The Bird Feeder

Friday morning was a wet miserable day, but out in the back yard this little guy was getting his breakfast at our hummingbird feeder. A couple of years ago my dad bought Janet a one of these feeders and since then she has pretty much cursed him every other day. We have these amazing little birds hanging around feeding all day and they go through a big jug of sugared bird water once a week. Of course the cats help the thin the flock when one of them is not fast enough, but for the most part the cats just have to sit and watch. 

Wee Willy II

On Saturday I had some time to kill with nothing to do, so I took a trip to Chino Airport, home of one of the Planes of Fame Air Museum's. As museums go this one is a little different in that most of the exhibits are actually regularly flown aircraft. Also you get to literally walk up to the aircraft, see it close up and touch it. In fact you actually have to mind your head while walking around them as there are lots of pointy hard objects hanging from a plane.

This plane is a North American P51 Mustang called Wee Willy II. It looks like this aircraft had a fun life after it's military service as an air racer until it crashed during a race at Reno in 1980. In 1985 it was rebuilt with parts from another Mustang and now flies out of Chino airport.

Black & White Orange

Over the weekend, I kept walking past our fruit salad trees in our backyard. (For those that don't know, a fruit salad tree is one that has four or five different fruits on it.) In our case, that's two varieties of oranges, lemons and limes. Anyway, the oranges just had these little drops of water from the rain dripping off of them and looked very interesting. So, with my camera mounted to the tripod, I took the photo above. I took it at about 9pm and didn't add any artificial light to it. It was just a long shutter speed of about 30 seconds and a camera that is capable of taking awesome photographs in the dark. The photograph above was converted to B&W in Photoshop and than the orange color was added back in. Below is the original color version.

A B-17

These are two of the engines from the B-17 Flying Fortress Return To Glory, which is displayed at March Air museum. The B-17 was the US Air Force bomber of choice in the European theater during WWII. The USAF used these aircraft for their daylight bombing raids on German manufacturing plants, to try and stop the German "War Machine". However these raids were not very successful and and suffered heavy loses. On the 14th October 1943 77 out of 291 B-17's along with 650 men from their crews were lost. In fact during that month of October 177 B-17's were lost. 

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.