Aerospace

Throwback to 1980’s

throwback-1980.jpg

Bob gave me these old photos of him taken thirty-some years ago, so I could send them up to one of the social media sites as a ‘throwback.’ In the image above, the cowboy dude on the left was actually an urban cowboy while John Travolta was still having Saturday Night Fever.

The guy in the right side of the image was acting as pilot in command of one of a fleet of aircraft at the flight school where he instructed and did charter flights. Click on the composite image to enlarge.

Moon and Stearman

Moon and Stearman

Verna and I were out walking the dogs a couple of days ago when I heard the distinctive sound of a radial engine-powered airplane overhead. I did not have my fancy DSLR camera with me at the time, or I’m certain I would have taken a better photo, but this one is not bad considering I used my pocket-sized Canon A1400 point-and-shoot camera. By coincidence, the plane passed very nearly in front of the waning crescent moon. Click on the image to enlarge.

Zero-Eight Foxtrot

Zero-Eight Foxtrot

We recently got a scanner for the office. It is a modern one that runs completely off of the USB port voltage without need for an additional external power source.

I had the above photo hanging in the old office in Torrance until we rescued many of the relics from the house last month. The photo was actually a color print, but the UV from sunlight streaming through the windows for years managed to fade it to a point that I had to recover it in monochrome (sepia in this case) after running it through the scanner.

The photo was taken circa 1976 around the time Nixon was resigning after I had flown a photo shoot for a local photographer. He rewarded me by taking this photo of me hovering in the Hughes 269B helicopter, tail number N9408F “Zero-Eight Foxtrot.” Click on the image to enlarge.

Flyover Country

Contrails

When atmospheric conditions are right, we can see contrails (condensation trails) overhead and from horizon to horizon. Today was one of those days. I was walking the dogs at around 9:30 this morning when I heard a jet flying overhead. I looked up and saw these two contrails just a fraction of a degree apart. The aircraft were both heading eastward, obviously at different altitudes. Click on the image to enlarge.

Sunset Contrail

Sunset Contrail

It was just another beautiful day in our high desert home today. I took this photo of the sunset punctuated by a high-altitude aircraft contrail. Click on the image to enlarge.