Boeing 787-8 At Ft Lauderdale

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

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...

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!!!

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!!!!

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

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......

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.....