Fluid Dynamics, Fluid Wars

Another shot from the Salinas Airshow, this time of an F-15E Strike Eagle, albeit processed to bring out the air condensing as it flows over the wings at speeds approaching supersonic.

By going to back and white, controlling the blue channel with a digital filter and changing contrast, you can bring to the fore elements that otherwise get lost. Not only did this processing emphasise the air flow over the plane's control surfaces but it also brings out the engine pulses.

Regardless, public demonstrations like these help reinforce the notion of what air supremacy actually is and what it means to modern warfare. It's worth remembering that the Russians only began to capitulate in Afghanistan once the mujaheddin acquired shoulder launched surface to air missiles from the US. All of a sudden, helicopters and troop transporters were vulnerable, air reconnaissance became a dangerous activity and even fighter-bombers were increasingly being targeted. With reduced air cover and much-curtailed ability to supply the front lines, the tide quickly turned as commanders reassessed the situation, and Russia soon pulled out.

To date, in the current conflict the Taliban have not been able to gain access to these weapons, despite many attempts to do so. We should all hope that this remains to be the case because if they succeed via Iran or somewhere else then once again a foreign occupying force will likely find itself on the losing side. Public opinion, historically being supportive of the Afghanistan operation, will rapidly turn negative if the 6 o'clock news starts reporting the downing of troop transporters.

Air power remains the primary tool of waging war in the 21st century, even where we face a 19th century foe.

Glass Ceiling #2

Here's an additional view showing more of the inhabitants of the sea-ceiling referred to in the post earlier today.

Glass Ceiling - Literally

Persian Ceiling and Wall Reflections

Back to the glass exhibit for a post today: one of the most impressive things we saw was an installation comprising a back-lit glass ceiling. This was a recreation of something he built for the bottom of his own swimming pool and comprises an amazing diversity of glass-modelled marine life, from mermaids to fish to seashells, lit to gives the impression of light being filtered throiugh water.

It's one of those exhibits you could easily spend an hour or more looking at, always finding something new and interesting to further catch your attention. Each piece is so well crafted, each piece so carefully placed.

The above shot doesn't really do it justice but at least it gives some impression of the scope, color and sheer joy of this unique piece of art.

2008 Salinas Airshow

F-15 On Reheat

Not really hard to figure that I was a) somewhere local (sunny) and b) there were aeroplanes involved. Yes, I spent the day at the 2008 Salinas Airshow, roughly 60 miles south of here. It was a sunny but not too hot day, but held in a location with very little shade. Of course, I took every precaution in terms of getting out the sunscreen, but that was somewhat negated by then forgetting the vital step of actually taking it with me in the car. Yes, I got burned, and yes, it hurt.

Salinas is a bigger airport than I ever knew and is ideally located in the Salinas valley. On problem is it has a fairly short runway, at least by commercial standards, so a couple of the aircraft flying-in had to be staged over in Monterey instead. Therefore, the static display was limited. The airborne display also a bit limited - and perhaps this was just peculiar to this year- in the sense that there were several F-15 variants and a lone F-18 but not much else in the way of interesting military jets, the U.S. Thunderbirds and their F-16s aside.

In addition to military jets, the air display featured single engine aerobatics, the Canadian parachute team, some stunt flying (which was the shot posted yesterday of course) and a portable toilet powered by a jet engine.

More yet to come.

Go Around. GO AROUND!!!!

Another clue as to whereabouts on Saturday. And no, this isn't me taking flying lessons. Or "waving my arms frantically in the air" lessons either ...

Glass Highlights

Yup, another smart-arse title. As you can see, taking even half-way acceptable pictures of bits of glass, in the dark and whilst being jostled by several hundred other visitors, has its challenges. Prime amongst those is that when lit by focused spotlights, as the larger exhibits all were, glass exhibits horrible specular highlights that overwhelm the dynamic range of any camera, film or digital. Add to that the fact that I only had my G9 with me and so had very limited opportunities to up the aperture or ISO speed in order to avoid camera shake with the inevitable slow shutter settings then I'm surprised I got anything worth a jot at all.

What we have here is a wooden rowing boat, sitting on a black, polished surface, lit by multiple spotlights. It's one of a pair of boats with different "fillings", spheres in this case (balls if you'd prefer!), that formed this particular installation.

Where's J?

Here's a clue as to how I spent Saturday. More shots over the coming days.

Air Traffic Overload

Think there are a lot of planes whizzing over your house these days? Wondering where they are all going? Fretful that you don't understand how they don't all crash into each other?

This video shows a time-lapse view, superimposed on a map of the globe, of all flights taking place around the world over a 24 hour period. Amazing stuff. (Better quality version here.)

The US is literally blanketed with light during daylight hours, as too is Europe, and the transatlantic corridor is just a solid band of yellow.

The tonnage of CO2 being generated; the number of people aloft at any given moment; the sheer economics involved in this collective industry, all must be staggering.

I caught a few minutes of a BBC America program on the inexorable rise of air travel. A reporter was in line to catch a low-cost flight in Bangalore for a journey of less than an hour. He asked the man in front of him what the base price was of his ticket, excluding any taxes or baggage check costs. "6 rupees" was the answer for a seat on this Indian version of Ryan Air.

Sure, with high load factors then air travel can be a quite fuel efficient way of moving people around, but there's a downside with all this and that's the tendency for new, low cost routes to generate additional travel that would otherwise not have happened.

No answers from me, and no particular axe to grind other than to wonder about the accelerative effect this must have on global warning given that it dumps all that CO2 right into the upper atmosphere where it has the maximum negative effect. Makes you think though. Just as cell phones are fast overtaking land-lines as the principal means of personal communication in the developing world, will air travel render train or cars redundant for non-local personal travel in India, China, Russia, South America and elsewhere?

In India, the demand for easier travel outside of the big cities is far outweighing the ability of government to build the necessary infrastructure to support it. Even in Bangalore they have taken nigh on 20 years to build a new airport. However, it's worth noting that even though this new facility is now open, they have yet to build a road out there to meet it .....

The era of mass aviation or even personal aviation - flying cars and all - may have only just begun.

Didn't Read The Plan But Killed It Anyway?

It seems to be the case that, in the midst of all the frenzy around the financial crisis, one of the presidential candidates couldn't even be bothered to read the three page summary of the plan Poulson was proposing, but that, err, oversight somehow didn't seem to stop him from heading off to Washington to blow out of the water the bipartisan agreement that had been reached. To compound that crime, said candidate will undoubtedly claim credit in the future for engineering whatever final agreement can be reached, and all in the name of a campaign for the presidency he says has been suspended.

Of all the twists and turns of this political campaign, this takes us from the absurd to the absolutely unacceptable.

It's bad enough McCain glides over reading something so critical as this 3 page document; it's jaw dropping he'd then admit to it on camera.

Add to that ticket the vacuous Palin and her "I'm good at foreign policy because I can see foreign from my house" line, and it starts to make GW Bush look like Lincoln.

So now I'm scared.

Glass Encounters

As previewed in the previous post, S and I went to the Dale Chihuly exhibition at the de Young museum, San Francisco. As many of you will already know, glass is definitely her thing - much more so than mine - but I was anyway happy to tag along to see what there was to see.

First things first: this is more a study in modern art expressed through glass than it is a simple collection of art objects that happen to be made out of glass. There is a wealth of form and colour in many of the individual pieces shown, let alone the larger arrangement of multiple separate items featured along the eight or so galleries spanned by the exhibition. For example, one room alone, comprising a collection of long slender glass cylinders fixed into logs, is more reminiscent of an installation work at the Tate Modern than it is a commercial glass exhibit.

In addition to his well know series of chandelier-like forms featured in various public spaces, an example of which is shown above, we find everything from the single item vase or jug right up to a complete tableaux stretching the entire length of one gallery. But it's not all glass. We also find a collection of baskets mixed in along with some woven items, providing a strong contrast to the angular nature of aspects of his glass work whilst also pulling us back towards the more organic forms used, again such as those shown above.

More to come in the next few posts ....