Friday Night Movie

Go outside and play, kids!

Sparked

From Cirque du Soleil



... as in, spark your attention? Much more about this at Slate. Enjoy!

Friday Night Movie (on Saturday)

You've never seen holiday fireworks quite like this! If your connection supports it, turn this one up to 1080p, set the speakers on, go full screen, and sit back and enjoy! Happy Holiday everyone!

Friday Night Movies

Yes, movies... as in more than one. We can't resist a triple feature this week because some of it is just that good. And all of them have something to do with our modern age of aviation.

First up is some genuine Top Gun kind of stuff and what happens when you give a bunch of hot shot pilots some cool new GoPro cameras. This is your tax dollars at work, folks!



We'll follow that with footage that is just downright beautiful. Wolf Air is a company that shoots custom air-to-air footage for commercial or movie purposes. They use their own highly modified Wolfe Air LearJet 25 and Vectorvision camera system. Cameras used are the Red Epic and Arriflex Alexa. Pretty easy on the eyes stuff for sure.

Wolfe Air Reel from 3DF on Vimeo.

And what movie night would be complete without a blooper reel? Well, we have one of those too. And we'll stay on topic: aviation. There's only one thing to be said about this - it's NOT how you load an airplane! This happened at MIA in April 2014. Both employees of the trucking company were fired. Duh.

Aerial Photo Day

My last day of 2013 was a day off... but I went in anyway for my annual Robinson R22 helicopter ride and an aerial photo tour of the Kona Airport. It's holiday time of course and the well-heeled folk are here for warm weather celebrations in numbers once again. I counted about 51 private and leased jets on the ground today... not the largest number we've ever seen this time of year, but respectable none the less.

Happy New Year, Everyone! And good fortunes to you all in 2014!

Dave.

Aerial Photography

27-Dec-2012 (KOA)

Yesterday was the day once again for an annual aerial photo flight at Kona.  I’ve gone up every year between Christmas and New Year’s since 2004.  In the beginning these flights were only done at Kona to capture the crowded conditions we see on the ramps during the holiday break.  Eventually a separate annual flight was scheduled at the Hilo airport too and the photo library became a useful tool for recording conditions and changes over the prior 12 months at both airports.  We also learned how to leverage the pictures for reports or whenever a case had to be made for project needs.  Images really do trump words every time.

007

The name is Bond. James Bond. And yes, that *is* a pocket protector!



See what happens when engineers have free time?!

Credits & Notes:

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor. A special microphone attached to the frame records the notes made by the "couch guitar".

These flying quadrotors are completely autonomous, meaning humans are not controlling them; rather they are controlled by a computer programed with instructions to play the instruments.

Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science is home to some of the most innovative robotics research on the planet, much of it coming out of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab.

This video premiered at the TED2012 Conference in Long Beach, California on February 29, 2012. Deputy Dean for Education and GRASP lab member Vijay Kumar presented some of this groundbreaking work at the TED2012 conference, an international gathering of people and ideas from technology, entertainment, and design.

The engineers from Penn, Daniel Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev, have formed a company called KMel Robotics that will design and market these quadrotors.
More information: http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/penn-quadrotors-ted

Video Produced and Directed by Kurtis Sensenig
Quadrotors and Instruments by Daniel Mellinger, Alex Kushleyev and Vijay Kumar

NORAD Tracks Santa

Those who know me know that I love Google Earth and have figured out how to do just about everything with it.  But at this time of year there is no higher purpose for such sophisticated software than to track a fat man in a red suit, a team of magical reindeer, and a sleigh as they swoop thru the heavens at astronomical speed and drop goodies down chimneys. 

That this should all cost us - software included - no more than the value of a cookie and a glass of milk is magic indeed. Just enjoy it.

For more go to the NORAD Track Santa site now!

Wordless Wednesday

Tail Feathers

Because of the dynamic nature of the internet... this image may, nay will, change from time to time.  So if you think you're crazy you'll have to find another reason.  :)

KOA Triennial Exercise 2011

On Wednesday, Dec 14, 2011, Hawaii's Air National Guard 204th Airlift Squadron assisted Kona International Airport and the Hawaii County Fire Department in the Federal Administration's Triennial Disaster Exercise by providing a large frame aircraft for the simulation of a crash site and mass casualty event. The Kona Airport Rescue & Fire Fighting (ARFF) unit were first responders, while the Hawaii County Fire Department filled in as additional manpower and triage support. Students from NELHA's West Hawaii Exploration Academy and Kealakehe HS, made up to simulate injuries from minor abrasions to life threatening, provided bodies for the exercise.

Also participating in the exercise were representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration, US Army Hawaii Fire Rescue unit, Hawaii County Police Department, Hawaii State Chapter of the American Red Cross, Civil Defense, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), Kona Airport Police, and various air carrier representatives.

Thanks go to Tech. Sgt. Andrew Jackson of the 154th Wing Public Affairs section for providing the link to this video work, and to the 204th Airlift Squadron for providing a Hickam AFB Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft for the exercise. The interview in the video is with Mr. Merv Kahumoku, Kona ARFF Chief.

My photos of the day will provide more detail of the event and will show up here in the form of a video in the near future. Stay tuned! :)

Tower Construction

Being out of state for a while gives me a chance to catch up on a few of those videos I mentioned a while back.  Here's one of them.

I was asked to put something together for the Western Regional FAA Annual Conference in San Francisco this past May, and decided to use some of the photos I've done of the FAA's new air traffic control tower project at Kona International Airport.  Since I'm currently travelling I don't know for sure how much the project was affected by the recent budget hubbub in Washington, D.C., but I assume they may have had to shut down for at least a few days somewhere along the way.  Hopefully everybody is back again and getting paychecks.

The FAA conference was held on June 6.  The video is current through about May 24th or so and shows progress panoramas and a couple time lapse videos of interesting elements of the project.  The contractor's work is scheduled to complete early this fall.  From there the FAA will proceed with installation and testing of their electronic equipment.  Full operations out of the new digs should be ready to begin sometime in Fall 2012.

Time Domain Electromagnetics



TDEM

In the period of 1943 to 1945 over 40,000 acres of Parker Ranch land near the town of Waimea (Kamuela) on the Big Island of Hawaii was transformed almost overnight from serene pasture into a US Marine Corps training facility known as Camp Tarawa. Originally constructed by the Marine survivors of the Battle of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands this new camp quickly soared in population to over 25,000 troops.  Before the war in the Pacific was over more than 50,000 soldiers had trained at the facility.  This must all have come as quite a shock to the people in sleepy little Waimea, who at the time only consisted of about 400 permanent residents... mostly all Parker Ranch employees.  Waimea, with its cool and moderate climate, was perfect at the time for those Marines suffering the effects of tropical diseases such as malaria. 

Two primary groups of Marines trained at Camp Tarawa.  The first to arrive, the 2nd Marine Division, were resident from December 1943 until the spring of 1944.  These soldiers went on to fight in the battles of Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa.  The second group, the 5th Marine Division, came in the fall of 1944 and trained until late December, 1944. When they left, it was to fight the horrific Battle of Iwo Jima. One of the local “puu”, or small cinder cone, was a perfect training site for what they would later face at Mount Suribachi on the southern tip of Iwo.

All this military activity took a toll on the land however, and over the years many unexploded remnants of the training have been found, in several instances with fatal outcomes.  Now the US government has funded a project to survey and locate unexploded ordinance on another 14,000 acres of this training area.  Follow-up projects are planned to remove items found and fully clear the area.

What you see above is a Bell Model 206L helicopter on the ramp of Waimea-Kohala Airport just outside of Waimea.  Workers are installing a Time Domain Electromagnetic (TDEM) induction system that will be used to detect metal objects or unexploded ordinance that may still be in the ground at the old training site.  Other applications for TDEM technology include identifying aquifers or detecting the presence of water or salt water intrusions in groundwater investigations, mapping aggregate deposits for quarry operators, mapping leachate in environmental investigations, or permafrost or other geologic features in geotechnical engineering.

The primary contractor for the government on this project is CH2M-Hill, with support from Battelle, and Pacific Helicopter Tours.  The survey and identification portion of the project is expected to take about two months. 

This work also goes straight to the heart of a key Hawaiian value, namely the concept of Malama 'Aina - Care for the Land.

Hilo Armed Forces Day 2010

Okay... this is a *little* late... my bad.  But it dawned on me now that this blog is out there and a YouTube channel is set up for embedding content, that there might be more things in the archives to share.  So share we shall... now and in the future.

While I work on a production for the recent Kona airshow, here's a flashback from the past:



Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday

Overflight:  (1/2000s f/5.6 @ 200mm iso200)

An Unconventional Landing

An addendum of sorts re: the airshow at Kona this weekend...

Maybe I will have to pick up a small camera with basic video capability one of these times after all!  Shooting moving objects handheld with a DSLR in burst mode doesn't quite produce the quality any of us are used to these days... including me!  :)  But put in the category of "something is better than nothing", the following *is* better than nothing, and can only be described as... a little out of the ordinary.  So enjoy!

(Safe for work, but contains sound)

I promise... next year I'll have my act together for this kind of stuff!  :)

Airshow



C'mon in!


For a first ever event the Hawaii Airshow Invitational at Kona went off very well this weekend. The weather was nice, if not a bit hot, both days, and the crowds were good. An airshow is always a great family event, and this one was no exception. From the looks on the little faces it was a great experience. And it was nice to see so many kids on the field. Hopefully this will continue to grow in both scope and popularity over the years. Isolated communities like ours need the kind of variety this sort of weekend provided.

Continued after the jump...

Teaser

F-16 Falcon practice run  (1/1500s f/5.6 at 300mm iso200)

This is a teaser for part of what will be happening here this weekend.  As I left the airport this afternoon for a dental appointment one of the F-16's screamed overhead on a practice run for this weekend's entertainment.  Watching him rip holes in the sky one couldn't help thinking how many "G's" the guy was pulling at times.  Here he is making a high-g horizontal turn after dropping out of a loop. 

This is a 100% crop of the disrupted airflow over his wings.  After seeing this I decided to endure the pain of hauling a 400mm lens around tomorrow just in case they get the green light to push mach 1 and an opportunity to snatch a Prandtl–Glauert singularity shot comes along.  One can always hope...  Actually, the condensation cloud seen here is related to the same phenomenon.

For more information on times, events, prices, and all the rest, go to the Hawaii Airshow Invitational website.

See you there this weekend!

Early Arrivals

This weekend the airport at Kona will be hosting the 1st Annual Hawaii Airshow Invitational.  It's a project that's been in the works for over 7 years and will be the first in Hawaii ever held at a public airport.  All prior shows have been hosted at military installations on Oahu, or included offshore aerobatic exhibitions by precision units such as the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels.

The event this weekend will include many static displays of military and historic aircraft as well as aerobatic exhibitions by several of Hawaii's top pilots.  See the link above for more information.

Roadside Repairs

So, you're far away from home and you blow an engine on landing. What do you do? If you're a C-17 Globemaster III it's no problem... you just load up another bird with a spare engine, lifting racks, auxiliary units, tech crew and tools and you go out into the field with a new blower in shrink wrap and swap the bad unit out.  No biggie.

That's what's happening at KOA this week. And it's just another day on the job for the guys (& gals) who get most of their work done before many of us wake up each morning.