Up In The Airfest 2010-Part 2

The second demo of the day at Airfest 2010 was a display of less elite paratroopers. These guys didn't do tricks or use fancy parachutes with airfoils and logos. They got pushed out the side of a big cargo plane over what represented enemy territory, en masse. They made two passes, dropping almost twenty guys at a time. I was able to reposition after the first pass to get better pictures, so these are all from that that pass. (You can't stand in one spot and be a good photographer, you have to go where the action is!) This shot shows the first guy has exited the plane, but his rig is still attached inside the plane. His weight will jerk that loose in a second, and he'll be on his way down.

Here's the first guy with his chute beginning to open, and the next two guys are out. I suspect they should have been jumping two by two, and that first guy got off a little early, or maybe the first guy on the left missed his cue. These things are never perfect.

I think this is all of them. I thought twenty guys jumped, but I only count 18. Perhaps I was mistaken. All of my shots show eighteen chutes is the air.

Here you can clearly see the differences between these guys chutes and the ones used by the SOCOM team. These are just big floppy jellyfish designed to drop safely, not to be flown.

I can see where a sight like this, but perhaps with a few hundred more chutes in the air, would scare an enemy on the ground. Trouble is coming, boys, better go hide in your spider hole.

As they neared the ground, they dropped the bag that help the parachute to the end of a tether. I guess this gets it out of the way when it's time to land. You can see it's a pretty big and bulky item that might make it awkward when they hit the ground.

Until I looked close at this shot of the drop plane, I assumed they went out the back, but I was wrong. You can see the small door in the side of the plane just rear of the wing. That's where they exited on this side of the plane. I'm sure there's a similar door on the opposite side, but you're going to have to trust me on that, as I don't have a picture of it. This shot is actually from the first jump. I concentrated on the parachutists on the second jump, so missed the plane as it exited the drop zone.

After the two drops, the plane made a pass over the crowd, then exited the area before landing. This shot showing the topside of the plane was made as it banked for the turn. Look close and you'll see that they've closed the door you saw open in the previous picture. Oh, I believe this plane is a C17 Globemaster. I didn't know that until I looked it up, but it's the same plane you'll see more of later. It's a big mother.

Up In The Airfest 2010-Part 1

I guess it's time to start sharing some of my pictures from Macdill Airfest 2010 with you. As some of you may remember, Airfest is an open house & airshow at Macdill Air Force Base here in Tampa, Florida. Almost every year, they throw open the normally secure gates of this base and let in 100,000 curious folks per day for a weekend of airplane fun. Since I've been going to this, they've always opened the show with a jump from some paratroopers, usually the SOCOM Parachute Team. The playing of the National Anthem is accompanied by the first jumper and the American flag.

After the flag, seven guys jump out of a perfectly good aircraft. They spend a few seconds doing a neat little ring trick, then they spread out and slowly drift to the ground.

I think it's pretty col how the trail smoke and spin through the air, taking their time and no doubt enjoying the view.

This was the first member of the group to make it to the ground.

Two of the seven you saw making the ring earlier formed an arrangement where they linked together in tandem, making a sort of bi-wing configuration.

I only got good pictures of the guys close to the ground who happened to land at the end of the airfield where were standing. They stretched their landing zone all up and down the flight line so that everyone was close to someone.

I like the shots where I can catch more than one thing going on at the same time. :)

The tandem team come down on our end, so I got a good series of shots of them separating.


These guys make it look easy. If I were to do this, I'd get tangled up and die.

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, but landing where you literally land on your feet and walk away is an especially good one. And look, the Blue Angels are there behind him. I wonder if we'll see more of them later?

Airfest Over

Whew, Airfest 2010 at Macdill Air Force Base took a lot out of me yesterday. 4000+ pictures will do that to you. It's still going on today, so if you really want to, head on out there and see the show. Me? I'm going to take it easy today, and maybe later I'll start throwing up some of the great pictures.

The New Bald Eagle

Here's a new bald eagle I discovered this weekend. Well, he's new to me at least. I thought I'd spotted a bald eagle out at Robinson Preserve a few weeks ago, but he was far away and the pictures were a little inconclusive. (From a distance, an osprey looks an awful lot like a bald eagle.) But I made it a point to get a little closer on this trip, and sure enough, there he was. But only for a couple of minutes. Not long after I got close enough to squeeze off a few shots, he decided to take to the air and flew off in the opposite direction. Oh, well. You can see the nest in the shot above. I think this is the only eagle nest I've ever seen that was completely out in the open. All the others I know of are in a living tree, tucked in among other trees. I suspect this one may have been like that at one time, but nowadays, this is all that's left.

AirFest 2010!

I normally forget to mention this until the day before, but I'm giving you almost a week's notice this year. Airfest 2010 is at Macdill Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, this weekend, March 20th & 21st! It's free, what more can you ask for? This year's headliner is the Blue Angels, a group I've seen a couple of times now. First time I saw them was in 2004, when they not only flew the spectacular aerial displays you expect out of such a team, they also trotted out the team cargo plane for a few passes, as shown above. So be there or be square!

One Million

Well, there you go. I reached the 1,000,000 hit level late last night. I'm pretty proud of that. I've been blogging for almost five years now (my anniversary is in a couple of weeks actually) and it's nice to know that some folks care about what I have to say, or at least the music and pictures I have to share. Thanks for your support! See ya in the funny papers!

(I seem to be accelerating slightly. I reached half a million hits in just under three years, so I'm getting faster!)

No Third

Sorry, but I've got no versions of "The Third Man Theme" for you this month. I've been out of commission for a few days here, and didn't get a chance to record any. Hopefully next month I'll get back into gear for you. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check here and here.

PS-Later this week or early next week, I'm going to get my 1,000,000th hit! I'm so excited!

While Bathing At Daytona

Well, I guess Daytona Beach isn't the safest place in the world. Not now, not then. Especially if then is 1890. I spotted this headstone in Pinewood Cemetery, near the water in Daytona. You may have never heard of this cemetery, but you've probably heard of the bar across the street, Boot Hill Saloon. That's the epicenter of many of the Bike Week festivities around these parts. Their slogan is "You're Better Off Here Than Across The Street". Well, this is in the cemetery across the street.

B-O-L-O-G-N-A

Look! I saw the Oscar-Meyer Wienermobile! It was right there in downtown Sarasota today. There was an art show being held nearby, but I don't think it was there for that. I think it was just passing through. It may look like something out of the acid-drenched sixties, but this vehicle was built in 2004 on a GMC light-truck frame. I asked. The girl seated on the steps is from the local ABC 7 News. She actually got to ride in the Wienermobile. All I got was a sticker.

Wisconsin plates that say YUMMY? How odd. And in case you stumble across this post sometime in the future, the Go! Team USA is because the Olympics are going on up in Canada right now. Are those Trans-Am taillights? Hmmm....

Both the instrument panel and the glove box are large wieners.

The front end reminded me a bit of the nose on a monorail up at Disney. Heaven knows how those wiper blades maintain contact with the glass. The two folks driving the giant dog were Torey Toppings (Go Gators!) and Atta-Dog Adam. I'm sure those are their real names.

Daytona Tonight

Here I am in Daytona Beach, again. It's just a couple of days after the Daytona 500, but most everything is back to normal already. But I did notice that the leaderboard over at the track is still lit up, and it's showing the 208 laps they raced as well as the top finishers. I can almost see this sign out the window of the hotel, but I shot it from a field between the track and the airport. Still not very close, but closer.

So Many Vultures!

I was out at Myakka River State Park last night, and I just couldn't believe how many vultures there were in the air out there. I knew they had lots of vultures, and I've seen lots of them before, but not like this. There were a thousand or more of them in the air at any given time. Keep in mind I shot these with a telephoto lens, not a wide angle. A wide angle lens would have shown birds from one corner of the sky to the other.

A Warbler

These are a couple of shots I got of a small bird last weekend at Robinson Preserve in Bradenton. I think it's some species of warbler, but I couldn't tell you which one. According to my book, there are a couple of different ones with the yellow underbelly you see here. (I think it was also a warbler I spotted here, judging by the thin beak, but that one isn't the same as this one.) It's hard for me to ID some of these little birds since I don't see them all that frequently. They're hard to spot in the wild, and I can only get their pictures when I happen to have a long lens on the camera and I happen across them. I usually get a shot or two and they're gone. This guy was different, though. He was out in the open and hopping along the ground for almost 10 minutes, looking for seeds or insects or whatever he eats. For a little guy not much more that four inches beak to tail, I thought I got some pretty decent shots.

Live Wire

Those power lines at Robinson Preserve are just a magnet for wildlife. Not only did I spot woodpeckers and a kestrel up there on Saturday, I also saw this kingfisher. As usual, he was skittish to the point of not being there. Soon as I took two steps towards him to get a better picture, he was up and gone. So apologies for the graininess of this one, but it's all I got. Maybe next time...

A Masked Marauder

He may be a little hard to see, but this is only the second wild kestrel I've ever spotted. There is one (or maybe a pair) that are in the field behind my parent's house, but this guy is much closer to my house. I spotted him on a powerline running across the middle of Robinson Preserve in Bradenton. I never got too close to him, and when I first saw him I thought it was a dove, but as he moved, I realized it was no dove. Those bands of color on the wings along with the marking on the face make these predators really stand out. Now I need to go back and see if I can get some better shots of him with a longer lens.

Woody et. al.

I waited and waited and waited for this little woodpecker to give me a better view yesterday, but he never showed my anymore than what you see here. And this was about the only time he stuck his head out of the shadow behind the palm tree.

I thought it a little odd that I would see similar woodpeckers two days in a row, and so many miles apart. The one up top was near the St. Petersburg Yacht Basin, and these two were ganging up on a telephone pole in Robinson Preserve near Bradenton. One of these two seems to be exhibiting male pattern baldness, although I'm not certain he was the male.

At least the one with the nice read head was closer, so I got a slightly closer picture of him.

Elvis Lives!

Yes, Elvis is apparently still alive, and he's towing cars that are parked illegally at the museum in St. Pete. Who'd a thunk it?

Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom

I've always said you can never have too much zoom lens on your camera. Problem is, the more zoom you have, the harder it is to get a quality picture. Here's a little example I shot this evening with an old lens I had and a couple of new fancy Canon Extenders I found at the pawn shop for a good price. Unlike the cheap 400mm lens, these extenders are top of the line. They'll find a place in my camera bag while I wait to be able to afford a nice long prime lens. Anyhow, the shot above is from one end of my living room to the other with just the big 400mm zoom telephoto lens. With the 1.6x crop factor of my 7D, that makes this shot about 640mm. At that kind of zoom, I can't come close to hand-holding it, so I've got it on a tripod and I'm triggering the shot with a remote. I guess I should learn how to lock the mirror up and take the shot, but I'm not quite there yet. Take a close look at the Justin Wilson LP just right of center.

Here's the next shot with a 1.4x extender thrown into the mix. Notice that in addition to giving more zoom, it's also darker. The 35mm equivalent zoom here is 896mm. That's pretty big. This is also the last exposure that the camera would autofocus on and really didn't think it would, but it did. All the remaining shots are manual focus. See that Justin Wilson LP? Not the one left of center in this shot but the other one, still to the right of center. Look close and you're beginning to see a lot of Chromatic Aberration. That means the different colors of light are traveling differently through the lens, and they aren't coming together quite right on the image sensor.

And here's a shot with the 2x Extender in place, making a 1280mm shot. Way, way, way long, and way too dark. I think I shot this one at a full stop more than the camera wanted, and I still had to brighten it up a little. Look close at our Justin Wilson title and you can see it's getting a lot worse. This is in pretty poor lighting, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad in daylight, but it still wouldn't get you into National Geographic.

Last but not least, this is the 400mm lens plus the 2x extender plus the 1.4x extender plus the 1.6x crop factor, making for a total 35mm equivalent of 1344mm! That's a lot of zoom! However, this is clearly the worst picture of the lot. It's almost to the point where you can't read the lettering on the Justin Wilson LP. If you were a double naught spy, though, this would certainly get you some incriminating photographs. Now, if I only had a nice 400mm L series f/2.8 prime lens to try this little test on...

So what happens when I put all these together? The collage above shows all the pictures crammed into one, with the lens alone at the bottom, followed by 1.4x, then 2x, then 1.4x and 2x on the top. I blew up each picture by the same factor as the missing extenders to get the scale the same in each shot. I also tried to fudge the levels a bit to get the brightness levels the same, but I didn't go crazy with it. (You can see where the camera shifted slightly between shots, I must need a heavier tripod.) Anyhow, you can see that I'm probably just as well off zooming the photo digitally as I am by having all that extra glass. I think if I had started with better glass, there would be fewer flaws to amplify, but it would still be a trade-off. I have a lot to learn when it comes to such things. Maybe I should just go back to a point-and-shoot with a 10x zoom and quit worrying about such things. Sure would be cheaper.

Once Again, It's The Third, Man!

That's right, it's the third day of the month, and that means it's time for another installment of my ever-growing collection of covers of that classic track, Theme From The Third Man. Only one more track this time than last, which means six different takes this time instead of five. I'd hoped to have more, but these things take time. Artists and instruments this month include Ruth Welcome on the, umm, zither, Mark Monte on the cocktail orchestra, Josef Sepp Diepolder on the, err, zither, Henry Jerome on his Brazen Brass (best version here in my humble opinion), another version by Don Costa, this time with only an orchestra (no voices) and a great version by Big Tiny Little on the barroom piano. Sound interesting? Here's a download link for you. Thanks for all those comments last month. I didn't get as many downloads as I see on my Christmas stuff, but the great comments more than make up for that. See you all next month.

Yard Of The Week

I'm thinking I need to start a Yard of the Week Award, and this place would win every time. Some place I drove by down in Venice today had an Easter Island head in his yard. A really big Easter Island head. Probably eight feet tall. Gonna take something more than a few pink flamingos to top this yard.

Tourists

I recently got hold of this picture taken when I went to see the shuttle launch last year. You know how you go some place and they make you pose for a picture, then sell you that picture later on in the day? Well, this is one of those, taken at 6:30 in the morning as we arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex. They herded us all in a row and blinded us with a bright flash that did nothing to illuminate the giant blue NASA logo in the background. I blame the photographer for that. That's my mom on the left, then Dad, me, and Charlene, a friend of the family. There's another shot here from later in the day, but it's not very good so I'll keep it for another day. A day far, far in the future most likely.

Oodles Of Doodles CLXV

Here's doodle #165, filling in a hole in the collection from way back in December of '05. I haven't posted anything in a while 'cause I've been busy trying to put up some shelves for my records. It's gotten a little out of hand, but I'm hoping to have it under control soon. Plus, the battery in my car died today and it took a few hours to get that fixed. Funny how they often die all at once with no signs of impending doom. Anyhow, this nautical scene is from the back of Sea Shanties by The Men Of The Robert Shaw Chorale (RCA Victor Red Seal LM-2551, 1961).

Up In The Air

The high temperature in my neck of the Florida woods today was in the forties. That's a regular heat wave over yesterday when it didn't get out of the thirties. But I couldn't live with the cabin fever, so I went outside in search of something to do. I decided to head up to Apollo Beach to see the manatees that seek shelter from the cold by congregating in the warm water discharged from the local power plant. Sure enough, there were hundreds of manatees being gawked at by hundreds of tourists. But that's not the interesting part. What was interesting to me were the other creatures looking for warmth in the water. And what was eating them. I kept seeing splashes in the canal that didn't look like manatees. Finally I realized it was fish jumping. And it was big fish. Two to three foot tarpon and snook were jumping out of the water, presumably in pursuit of a meal. And every once in a while, a spotted eagle ray would leap out as well, a completely unexpected sight. So I decided to try and photograph one of these fish up in the air. It took half an hour of pointing and waiting, but I finally got a ray up in the air. This is a detail of a much bigger picture, and it only lasted a second, but I got it. You can add this to the list of rare shots I've taken of things in the air that should be in the water. After I got these shots, I went back to the car and waited until I could feel my fingers again before leaving. We don't know how to dress for the cold here in Florida.

Looking closer at these shots, I'm pretty sure there's some sort of sucker-fish stuck on the rays head. You can see it on the right side of his head above.

Oodles Of Doodles CLXIV

If memory serves, I skipped doodles 164-168. So here's the first one of the fill-in doodles. I think it was November 0f '08 when I last brought you a doodle, but I think I need to throw a few up just for old times sake. This is from the back-side of Mood Italiano by Tommy Gumina (Decca DL 8630), an LP I picked up this weekend. Hope you like it.

It's The Third, Man!

Here's a little something I've been meaning to do for ages now. I know you're all used to getting Christmas music from around here, but trust me when I tell you that the Christmas records in this condo are far outnumbered by plain ordinary non-seasonal music. But I'm too lazy to record and share most of that music with you. But for a while now, I've been wanting to share out some different versions of that Anton Karras zither classic, The 3rd Man Theme. Or, The Third Man Theme. Or sometimes, The Harry Lime Theme. You know the one I mean, it's the main theme from The Third Man and it was crazy popular for a few years after that movie came out. I've got dozens of records featuring that track, and I was busy trying to avoid doing anything else tonight, so I ripped five of them to share. With a little luck, and perhaps a little encouragement, I can get around to putting up a few of these each month. Hopefully more than the five I have for you now, but hey, I only started ripping these a couple of hours ago. And I can never bring myself to only rip one song from an LP... So here are five versions of one song as performed by Eddie Peabody, Don Costa, Ethel Smith, Johnny Ukulele and Robert Maxwell as performed on the banjo, the orchestra with voices, the organ, the ukulele and the harp. Interested?