500 Traffic

 

The weekend of the Daytona 500 has come and gone.  Now we are in the midst of wonderful bike week.  When tens of thousands of people who think that riding a Harley is cool arrive in Daytona to clog up our traffic and create the most obnoxious noise pollution.  Can you tell I don't really appreciate them.  To keep my mind off them lets check out some highlights from the 500 weekend traffic.

 A  pretty nice look at a very nice Challenger business jet.  It shares the same fuselage as the CRJ line of aircraft, but has increased range due to its smaller size.  These are truly stand up cabins and seem to be great aircraft.  Bombardier CL-600 Challenger 604.

 This big boy is a Gulfstream G-550.  Massive and expensive business jet that can just about take you to any place you'd want to go in one hop.  Personally I'm a Falcon guy so this didn't interest me that much, but I know quite a few people who have interned at Gulfstream and absolutely love it.

 A regular Citation?  Nope, look a little closer and you'll find some military markings on it making it a Cessna UC-35.  I fiddled with Gimp for a little while trying to make it look cool, this is what I came up with.

 F/A-18B or D model Hornets you say?  Not quite these are from our neighbors from the north.  McDonnell Douglas CF-188 Hornets from way up at CFB Cold Lake, Alberta.  I was happy to see them because of my Canadian heritage and the fact that they are essentially US Navy aircraft.

 The Canadians departing.  One of my friends from school mentioned that there was a TV documentary made about the training of Canadian fighter pilots made for the Canadian Discovery Channel called, "Jetstream".  I haven't been able to find a stream for it yet, but the clips that are on youtube look amazing.

 The other Canadian Hornet departing.  I like the paint because they share it with their other British Commonwealth nation, Australia, who also operate the Hornet, and now the Super Hornet.

 Trying to make an Airbus product look cool.  Here a US Airways A319 is on short final for Runway 25R at KDAB.  This kind of traffic is somewhat unusual for Daytona and is received for times when there is a high volume of traffic, the races, spring break...

 Another cool set.  The first of what I call the real warbirds.  I think the guys that fly the T-34s around should not be considered in the warbird class.  They are simply Bonanzas with a different cockpit and tail.  These North American T-28 Trojans are absolutely awesome.  If I could choose any of the old training type aircraft to own and fly, this would be it for sure. 

 Finally some real Hornets.  They're McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornets from VFA-83 the "Rampagers."  On the aft portion of the fuselage where it might typically say Navy it instead says, "Ram On".  These guys did the loudest takeoff that I have ever had the privilege of witnessing.  They were so loud that you couldn't here yourself shouting over the engine noise. 

 This was a pretty boring shot of the Thunderbirds before I did some heavy editing.  I have probably 3,000 pictures of the Thunderbirds already and they are all very similar so I wanted to try something new.  Lockheed Martin F-16 Falcons.

This a completely unedited shot.  Not one of my best into the sun shots, but I still like it.  I also like the aircraft that is on final!  A Dassault 50 Falcon one of the locals.

I have some more shots from the weekend including some form New Smyrna where we saw some awesome WWII aircraft, but those will have to wait until my next post.

Mental Battle

For the past week I have been having this major draw to be outside and either in the water or mountains.  Unfortunately Florida only has one of these activities and so I have had to pacify myself by running on the beach.  I have been on the quest to buy a sea kayak for the last year or so, and each time they seem to slip out from under me.  I have called/emailed on a half a dozen boats, and each have been sold before I have had a chance to look at them.  I'm going to continue my search, and hopefully within a few weeks I'll find something.

In my search for these activities I have been captivated by sea kayaking videos that I have found on youtube.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with another post of some of the aircraft we saw this weekend at KDAB.  NASCAR was in town for the Daytona 500 and as a result the NASCAR air force was here too.  Some interesting visitors also made an appearance.  This weekend also saw an open house in New Smyrna where a pair of B-17s and a B-24 were on display, and a very rare aircraft was also spotted.

Massey Ranch Airpark

Well another day of flight team practice.  Although no longer on the team I still enjoy going to practice and helping out.  This weekend marks the 3rd weekend of practice since the team received the brand new Cessna 162 Skycatcher.  What a plane it has been so far.  No complaints from anyone really.  Over the last three weeks I have watched as our pilots have slowly taken to the aircraft and improved their landings.  The first week hardly anyone even landed in the 300 foot box.  Already by week 3 not only were most  in the box, but they were doing so despite very gusty conditions.  Massey has a burble not unlike that which carrier pilots experience from the bridge.  At either end of runway 18-36 there are trees, and the second you pass over those trees on short final all the flight characteristics of your approach change in an instant.

Phil and I were able to arrive early to practice because we drove separately this gave us a chance to take some shots in the early morning light with frost and dew still covering the aircraft.  The Commander above is probably the best shot of the morning.

The big thrill of the day was the first time that any of us have witnessed a jet at Massey Ranch.  A Cessna 500 Citation I departed around 0900.  You can see it being fueled and towed by a Ford diesel.

Next weekend is the Daytona 500 so be on the look out for shots of the Thunderbirds and the NASCAR air force.

Back to the Grind

This week marked the beginning of the end.  The end of my college career that is.  In just 5 short months I will be done with school and on to bigger and better things with the United States Navy, after a short time as an unemployed, bachelor of science in Aerospace Engineering holding, Ensign in the United States Navy waiting to go to flight school.

Until then I will muddle through school preparing for what I hope to be my first ever marathon.

This weekend I was able to attend flight team practice where the team for the first time flew their brand new Cessna 162 Skycatcher.  My first impressions of it are that although it isn't much of a looker it does seem to have good flying qualities.  It is considerably quieter than the Cessna 150s that we usually fly.  Although the Skycatcher was designed some 50 years after the 150 it doesn't seem to have as an advanced a wing from what is visually perceptible.  The 150 has a tapered wing, and the Skycatcher has a hershey bar wing with no taper.  In the coming weeks I hope to see much more of it as our pilots become better and better at flying it, and the team's second Skycatcher arrives in February.

This weekend has also brought renewed interest in photography and filming.  Yesterday the afternoon was spent at Spruce Creek building a gimble for a DIY steadicam.  The work continued today, and it should be operational tomorrow, so look for updates with that.  As we were working on it today we started thinking about camera cranes/booms and tomorrow the plan is to hash out a better idea of how to build one of those as well.  The goal is to have everything operational by next weekend.  Along the way we also ran across DIY plans for a dolly, so that may be included as well.

For my parting words I will share something I have come to realize based on two old phrases:

The first phrase is, "You can achieve anything you put your mind to".  No as a matter of fact you cannot.  It seems to be a motto that American's live by and the rest of the world already knows is not actually true.

The second phrase, "There is no such thing as a stupid/dumb question".  Oh yes there is, and far too often I have heard them.  My favorites are the ones that are asked mere seconds after someone has just finished explaining that very thing.  Why don't people just learn to listen?

And with that it is time to end, thank you, and goodnight.

The Beginning

A New Year and a New Beginning for this blog. I intend to be much more diligent with my posting and a lot more interesting. Many big changes are coming for me in the next year and this will be one of the places that I post these changes.

To start the year off on the right now I ran in a small fun run called the John Dailey Memorial One One Run. I ran it with my cousin Rebekah and her cousins Laura and Emily, their Dad Dan, and Emily's husband David. This was all sort of a last minute deal, I had not even heard about the run until the Thursday before it happened.

The day was a cold one, but with sunshine breaking through from time to time. No snow was on the ground as the rain and warm weather from the previous two days had washed it all away. I found out later that the wind chill was somewhere in the teens. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a shirt, they sold out because of the nearly 800 people that were there.

In the end I think I finished between 15-20th for the people who did the two lap 4.4 mile option. I ran it in 0:32:36.63 which I feel was pretty good given the weather, and how little training I had done. I had only ran 3 times over break.

The goal this year is to run the first ever Kalamazoo Marathon in a time under 3 hours 10 minutes. Ideally I would like to be under 3 hours, but I am going to be realistic for my first marathon.

One thing I observed during the run was how many people have all the gear and look the part of runners, but aren't at all very fast at all. I don't have nearly the proper gear compared to some. I was wearing a pair of soccer sweat pants with a pair of running sweats underneath, a long sleeve shirt, a North Face lightweight pullover, and a pair of Adidas running gloves. Some people were decked out head to toe in purpose made gear and were slow as can be. I just cannot understand the people that dress the part and cannot perform.