This Week's Featured Image

This week's featured image comes from, surprise surprise, the Azores.

Terceira Island lies some 900 miles off the coast of Portugal and is part of the Azores Archipelago, a small group of islands thrust up from the ocean floor by volcanic activity. Terceira is home to Lajes Field, an American tenant unit that sits on Air Base no.4 and run by the Portuguese Air Force FAP. Because of it's location Lajes is a frequent host for aircraft transiting between Europe and North or South America. Many of these stopovers are planned but sadly, some are not.

IFE's or in flight emergencies occur for technical reasons but more often than not are declared for a medical emergency of a passenger or crew member. In this case the combined medical personnel of the American and Portuguese forces respond to render aid. With the presence of a modern hospital most outcomes can be successfully managed. With some effort from the local airport facilities the plane can be underway in just a few hours.

On this day there was just such an IFE and Lajes Field played host to a visiting Iberia Airways Boeing 747-412 TF-AMA in a splendid color scheme. Aside from the weekly cargo shipment 747s are infrequent visitors to Lajes so to see this one was quite a treat. Treated to a watercolor-style treatment the vibrant colors accentuate the lines of the Jumbo jet rotating for liftoff with the air traffic control tower behind.



As my Featured Image of the week you are able to purchase the base print for a reduced price for this week only from my preferred top-quality printing e-commerce partner ImageKind. Normal matting and framing prices apply. To see this image at my ImageKind gallery page please click here.

Please check back next week to see a new Featured Image from my image collection of "Unique Imagery From Around the World".

Bad Day? Try a Little Perspective...

(Originally posted at American Yank in England on 25 January 2008.)

Some days just aren't worth getting out of bed for. I work quite a bit on my computers (more than I wish, really) so I run them pretty hard. Three days ago I came down to start the day and when the computer powered up I heard a POP followed by that all-to-familiar smell of fried electronics.

"Oh, what the..."

A quick inspection found that I had blown out the power supply. Well, poo. Unlike some previous assignments it was relatively easy to trek the 25 miles to the base and pick up a new CPU. Well, since I have a large backlog of images on my working drive I now have to transfer all of them over. Oh, updates for the new computer as well. And re-installing a program or two(million) and all of their updates. So to say the past few hours have been not only non-productive but taxing is pretty accurate from my point of view. A bad day at the office.

Now, how about having a bad day at the office when your "office" is moving. Really, a moving office. Well today we saw one of these flying offices zipping by and HE was having a MAJOR BAD DAY. You see, his office is an F-15E Strike Eagle and his bad day was happening while trying to land.

Aircraft mission (called sorties) are best when they involved an even number of takeoffs and landings. As this bird was coming home something went wrong and the nose landing gear was down all by its lonesome. Not good. I'm guessing that when he extended his gear to land he didn't get the proper indicator light saying everything was OK in the landing gear department, so he would cycle the system to try for the green light. Yet something else went wrong and as the main gear retracted, there's that pesky nose gear hanging out again.** About this time the pucker factor starts to crank up I imagine (beware of some strong language in the link to the explanation of pucker factor).

As me and my two spotting cohorts were trekking through a stand of trees to reach our desired field I only got a couple of frames when we realized there was something wrong with the jet as it shot past for a fly-by of the tower. Eventually everything went according to plan (we're assuming) and there was no major incident response to indicate anything other than a regular conclusion to a day at the office of a Strike Eagle crew. The jet remained intact, no violent ejections occured, no destruction of life and property to the public. All of these are possible outcomes when things go wrong in a fighter jet.

In retrospect, my day wasn't so bad after all.

**This is all conjecture on my part, if you can comment on the actual incident feel free to contact me so I can set the record straight!**