aviation

Word of the day yesterday: "wet"

 

I took a personal day yesterday becaue I wanted to take a short trip up to see Snoqualmie Falls at or near flood stage. I checked www.floodzilla.com and it said as of 7:15 AM, it was a mere 6 inches below flood stage, so plenty enough water for me.


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5D gets it first real workout

 I finally got to take my new 5D for a spin!

A friend of my wife, who works for Boeing, graciously invited me to go with him to the Boeing Employee viewing area for the first flight of the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. What an exciting opportunity to photograph this airplane from an amazing vantage point (from Paine Field's taxiway Alpha!) 

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My own mystery object

[Solved: it was a reflection of a light source inside the house, filtered through the flats of the blinds.]

One of the RSS feeds I follow is Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News blog which mentioned an observation from Tacoma of a North-South meteor sighting around 6pm on December 3. I figured this might be something my WeatherCam might have captured, as the time fit within the capture period of my daylight camera. Though the odds were slim, as my camera only captures a frame every 20 seconds.

While there is a faint contrail (aligned with north-to-south), there was no brilliant of obvious sign of a meteor streak, unfortunately. While some bolides are known for leaving a lingering trail, the contrail that visible falls within the standard YVR (Vancouver) approach, and lasted much too long to be a bolide contrail (which tend to disappate rather quickly). The contrail starts at around 5:45pm and passes overhead and out of view at 6:02pm.

However, while I'm watching my video, I notice a bright object appear, then disappear. I first thought this might be a lens flare from the lamp in front of my house, but it was on at full illumination before and after the object appears and disappears.

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Missile Theorists: Where's your proof?

After a 24 hours, it became widely evident to most news outlets that the "mystery missile" of November 8, 2010 was caused by an airplane contrail. However, there was always a bit of vagueness as to what flight or what kind of airplane caused the contrail. The Pentagon didn't reveal anything other than the fact that it WAS a contrail of some sort, and the FAA never said anything at all other than it was a normal event.


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In retrospect, the week in review

This week, the week of the "mystery missile" non-event in California, turned out in a way that I could never have imagined. What started out as mild curiousity turned in to a desire to put to rest a "mystery" that was so obviously unmysterious to me.


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Another "mystery" object, this time over NYC

I'm just getting word that there was another "UFO" cloud sighting over New York last night and from the clips I've seen, it appears to be another sunlit contrail, this time in a horizontal alignment.

CBS 2 coverage: Did You See the Fire in the Sky?

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The most notable feature I want to address about the video is this:


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It was US Airways flight 808

Or was it? New evidence points to UPS902

One of my commenters below has given me some critical information that has lead me to update my assement of what flight caused the "mystery missile" contrail. Make no mistake, I stand by my assertion that the event was nothing more than a contrail, however, new, solid data has come in that has me changing my theory that the contrail in question was not caused by US Airways flight 808 (AWE808) but rather my second contender, United Parcel Service flight 902 (UPS902). In fact I believe I can definitevely say that UPS 902 was the flight that created the contrail on November 8, 2010.


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You know you're a plane spotter when..

... you're waiting for the bus and you see a Boeing 767 flying overhead and notice that it's a Hawaiian Airlines airplane. But wait, this is not its normal approach, this is the GLASR flight path to KSEA (usually westbound, eastern seaboard, upper midwest flights)


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Devil in the Details

There's a fascinating article at Vanity Fair Magazine about the mid-air collision of a GOL Airlines Boeing 737 and N600XL, an Embraer business jet.

I compel you to read it and then come back and read the rest of this blog post. I wonder if the facts blow your mind as much as they do mine:

It is simply astonishing to me that:


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First flight

For Christmas, Jenn bought me a gift certificate for a "Discovery Flight" with Wings Aloft at Boeing Field. It wasn't until now that I was able to take advantage of it.

I was planning to make the flight on a Sunday, but they had an opening of the Friday I had called, so I booked it. The weather would be better today than Sunday anyways. I surprised Cohen at the bus stop with the news as he would be going with me.


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