Aviation
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Motherings
Trump will be flying Qatar One instead of (or as) Air Force One: Aaaand,,,, Call your mother, if she’s still around. If she’s not, remember her anyway. I did that here. I’m pointing to A look at broadcast history happening because it came up in a conversation about archives. Also because that history (especially concerning Continue reading
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Flyings
Neither here nor there, yet. At BWI, about to board an SWA flight to IND. There are thunderstorms between the airports and more on the way, but no delay so far. Meanwhile, this gives me chance to talk weather apps. My current fave is Windy, which visualizes winds at all altitudes, real time lightning (with visuals Continue reading
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Thoughts
An important extinction. Overheard (between veteran unemployed journalists): “I’m not a has-been. I’m a still-was.” Because you’re the only one who might employ you. “DIY journalism” just got uttered in a call I’m on. Its the windows, mostly. I didn’t like Boeing’s 787 eight years ago, and still don’t like it now. That’s my response Continue reading
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A Hat Tip to United
United Airlines details 6 big inflight entertainment updates, including all-new Control Tower map, by Zach Griff in The Points Guy, is thick with welcome news for frequent United fliers, of which my wife and I are two. (So far I have clocked 1,533,214 miles with United, and she has about double that. We are also Continue reading
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Aviation vs. Fire
3:22pm—Hats off to Miles Archer for the links below, one of which goes here— —showing all the aircraft and their paths at once. You can start here at https://globe.adsbexchange.com/, which is kind of your slate that’s blank except for live aircraft over the Palisades Fire: Meanwhile all the media are reporting one home loss, in Continue reading
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Palisades Fire on the Ridge
10:15pm—Here is a Google Earth Pro view of the Palisades fire crossing the wilderness north of Pacific Palisades and south of “Dry Mulholland”—the dirt road that serves as a firebreak along the ridge of the mountains south of the San Fernando Valley: The large squares are MODIS satellite fire detections. The smaller ones are VIIRS. Continue reading
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Please, United: Don’t Do It.
I’ve flown 1,500,242 miles with United Airlines. My wife has flown at least a million more. Both of us currently enjoy Premier status, though we’ve spent much of our time with United at the fancier 1K level. We are also both lifetime United Club members and have been so for thirty-three years. Unlike many passengers Continue reading
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From Hollywood Park Racetrack to SoFi Stadium
Hollywood Park Racetrack is gone. In its place is SoFi Stadium, the 77,000-seat home of Los Angeles’ two pro football teams and much else, including the 6,000-seat YouTube Theater. There’s also more to come in the surrounding vastness of Hollywood Park, named after the racetrack. Wikipedia says the park— consists of over 8.5 million square feet (790,000 m2) Continue reading
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On windowseat photography
A visitor to aerial photos on my Flickr site asked me where one should sit on a passenger plane to shoot pictures like mine. This post expands on what I wrote back to him. Here’s the main thing: you want a window seat on the side of the plane shaded from the Sun, and away Continue reading
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Making useful photographs
What does it mean when perhaps hundreds of thousands of one’s photos appear in articles, essays and posts all over the Web? It means they’re useful. That’s why I posted the originals in the first place, and licensed them to require only attribution. Because of that, I can at least guess at how many have Continue reading
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When a thunderstorm appears right on top of an airport
This is the situation at Newark Airport right now: Those blobs are thunderstorms. The little racetrack in upstate New York is an inbound flight from Lisbon in a holding pattern. Follow the link under that screen shot. Interesting to see, in close to real time, how flights on approach and departure dodge heavy weather. I’ll Continue reading
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A miracle of flight
That was the view to the south from 31,000 feet above the center of Greenland a few hours ago: a late afternoon aurora over a blue dusk. According to my little hand-held GPS, we were around here: “11/10/17, 11:48:32 AM” “2.4 mi” “0:00:16” “538 mph” “30072 ft” “283° true” “N70° 56′ 10.4″ W38° 52′ 59.1″”. That’s about four Continue reading
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A dark review for United’s Boeing 787
An update on 1 May 2024: Read what Cory Doctorow published today. Pro tip: avoid 787s if you can. On top of what Cory says in that piece, what I wrote here when the 787s were new is secondary stuff, but somehow consistent with how things are done at that company. I had wanted to Continue reading
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Heavy (but brief) weather
Here’s what flying in and out of Newark looks like right now: That storm is very heavy, but narrow. It’s going to wash over New York like a big wave. Hat tip to Flightaware. Continue reading
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Daily Tab for 2016_06_07
For today’s entries, I’m noting which linked pieces require you to turn off tracking protection, meaning tracking is required by those publishers. I’m also annotating entries with hashtags and organizing sections into bulleted lists. #AdBlocking and #Advertising Jack Trout died. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (co-written with Al Ries) did for advertising what The Elements of Style Continue reading
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Desert warfare training in live ghost towns, seen from the sky
I’ve been fascinated for years by what comes and goes at the Fort Irwin National Training Center— —in the Mojave Desert, amidst the dark and colorful Calico Mountains of California, situated in the forbidding nowhere that stretches between Barstow and Death Valley. Here and there, amidst the webwork of trails in the dirt left by Continue reading
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Oil and Water on California’s South Coast
Oil in the water is one of the strange graces of life on Califonia’s South Coast. What we see here is a long slick of oil in the Pacific, drifting across Platform Holly, which taps into the Elwood Oil Field, which is of a piece with the Coal Oil Point Seep Field, all a stone’s throw off Continue reading
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This is why you want a window seat
I’ve seen auroras on red-eyes between the U.S. and Europe before. This one over Lake Superior, for example, on a July night in 2007. And this one over Greenland in September 2012. But both of those were fairly dim. Sunday night’s red-eye was different. This one was a real show. And I almost missed it. First, my window seat Continue reading
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FlightAware’s Amazing MiseryMap
That’s FlightAware‘s MiseryMap. Go there now, click on the blue “play” button and watch what happens. If you’re close to now (8:56pm EST), you’ll see what weather does directly to major airports in Chicago, New York and Atlanta, and indirectly (by delayed flights due to unavailable airplanes, mostly) to Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, etc. Continue reading