The BUFF

One of the longest serving aircraft in the US Air Force's history is the B-52 Stratofortress bomber built by Boeing. The B-52 made it's first flight in 1952 with a total of 744 being built all together. The B-52 or BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F#%Ker) as it's crews affectionately named it was designed to carry nuclear weapons as deterrence during the Cold War. However it has only every dropped conventional munitions in actual combat. Today there are 76 active B-52's in service with the USAF and there are plans for them to see service until 2040, nearly 80 years after the production of these aircraft ended. The B-52 in 2001 had the highest mission capable rate of 80% and is far cheaper to maintain than what should have been it's replacements, the B-1B and the B-2 bombers. In 2005 the B-52 saw it's 50 years of service with the USAF and still has many more to go. 

I took this photograph at the March Air Field Museum just before a rain storm arrived. I always had a fascination with B-52's and had read many books about them. Then when I met Janet I discovered that her father was a navigator on B-52's and used to fly missions lasting up to 28 hours. These missions were part of the Cold War airborne alert duty, meaning that at least 12 B-52's carrying nuclear weapons were in the air on alert to attack the Soviet Union at a moments notice. Here is an article about these missions from Time Magazine in 1961.

Here is a black & white version of the same photograph.

Habu, A Damn Fast Aircraft

A few years ago, well 15 actually, I read this great book called Skunk Works by Ben R. Rich. For those not into the whole history of aircraft thing like me, the Skunk Works is Lockheed's secret development plant in Burbank. It is responsible for developing some of the most infamous aircraft in history, including the U2 spy plane, the F-117 stealth attack aircraft (you know the one that looks like a diamond and shouldn't fly), the F-22 Raptor and probably the most famous of them all and photographed above, the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft. This aircraft was designed to fly higher and faster than any other air breathing manned aircraft and in fact still holds that record. It flew at a top speed of Mach 3.2+ (or over 2200mph) and a height of 80,000ft. This height and speed was it's defense measure when flying over enemy countries taking reconnaissance photographs, as missiles and enemy aircraft could not catch it. It was manned by a crew of two, which had to wear what was in effect a space suit to survive. Some of these aircraft were based on a USAF base close to where I live in England. One of the most interesting facts was that the crew could take off after breakfast in England and arrive in the USA in time for breakfast again the same day. I would imagine that if ever there was a time machine to go back in time this aircraft was it. 

I took this photograph at the March Field Air Museum here in Riverside, less than 10 minutes from my door and yet I never went there until last Sunday. The one thing that struck me about this aircraft when I walked up to it was it's tiny size. I always imagined it to be much bigger, but I stood taller than it's nose. 

The Water Hazard

Golf course designers just love to throw in one element that can really screw up a golfer mentally and that is water. Of course water hazards make golf courses look very beautiful too and add a challenge to the round of golf. Most water hazards are very innocent, but if the last think you see right before you hit the ball is that water hazard, a picture of it will stick in your mind and guess what? You'll hit the ball straight into it!

This water hazard is at California Golf & Art golf course in Sun City, California and for the most part is harmless except for the little bit you have to hit over where this photograph was taken from. This morning while playing 18 I thought it looked good enough for a photograph.

Imagination

I'm always astounded by other peoples creative imagination. I've never really been able to call myself creative. I can take a photograph and make it interesting, but the object of my photography has already been created by someone else or mother nature. I can be creative with problem solving, my work requires that on almost a daily basis but, creative to create something from scratch, no, sorry not me. 

So to the subject of the photograph. People I have shown this too have described it as "Creepy" and yes I think I would have to agree. On the other hand I think "creative" is another good description. This was another one of those weird statues that had been created by the people at Tio's Tacos in Riverside.

Ranger Peak

One cold winters day 2 of my colleagues and myself headed up to Ranger Peak, one of our new radio sites. Now I don't normally get cold, I mean it has to be REALLY cold for me to feel it. Anyway this particular day it was so cold up there that the tress and bushes had a 1/8 inch layer of ice on them. The bush you see in the foreground is not normally white like that, the color is from the ice formed on the branches. The tower in the background is an old AT&T microwave tower that was part of AT&T's network before fiber optics became the norm.

A Recurring Dream

Sometimes the most powerful photograph is the one that brings out emotions in us and this photograph did that for me. A couple of days ago I posted the photograph of the curve where two railway men lost their lives when their train lost it's brakes and they were unable to stop it. Today's photograph is of one of the two crosses that have been made into a permanent memorial to those men. This is the cross in memory of Kevin Williams, 38 who died alongside his colleague Gil Ortiz, 25. Now I didn't know either of these men but they encountered every train drivers nightmare "A runaway train". Every so often during my railway career I would have a dream about being unable to stop a train. In fact I still have that dream now once in a while and I haven't driven a train for over 10 years. What I didn't realize until a break room conversation was that every train driver would have that dream once in a while too. For a train driver that was a worst case scenario and it would wake me up in a cold sweat.

Mormon Rocks

Our trip up the Cajon Pass was to photograph the rock formations officially know as Rock Candy Mountains, locally they are known as Mormon Rocks. The name was given to them from the Mormon settlers who passed through Cajon Pass in 1851 to settle in Southern California. 

This photograph was taken just after the sun rose over the surrounding mountains. I also got a little bit lucky to have a train come through at that moment in time to pose for me below the rock formation.

The Curve

On Saturday morning, dark and early, a group of like minded amateur photographers met up for an early morning photo shoot. The place we picked was Mormon Rocks in Cajon Pass, (the 15 Freeway's route out of the LA Basin into the High Desert and beyond to Salt Lake City.) I have wanted to visit this place since the late 90's and although I have driven through there many times I have never stopped for a closer look. My reason for wanting to visit this area is probably a little bit morbid. Having been a train driver, I wanted to visit the scene of a train crash that happened here. At 4:10AM on February 1st 1996 the four locomotives and forty five of the forty nine cars that formed the freight train known as H-BALT1-31 left the rails on the curve photographed above; the resulting pile of twisted metal then caught fire and burned for three days. Sadly, two of the three train crew on this train died and the third, the engineer, was seriously injured.  I dedicate this photo to their memory...

Security

I thought I'd try and get a little bit creative today and take a photograph of barbed wire. This was taken at one of our existing radio sites at Paradise Peak. As always with these mountain tops the view is spectacular, but as always I was a bit late in the day getting up there so the light was pretty bad. So I figured I'd try something different from my usual photographs and see what i could do with some barbed wire and a radio tower. Then with a little bit of black & white magic I got this. I hope you like it.

The Golf Course

Some golf courses, well in fact most golf courses are some of the most beautiful places to see. Sometimes you just get to see how the designer gets to let their imagination run riot and come up with something spectacular. A lot of times though the regular courses that us every day Joe's get to play try and mimic features from the more famous courses. This photograph was taken at the Links of Summerly course when I played there last week. It's actually a course modelled after some of the more famous courses from the home of golf, Scotland.