How I spent my afternoon
I got a call at 1:36 this afternoon from faxpaladin. He had heard on the news wires that the Space Shuttle Endeavour would be spending the night at JRB Ft. Worth and was due to arrive about 3:17 our time.
I'd been wanting to see a shuttle mounted on the 747 carrier aircraft - in flight preferably - for 20 years now. Opportunity was knocking. So a scramble ensued to grab cold weather gear and camera gear. I just barely had enough time to get there and had 2 counties of potentially horrible traffic to make it across.
For once, the traffic gods were in a good mood. I had the smoothest drive across Dallas County I've had in years. No problems in Tarrant county either. I was able to drive right to the spot I had picked on Google maps and pull off the road - along with about 200 other folks.
As I stepped out of the truck, camera already in hand, I heard the lady in the group next to me tell her kids to look just left of a telephone pole. I had arrived just in time. The 747 was on 5 mile final for the south runway. I was about 1000 feet west of the south end of the same runway. Kinda cool seeing a 747 carrying a space shuttle coming right at you.
So of course I started snapping pics.
( Click the image for the larger version )
Thanks to decoy01 for the use of his rather snazzy image stabilized telephoto, even though he doesn't know yet it was borrowed. ( Bad day to go out of town, Sam. )
And thanks to faxpaladin for the timely head's up. Much appreciated.
I'd been wanting to see a shuttle mounted on the 747 carrier aircraft - in flight preferably - for 20 years now. Opportunity was knocking. So a scramble ensued to grab cold weather gear and camera gear. I just barely had enough time to get there and had 2 counties of potentially horrible traffic to make it across.
For once, the traffic gods were in a good mood. I had the smoothest drive across Dallas County I've had in years. No problems in Tarrant county either. I was able to drive right to the spot I had picked on Google maps and pull off the road - along with about 200 other folks.
As I stepped out of the truck, camera already in hand, I heard the lady in the group next to me tell her kids to look just left of a telephone pole. I had arrived just in time. The 747 was on 5 mile final for the south runway. I was about 1000 feet west of the south end of the same runway. Kinda cool seeing a 747 carrying a space shuttle coming right at you.
So of course I started snapping pics.
( Click the image for the larger version )
Thanks to decoy01 for the use of his rather snazzy image stabilized telephoto, even though he doesn't know yet it was borrowed. ( Bad day to go out of town, Sam. )
And thanks to faxpaladin for the timely head's up. Much appreciated.