Update on things

Hello everybody!

I am still hear and still love your e-mails. I just been having problems thinking up a good new topic. My favorite thing to do is to emphasize a great topic that might have a lot of interest.

So let me think and ramble here a bit. I have been flying. I typically fly around 100 hours a year. These days it is for our Colorado Aerial Photography business or it is for a long trip where we are usually also trying to get some good photography at the same time. We didn't end up having a flying trip this summer, bummer! It just didn't happen, not sure why.

Colorado Aerial Photography has been a lot of fun. It is a lot more work than it might first seem. I am glad that my wife is making it her full-time work, but I am very happy to help out on the side where I can usually as a pilot or brainstorming. Taking high quality pictures with a high quality camera/lenses while the plane is bumping around in turbulence can often be a challenge. We have had some interesting things to circle and take pictures such as a dynamite plant, a prison, and a bunch of other things. We even helped out with a promotion to try to get Google to come to Longmont for high speed internet. Here is the local newspaper article about Longmont Loves Google. You certainly go concentrate and circle on areas that you never would otherwise. And there is a lot of time and energy that has to be put into the business other than flying and taking pictures. But this blog isn't about the Aerial Photography. It is just an update...

We just had our local air show, the Rocky Mountain Regional Fly-in. It was a great time and I had the opportunity to take a father/son on their first ride in a small airplane and we arrived at the show by plane. A big hit with them. Even though the son was a bit quiet, his dad told me that he really, really enjoyed. He is a super airplane nut. The most exciting things to me was the F16, F18, and the Team Chaos Jet Truck with pyrotechnics. I have never seen anything like the jet truck before. Oh.. on the ground they had a MV-22 Osprey parked that you could walk around and inside.

I just had my annual. This I think will be the cheapest annual since I owned the plane. Nothing major was found. Just a few small cowling fixes; loose rivets, etc. So I think the bill will come in around $1500; probably a bit more.

Another interesting, but sad thing to watch is the Four Mile Fire. We live pretty near it and saw it blow up right at the beginning. Before getting a bagel, nothing. After a bagel, big huge cloud. One of the biggest I have seen from a fire. I didn't get a picture, but it looked about like this picture within a 1/2 hour of it starting. If you check out the stuff on the internet, it shows it pretty well. We had huge 30-50 mph winds and it went from 0 -> 3000 acres -> 6500 acres super quick. Luckily, it has not continued to grow, and it rained today.

The air tankers are amazing to watch. There is one in particular that facinates me. Here is a link to Air tanker 45 pictures on Airliners.net. It is a Lockheed Neptune P2H and the strange part about it is that it has 2 3,500-hp Write R-3350-32 Radial engines and 2 3,400-lb thrust Westinghouse J34-WE-36 auxillary jets. Now it looks like Tanker 45 has the jets, but they are not in use. Pretty strange. If you look at other Neptune P2 planes, you will see some in operation. And I am pretty sure I saw one in Idaho and heard the auxillary jets spinning up. I have a picture of Tanker 44 in my Idaho pictures from my McCall Mountain/Canyon Flying Seminar experience.

So I guess not much has happened in some ways, but maybe a bit has happened in others. Maybe I should have split up the above into separate blogs... Oh well. If you have any specific ideas or questions, please E-mail me . I am still here.

/Brian