October 7, 2006: Night takeoff
 

http://cellar.org/2006/takeoffnight.jpg

A UPS-owned B767 departs Des Moines Int'l and turns south.

via airliners.net, and one of the most interesting photos I've seen recently!

WOW, too cool. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Very cool! But it looks wierd from here, doesn't it? Far to steep an ascent.

Is is a cargo plane ... so nobody's drinks get spilled in a steeper ascent ...

I actually think that the image is foreshortened by the wide angle camera lens and shot angle. Look at the spacing on the red light.

Hehe, unless you stall. How do you know it only carries cargo, by the way?

Yeah, it's a good thing the lights are there.

Because the plane belongs to UPS ("United Parcel Service").

And UPS never spirits political prisioners out of Des Moines.:tinfoil:


btw....Canon 20D, 50mm f/1.8 MK-II

Sometimes it does. But it refuses to give them drink service. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

I've tried taking pictures exactly like this one. It's hard to get the exposure right. This was a very clear night. The sky isn't all washed out.

Around here the light pollution around the airport would kill any chance.:(

I just dug out an old shot I took in 1994 at Washington National. There's a cool park right next to the end of the runway in the flight path of the approach. This is a long exposure that caught a couple flights. Flights are about a minute apart, so this must be a 3-4 minute exposure.

Just as long as they're packaged properly. ;)

Fantastic shot.

Why does the red tail light miss about 5 flashes at the top of the steep bit?

As the plane flops forward onto the flattened traveling plane, the tail moves faster and therefore we don't see the 'motion' in the picture because it moves from red light to the next red light?

OR...

The back wings at the tail of the plane are blocking the view of the red light.

Need to add...

I showed this pic to Hubby tonight as I knew he would enjoy looking at it. When we were married, we flew to SoCal for our Honeymoon.
When we left John Wayne Int'l Airport to come back home, the plane went straight up with full thrust and when it reached the altitude it wanted, it cut the engines back to nearly nothing (compared with take off and the climb) and the plane dropped a good bit.

Hubby was wide eyed, gripping the arms of his seat and staring around to see what the other passengers were doing. I was calmly flipping through a magazine and he jerkily twisted towards me and stage whispered "Is this normal? Are we okay?" I gave him a puzzled look until I understood what was bothering him...

He hadn't flown much and had NEVER taken off somewhere where the planes had to get out of residential noise areas... He thought the plane had cut out and was gonna go down!
Poor guy. He's much better about flying, now.

Having begun his turn, he no longer needed his turn signal on.

It kinda looks like Santa's light trail. Is Rudolph up there somewhere?

I'm puzzled by the sharp right-angles of the light paths on the runway. Presumably these are his wing lights, while taxiing before take-off. Doesn't a plane make a sweeping turn? It reminds me of the light-cycles in Tron...

That's because in most of the country, rich people don't live too close to airports and it's a lot easier to fly lower over middle and lower income neighborhoods.

The funny thing was we were discussing that today after the funeral since some of the mourners were from California.

A very cool photo.

The beacon is the light that means the plane has an engine running. As it climbs you see the beacon on top and as it levels off you begin to see the beacon on the bottom. Planes have at least two of everything. Some systems, like navigation have six or seven layers of redundancy.

Welcome Simon!

Tell the truth ... you're actually quite complex and you're trying to put us off our guard, right?

No I'm pretty simple. It's all the time I spend with my two year old, I think.

Lots of great photos at http://www.airliners.net
Check out the editors choice section.