Photo Flight

My friend Neil at work is an avid photographer. And while I enjoy taking pictures as well, I'm a "point and shoot" kind of guy. Neil, on the other hand, takes it much more seriously: he's got several cameras (both film and digital), a complement of lenses, and when he needs that extra zoom telephoto, he rents it -- much like I rent airplanes.

Neil is one of those folks who wants to go flying without needing to be convinced too much. We talked for a long time about going up for a flight, partly (or mostly) because Neil wanted to take some pictures of freeway interchanges from up high. And, since we had the perfect weather for this last Monday -- sunny, with not a cloud in the sky -- we went.

I guess this flight with Neil was the first situation for me that might have been a real-life "flight for hire" that I might have been asked to do had I been a working commercial pilot. Of course, I couldn't really charge Neil, even though I have a commercial pilot's license -- my medical is over 2.5 years old, which means it's only good for third class private pilot operations. But, even though I wouldn't be getting any money, I still had a good excuse to go up flying. So, we headed up to Northway Aviation, the FBO that I rent from most often at Paine Field, boarded one of their Cessna 172's, and headed off.

Neil wanted to take photos on the East side of Seattle -- particularly the I-405/SR-522 and I-405/SR-520 interchanges. The first interchange, with SR-522, could be done easily, since the overlying Seattle Class Bravo airspace does not start until 5,000 feet. SR-520 required a Class Bravo clearance -- it's a bit closer to Seattle-Tacoma International, and Class Bravo starts at 2,500 feet there and even goes down to 1,800 feet at the point where SR-520 crosses Lake Washington (which Neil wanted to take pictures of as well). But, we got lucky! Seattle-Tacoma happened to be landing to the North that evening, and we had no problems getting a clearance into Seattle Class Bravo at 3,500 feet as long as we stayed north of the 520 bridge and east of Mercer Island.

This flight was my first with an open passenger window, and I anticipated a lot of wind and a greatly increased noise level in the cabin. However, I was pleasantly surprised. There wasn't much wind, and even though we did have an increased noise level, I could still hear air traffic control just fine over the radio. What I did not anticipate was that an open window would provide a bit more of drag, and the plane cruised just a bit slower than usual. However, that was not a problem: I chose to operate at a pretty slow airspeed to let Neil find the perfect shot.

An exact 1.0 hours and 3 rolls of film later, we were back on the ground at Paine. I finished off the flight with a nice greaser landing on Runway 29, which put us right next to Northway's parking spots -- no extra taxi time needed. The photos turned out great as well!