Seattle's Museum of Flight
Seattle is prime aviation geek territory thanks to Boeing’s historic connection to the city. I’d been considering a visit to their factory, but as a non-driver it looked impossible to access by public transport and expensive by escorted tour.
Fortunately I would have more luck with a project I’d been considering for a while: to visit every British Airways Concorde. Most of these are in the UK, which makes this relatively easy for me (especially as I got
up close to Alpha Bravo whilst working for BA); of the internationally-located ones, I’d already ticked off G-BOAD in New York last year, and Seattle’s Museum of Flight is home to G-BOAG. Whilst Alaina has no interest in joining me in the hangars for these pilgrimages, I think I can at least convince her of the merits of a trip to Barbados so I can add G-BOAE to the collection :-)
Concorde G-BOAG
The nose
Rolls Royce/Snecma Olympus 593
Concorde seating sealed away as a museum exhibit (although I used to have lunch breaks on a few that can be found at Waterside!)
As a bonus, the Museum of Flight was holding a series of events under the ‘Jet Blast Bash’ title as part of Seafair weekend, the annual air show which by happy accident overlapped with our return to the city. The museum’s runway would be pressed into service for take-offs by performers, and thus a visit would allow for some prime plane spotting for those so inclined. However, I’m not especially interested in military aircraft, with one notable exception. Thus the highlight for me would be found inside rather than pressed against the runway fence: a talk by SR-71 pilot Brian Shul.
Special guest visitor - the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital
Runway-side viewing during the Jet Blast Bash
His account of
the fastest ground speed check is a tale of crew bonding that has passed into legend. It was first told at this same venue, in response to a question from a child on whether flying this impossible aircraft was ever fun. It is, I suspect, almost a contractual obligation to re-tell it each year; and I suspect the tale gets taller with every telling, for the punchline in the version we heard was a hundred knots faster the one I linked above.
No matter; I suspect all in the room were familiar with the broad shape of the anecdote. What I didn’t know was anything about Shul’s life before the SR-71, and thus how improbable it was that he ever had the chance to pilot it. Nor did I appreciate that many of the iconic images of the Blackbird are thanks to him: a then-amateur photographer who managed to charm his way into being able to get shots of this top secret machine during its working life. (Shul has continued with photography since, although now his subjects are actual birds.) Admittedly, the talk did sometimes stray into motivational speaker territory, and at other times took a rather jingoistic line; but on the whole it was fascinating. Even with the offer of both a discount and a signature, though, I couldn’t quite justify the $200 price of a copy of his Sled Driver book!
'Sled Driver' Brian Shul and the SR-71
As part of the festivities, the Blue Angels display team roared across downtown Seattle every afternoon for a few days. Somehow I was outside for each of the fly-bys yet never had appropriate camera gear to hand, until the final day (of both the air show and our trip). On that occasion we were out at Gasworks park, having spent some time exploring Fremont (joining Bainbridge and Mt Baker as another appealing neighbourhood). Thus I thought I would have to settle for some distant shots of the planes mingling with the skyscrapers across the lake, but to my delight their antics brought them directly overhead - with enough time for me to swap to a suitable lens before they reached the park.
Blue Angels over Gasworks park
Blue Angels in formation