…and on Feb 12 2010, 75 years later to the day, the US Gov’t declares the big dirigible’s wreck site a National Historic Monument.
The Macon and her sister-ship Akron were unique amongst dirigibles – they had an embarked air wing of six Sparrowhawk biplane fighters. This is pure pulpish awesomeness – flying aircraft carriers! Except for the part about them both crashing in storms, of course…
One photo and a photo-panorama from December 24th, just because I haven’t posted anything in a while…
The panorama was six photos originally, stitched in Hugin. The flat grey foggy background seemed to cause Hugin some issues – notice how obvious a few of the vertical join lines are in the centre of the image. Odd.
I had someone email me a few days ago about my Nov. 25th F-Spot blogpost and it’s long discussion thread. I’d planned to do a followup post in early December, but holidays and reality obviously got in the way, and I’ve got WordPress set up to automatically close commenting after three weeks to frustrate the spambots a bit. I’ll do a proper followup F-Spot post this week!
Hope everyone had a satisfactory, safe holiday season.
Part of the qualifying/timebuilding for a Commercial PIlot’s License is a long cross-country trip, at least 300NM from your point of orgin. Most people make a flying expedition out of it, taking a couple of days and sometimes a friend – there’s no round-trip requirements, so two people can share a 300NM trip – one person flies out, the other back, both get their trip done. That’s exactly what two friends have done over the last three days, and they invited me along (I completed mine several years ago) because I’ve been into the United States by air and they hadn’t before this.
We went from Victoria, BC, Canada down to North Bend, Oregon via Seattle-Boeing Field & Astoria, then turned inland and north back to McMinnville, Oregon, home of the Evergreen Aviation Museum & the Spruce Goose. Wikipedia has a good Hughes H4 (Spruce Goose) article, for those wanting more information.
Short version: It’s a monster airplane, the biggest thing in the world at the time, still the largest seaplane & largest wooden aircraft ever made; only the 747 & A380 really rival it in sheer size. The main building of the Evergeen Museum is a huge building, and it’s still barely large enough to fit the H4 in. There’s absolutely no way to take a picture of the entire beast; the building would have to be three times the floorspace to allow you to get far enough back and still be inside! My camera does reasonable wide-angle setups, but you either need a fisheye lens or you need to resort to panorama stitching to get the whole beast in. Lacking a fisheye, I turned to Hugin, which has the additional advantage of being both free and Free.
More over the next few days, as I sort & process almost 200 photos, almost all from the Spruce Goose’s museum!
Up early this morning for the second flight of my Flight Instructor training – a very good flight, overall, with a bunch of stuff I hadn’t seen since the very early days of my Private Pilot training (six years and 300+ hrs ago…). It was clear, cold and very, very frosty this morning, though!
This evening I got to fly again, just as a passenger this time. This is actually a bit of a treat; I’m usually in one of the front seats, too busy with flying the plane to indulge in much sightseeing. Being cargo meant I could exercise the limits of my little digital camera, and get some very cool, rather impressionistic night shots from the back seat.
More, as always, at my Flickr stream – enjoy!
Got a priority-post envelope in the mail Friday last week; in it was a small piece of paper:
Most expensive thing I’ve ever owned, and it’s a single sheet of paper about the size of your hand. Excellent.
Come April I’ll be starting my Flight Instructor’s Rating, so by the end of July or so I should actually be earning money with these expensive pieces of paper. After spending more on the Instructor training, of course… Looking forward to that, too – instructing promises to be a lot of fun and a fantastic challenge!
CYYJ 281600Z 24003KT 12SM SCT008 BKN012 BKN027 OVC060 03/02 A3043 RMK SC3SC4SC1SC1 SLP306
Eight AM local. Not good weather at all. No wind, but low cloud all over the place.
CYYJ 281800Z 00000KT 10SM FEW006 BKN008 OVC012 03/03 A3038 RMK SF1SC6SC2 SLP287
Ten AM local. Even lower cloud, and the visibility is coming down.
METAR CYYJ 282100Z 00000KT 3SM -RA BR FEW006 BKN011 OVC015 04/04
A3027 RERA RMK SF1SC7SC1 SLP253=
Noon local. Even worse vis, rain, mist, even lower clouds. Fun. And to think that yesterday was bleedin’ gorgeous all day… Commercial Flight Test re-scheduled for Tuesday next week. Hopefully the weather co-operates by then!