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If only I could get him taking off coming *toward* me instead of away.  THAT would be a cool picture.

 Pinchette #2 Sarah turned 21 a week a few weeks ago.  We had dinner at the Army Navy Country Club (courtesy of a very good friend).  T’was a beautiful night, and with the exception of the old guy on the left (whiskers are gone now, btw), the company of these two very beautiful young ladies made the night wonderful. 

Mama keeping an eye on the paparazzi.

From last night, using a new 1.7x telextender on the 400mm.

Discuss.

From a Facebook friend:  “More protection than what Ambassador Stevens got”.

Congrats to the US Navy for this singular accomplishment.  I remember about 10 years ago when I worked with the Aircraft Carrier program at NAVSEA, congress had told the Air Force and the Navy that they wanted something like 1/3 of their aircraft to be pilotless drones by – and I am digging into the misty, hazy archives of my brain now, by 2015.  Easy enough for the Air Force with their 3 mile long runways and bases all over the place – much more difficult for the US Navy with their aircraft carriers.  As a result, the Navy was given some additional time to develop this technology (till 2020?), and it appears they may be on track.

Next comes the recovery of that pilotless aircraft back on-board a carrier, and that is a much, much more difficult evolution given the dynamics of carrier-based recover – pitching deck, dutch-rolls, wind-over-deck, etc.  Point to be made is they are still many years away from this being a viable tactical asset in a theater of war.

Here is a good link to an article from the Norfolk-based Virginia Pilot on the launch, with video.  If anyone can help me out as to why they did not use a jet blast deflector (JBD) for the launch off catapult 2, I’d be much obliged.  I understand this was a one-off, a first launch and perhaps for photo-op reasons they didn’t need it with a clear/clean and empty deck, but it seems to me you would want to take advantage of data points in every category of a flight test.

Virginia Pilot UCAV Testbed Launch

Some days you’re the osprey, other days you’re the fish…

Some shots from Georgetown last night…the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal locks, and main street, Georgetown.

A quick dump/upload of some pics from this past weekend and a few eagle shots taken from my trip to Conowingo late last year that I played with (using Lightroom) to try and pull out a bit  more detail.

The classic take-out dinner, young eagle style.

Not too much crisp detail with this one – I just like the clear differences between the mature eagle (top) and the young one (below).

Little bit of osprey action down at the Neabsco Creek marina.

Love how these guys look right at me when they fly by.  Don’t know if they are sizing me up or what!

Facebook and Neptunus Lex buddy LCDR Perry “Whisper” Solomon performed the missing man pull-up for this Arlington National Cemetery flyover for the late CDR Thomas Kinaszczuk, US NAVY today at 1500.  Their time-on-top was slated for 1505 and the time stamp on teh photo says 15:04:02.  Well done, gents.

I was at the Air Force Memorial and a side view of a Missing Man fly-by is never the best – head on or a slight oblique angle is ideal, but t’was the best I could do.