy runway spray just made it my number 1 favorite shot.

One of my guilty pleasure of my hobby is that I get to take some trips just for shooting, and so far, they have always taken me to New York to shoot at La Guardia (KLGA) and John F. Kennedy (KJFK). As I noted in the first post when I opened this blog, I belong to a website in New York (http://www.nycaviation.com) and have an amazing group of friends that I really enjoy shooting with. This shot was taken on my second trip to New York. I normally try to fly jetBlue direct from PBI into JFK (just a personal preference and I do enjoy jetBlue), but on this occasion, because of a little fare war, I flew Spirit into LGA. After an amazing weekend of shooting, I was on a Spirit A321 back to Ft Lauderdale. We took off from runway 13 at LGA and turned back over the field. As we came abreast of LGA, I just started shooting and loved this result to make it my 2nd favorite. This is also the only picture that I have sold as well which makes it also a little more special.

When I first moved to West Palm Beach, I had been shooting with a Minolta P&S and for a birthday, I received my Nikon DSLR that I shoot with now. Of course, the first thing to do when getting a new camera is to shoot! This was one of those timing things. Taken from the parking garage at PBI, I got 3 MD-80's in a row - one pushing off the stand, the second waiting for that spot and the third in reverse thrust on runway 9L. The timing of this made it my 3rd favorite.

On my last photography trip to New York, I had the most amazing experience - the ability to shoot right next to the runways and taxiways on the field. Having lived in South Africa for the majority of my life, I'm always looking out for SAA planes. This one, SA204 to Dakar and Johannesburg, was a late afternoon departure taxiing out to runway 4L for departure, and just the ability to shoot it right next to the taxiway was an amazing thrill. The light, plane and experience made this my 4th favorite.

And to the 5th favorite. This was taken on the same Alaska trip as my 1st favorite. From Palm Beach, to get to Anchorage, we flew Continental to Houston, and then Continental from Houston via Seattle to Anchorage. Flying into Seattle in the very late afternoon gave me this amazing shot of a sunset light drenched Mt Ranier over the wing of the B757-300. I just love the light and the mountain over the wing which put it as my 5th favorite.

Well, those of my fav 5 pictures - there is another trip to New York on 25/26 April (two weeks time), so maybe there will have to be a top 10 soon!

FLL 4/9/2009

2009-04-09T22:29:00.004-04:00

A cold front went through Florida this week - bringing some lovely cool weather (in the 70's) and after a couple of days of not being able to make it out to FLL, this stunning day I could not miss - noon temperature at 76 F and lovely bright light for digital photography. I will say that this, according to a colleague who shoots slides, it only time for digital - he has packed his camera away until September.

Flightaware was my friend today as well - scrolling through the due arrivals showed a Sun Country B737-700 on the board for arrival. This is a rare occurrence for FLL - SCX doesn't get in here too often. It was arriving from Atlantic City (guess it was a gamblers charter) and later went off to Chicago (KORD). I had also received an ACARS alert for the US Airways Pittsburgh Steelers scheme (N733UW) that had arrived and was due out back to DCA arround noon. As I have shot this at PBI (http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6518111&nseq=1), I wasn't too worried when I drove over the bridge towards the viewing spot and saw it lining up on 9L.

The SCX B737 was great to catch - it is an ex Air Berlin (D-ABBV) and Air Astana (P4-CAS) jet - that hasn't been with SCX for too long. What makes it also a good catch is that it's a very long time since I have seen a -700 series in the US without winglets - the last one I remember is N271LV that went from Ford Motor Corporation to Southwest. I'm sure SCX will add the winglets to it soon, but it's nice to catch it without.

A couple of very nice biz-jets made for a nice day as well - I really love the color scheme of the Legacy - almost like Embraer's demonstration color scheme - and then the Challenger came from Montgomery AL - Colonial Bank.

It's a long weekend for me - no work Good Friday, so maybe over the weekend, weather permitting, I might go out and see what's happening at PBI.

FLL 4/6/2009 - Hot Day!

2009-04-06T21:16:00.003-04:00

I should have known actually -winds out of the west, hot as heck - I knew FLL would be on westerly operations using 27R for main operations. But, it was worth the look. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the one unusual operation that came in was in dark cloud conditions. I wish it had in good light as it was a private Embraer Legacy - N900EM - ECW Investments from Las Vegas - a very different color scheme - pictures that some lucky people have of it are here (http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?aircraft=-2&airline=-2&country=-2&photog=-2&category=-2&year=-2&keywordrange=all&keywordlimiter=2&keywords=N900EM&sort=1&genre=1&size=-2&mainsearch=search&displaymode=1&display=15). Add it to my wish list for next time. Apart from that, it was all the usual suspects for lunchtime operations - plain canyon blue Southwest, standard jetBlue. Tonight, a cold front will be coming through South Florida - hopefully that will make for some better conditions and not so much heat distortion.

Starting the new blog

2009-04-05T20:30:00.001-04:00

After reading so many great blogs from people in the aviation industry, I decided it's time to document my amateur aviation photography. Hopefully through this, I'll be able to share spotting and photography trips, experiences and my ever growing collection of pictures on the internet at jetphotos.net (shameless self plug: http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?userid=1538).

While I'm based in South Florida (I know - duck - windy season will be here soon!), I do travel for photography trips when I can. My favorite place to visit is New York. I belong to a website that has an incredible group of followers (http://www.nycaviation.com/) and whenever I get to New York, there is always a good crowd of spotters. I have made some very good friends through that site and have learned a whole lot about about photography, editing, etc.

When I'm not travelling, I do all my spotting in South East Florida. I live very close to Palm Beach International Airport (KPBI) and my office is very close to Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale International Airport (KFLL). I also spend some time at Miami International (KMIA) when I can - it's a short drive. During the week, lunch times are quite often spent at the viewing area or on the parking garage of FLL looking for special schemes, interesting shots, etc. Over the weekend, I try to get to PBI whenever I can if there is something interesting - like this weekend, a Miami Air International B734 which was obviously on a charter routing. Flightaware is my friend! :)

So, in the future, I'll try and document my trips, visits, what there is. If any pilots happen to come across times when they've flown into the airports when I've been spotting and I might have a picture, I'm always glad to share! And if any of you are flying into one of my close by airports and would like a shot - let me know and I'll always try to get out there to capture the shot!

I'll also try to post some of the pictures here when I can.

Please come back and visit often! :)