Monthly Archives: March 2007

An interesting day at the Museum

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Liftoff

I went off to the Toronto Aerospace Museum today expecting to spend more hours blasting the primer off the brackets for the display stands.  Well, I did plenty of that but also saw some interesting things.  A new business has opened up across the road and I walked over to see 6 helicopters!  Here is an Aerospatiale AS35551 lifting off.  A lot quieter than I thought it would be.

Catching the news from above

Sitting out in the sun was the Global News chopper.  Another Aerospatiale, I’ve seen this one flying over the city but didn’t think I would get this close.  I guess I’ll have to make nice with our new neighbours and, perhaps, I can hitch a ride.

I bet it still has that new plane smell

Just as I was leaving for the day, this brand new Bombardier CRJ spooled up on the runway by the museum.  First time I’ve seen one at Downsview.  I imagine it was off to Montreal for the final paint job.

Another reason I didn’t get much done today was that it was time to move a few of the aircraft around.  They needed to reposition the little Ultimate stuntplane so the front section of the Lancaster had to be swung out of the way.  While not pushing a broom (you’re a volunteer, you do everything and the area under the Lanc needed sweeping) I managed to get this shot of the interior.

Where brave men worked

It’s a little hard to make things out because it was actually above me.  The mustard colored metal at the top of the shot is the windshield area and the clear area straight ahead is where the bombardier sat (or layed) as he guided the bomber over the target.  It doesn’t look like much now but in a few years it will be immaculate.  The work the skilled volunteers do is amazing.

More shots are available over at my Flickr page (see link on the right) or you can click on any of these to see a larger version.

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

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 You’re flying along and all of a sudden a flaming piece of space junk almost hits you.  Welcome to the impercise science of deorbiting satellite re-entry calculation.

A Lan Chile Airbus A340 on its way from Santiago to Auckland New Zealand yesterday came very close to being destroyed by a piece of a Russian satellite that came back to Earth a day early.

How close did it come?  The pilot reported that the “rumbling” noise from the flaming junk could be heard in the cockpit.

From the article, a spokesman for Airways New Zealand which handles air navigation services said, “clearly there has been a timing issue” when asked to explain why the satellite decided to come back ahead of schedule.

It’s not like the timing was predicted by rocket scientists….hmmm.

(image above shows some of the junk in orbit currently being mapped)

Link to thewest.com.au : Flaming space junk narrowly misses jet

Every 45 Seconds

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 Article reports a protest group is claming that a container destined for Wal*Mart arrives at a US port every 45 seconds.

The group, WakeUpWalMart, raises the issue to point out the fact that only 5% are being checked by Homeland Security.

Dealing with the giant as part of my job, I really don’t have any reason to doubt their claim.  Wal*Mart is the 600 pound gorilla in the global logistics business and the numbers that swirl around their empire are legendary.

  • largest private employer in the United States
  • largest grocery retailer in the US
  • over 1,000 discount stores (US) and 2,200 Supercenters (US) and nearly 300 in Canada
  • data storage of 460 terrabytes

They’re ruthless and they’re goal to drive costs down by pushing back against suppliers and 3rd party service providers like mine make them extremely difficult to deal with.  Unfortunately, they hold so much clout that you can’t ignore them and they don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

As for the question of container inspection, fine in practice but a hell of a task. In 2005, it was estimated that 18 million containers were around and over 200 million trips were logged.  That’s over 11 trips a year PER container. The largest container line, A.P. Moller-Maersk Group had, as of January 2006, 549 ships capable of containing 1,665,272 TEUs (stands for 20 Foot Equivalency – a 40′ can counts as 2 TEU).  And they only accounted for 18% of the world’s total capacity.

This Week’s eBay Find

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United DC-8 Commemorative Ashtray

Now that it appears I’m officially collecting aircraft memrobilia, I have to start clearing out my office to make room.

This week, I picked up this ashtray and a little snooping around the Net has gotten me really excited.

The ashtray commemorates the start of United Airlines’ scheduled DC-8 service in September 1959.  On the side, it is imprinted with the name “R. A. Miller” but Google doesn’t lead me to much except a listing for a company of that name that produces avionics.

Foiled By Fog

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Set out again this morning to work on the sunrise photos.  It was supposed to be clear.  Instead, the fog rolled in.

Foiled By Fog

Sharp eyes will notice that this is the same tree shown in yesterday’s posting.  A wider shot today from about the same angle.  A stark outline against the gray skies.

New Acquisitions

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I was working at the Toronto Aerospace Museum in the Lancaster restoration area when a couple of new acquisitions came in.

Transmitter

A transmitter of the type used on the Lancaster bomber that is currently undergoing restoration.  It was used to send bomb damage assessments and aircraft status via Morse code.  One of the volunteers on hand mentioned that his mother used to be a listener during WWII and transcribed messages sent by devices like this.

Planisphere

An orignal Planisphere or star chart used by Allied navigators during WWII.  The arrival of this item caused a crush of onlookers so I was unable to actually get any shots of the contents.

Remarkably, The London Name Plate Mfg. Co. Ltd still exists.

What was I doing in the Lancaster restoration area?  Still working on those damm brackets for the display boards.  Now I’m bead blasting the primer coating off the aluminum which involves this nasty bugger.

blaster

Turn the compressor on, pump up the air pressure, start the vibrator (for recovering the glass beads that do the blasting), safety goggles on, respirator on, pop the bracket into the chamber and blast away.  Repeat 150 times.

Depth Of Field Experiment

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Jan bought me a book for Christmas called “Understanding Exposure” and I’ve been dying to try out some of the exercises.

Yesterday was warm enough to spend some time working on depth of field.  Basically, the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth captured. (click on any picture to see a larger version)

Shallow Depth Of Field

This first shot was taken using a setting of F/4.5 for 1/1000 of a  second.  The lens is wide open (the smaller the f number, the larger the aperture).  No, I don’t understand it either.

The foreground is crisp and clear while the background is very out of focus.  This naturally leads the eye to the tap itself. 

An automatic digital camera sees this shot and automatically tries to bring everything into focus so it chooses a smaller (larger number..huh?) aperture and a longer exposure. 

Deep Depth Of FieldThis shot was taken at f/22 for 1/40 of a second and approximates what an automatic camera would capture.

In an effort to avoid capturing what it feels would be a bad exposure (out of focus elements), a smaller opening is used and gathers more light by increasing the exposure time.

It’s still an OK picture but now your eye isn’t really sure where to look as the trees in the background compete with the tap for your interest.

This is really the first time I’ve been really able to demonstrate the power of a digital SLR being used with manual settings.  If I’d set the camera to automatic mode, I would have naturally got the second shot.  I prefer the first one.

One last one.  In this one, I manually focused about 10 inches out so that the middleground was highlighted.  The picnic table board in the foreground is out of focus  as are all the other tables in the background.  Only the second board is clear and your eye is drawn to the knot.  If I had really thought about this composition, I would have made sure that you couldn’t see the tree in the far background.  The angular, dark trunk competes with the effect I was trying to achieve. (f/4.5 1/1250 sec.)

Heart Lake

I could crop it to get rid of the tree which works better but now it’s a flat shot.

h14(2)

Still lots to learn.