Seen Over Your House Today

[kitnut617]

Huh!!! New stuff for me! How cool is that?!  I went and had a gander at google images. 737's barreling down what looks like old rural dirt roads and such. 

I wonder if Saudia ever used a gravel kit on their birds? I'm going to build a Saudia 737-200 at some point....  one of the coolest liveries I've ever seen.....    it would be neat to put all this gravel jive on it too.   

I had a job a few years ago where my customer sent me to a diamond mine in the NWTs. I was to observe their operation so I could design and draft up some equipment for drilling. I had imagined some sort of 'bush' operation but I was completely gob-smacked when I traveled on this 737-200 (which just happened to be a Canadian North one) to the mine and we landed on a gravel airstrip. I had a good look at the set-up of the kit when I got off the plane.

Amazing!  I would have been blown away myself! Thinking about some high winged, balloon tired jobber with a low stall speed and here's this Boeing! Fantastic story, that whole affair sounds really cool to me.    Sounds like Debeers? I'm vaguely familiar, having seen a bit of Ice Road Truckers.    Work is work, but, man, that sounds like some pretty "fun" work. 

This whole "gravel kit" stuff is immensely intriguing and I'm going to have to find this etch stuff and throw it on my build whether the Saudis did it or not.... (I think I saw a picture of one with the vortex dissipator things though so maybe they did after all).

Actually it was something that De Beers decided it wasn't worth it, I went to the Ekati Diamond Mine which is about 350 km north-east of Yellowknife and 200 km south of the Arctic Circle. At any one time there's about 2500 people working there.

[TheChronicOne]

Fascinating. I'd never want to work way up there but visiting would be interesting. I could say the same for any place that one can't readily enter or exit of their volition.    Diamond mine or not!!! 

[kerick]

USCG chopper flew low over my work site today. Nice little distraction from work.

[TheChronicOne]

An Atlas Air Boeing 767 just flew right over the property here!! Airport is about 4 miles South of here so sometimes the air traffic flies over.

How strange to look out my window and see a wide body! It hopped on FlightRadar24 and it came from Baltimore.     Not as cool as the Galaxy, but still very cool, as 95% of the civil traffic around here civil are all little Embraer and another type of little regional jets.

I was too slow to get a picture....  I was dumbfounded to see this big thing flying over.

[JayBee]

Two A-29 Super Tucanos, just airborne from Prestwick. Four came in yesterday, I didn't see them then but they are on delivery to the Lebanese Air Force.

[zenrat]

Having dinner at a friend's last night.
Clear sky,  85% moon with a 22º halo around it and Jupiter within the circle.

[Captain Canada]

[Captain Canada]

[zenrat]

What are those Cap'n?
Herons?

[kitnut617]

At 10.27pm last night we were supposed to see the ISS pass almost directly over our place --- but it didn't happen. After a really hot day (28C) and lots of sun, minutes before the ISS was to pass over, it clouded over and we were treated to quite a lively thunderstorm instead. It was running up and down the eastern slopes of the Rockys for as far as we could see and was a continuous roll of thunder (and lightning) for about two hours. Quite the display actually --

[Captain Canada]

Yes. Great Blue. I believe they were mating, as they were circling and chasing each other all over the sky !

[zenrat]

Cool.  Thanks.
I love watching large birds in flight.  We occasionally get pelicans over us which are always very impressive in the air.

[NARSES2]

Largest we get are the Swans and Canada Geese that are either in Norwwod Lake or Crystal Palace Park, I do like watching them fly over in formation 

[kitnut617]

Forgot to mention --- a couple of days ago I heard a strange prop job taking off from YYC, looked around quickly and saw it was Piaggio 180 Avanti in colours I've not seen before, sort of silver with metallic crimson stripes from what I could see from my position.
This was followed shortly by a trio of BAe 146's taking off in quick succession (all from the same group of airline companies, Summit, First Air and another)

[zenrat]

Last night was clear.  We had Venus in the North West and Jupiter in the East.