Night Flight Operations on an Aircraft Carrier

  Ok, first underway on my new assignment on the USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76) - a nuclear powered aircraft carrier for those who don't speak Navy - so I figured I had to take Excalibur out and get the obligatory shots of flight operations. The weather was pretty horrible the whole time we were out, and I found that as cool as flight ops were, grey F-18s taking off from a grey deck into a grey sky was simply not visually appealing enough fto make carrying the D4 / 70-200mm combo up ten decks worthwhile, so you will have to wait for high speed shots of fighters taking off and flying into the wild blue yonder. Night Flight Ops, on the other hand, were pretty freaking awesome, and with what little moon there was trapped behind the clouds, I figured they would be a challenge even for excalibur. And I was right. Still stuff on the decks with the amber deck lighting on- piece of cake.

Right before takeoff the plane lights up to signal the pilot is ready to go. Who knew the Navy was just as much into EL-Wire as burners are? The one thing I didn't count on that made some of the still shots difficult was jet wash. I wasn't allowed on the flight deck itself, I was shooting from Vulture's Row (area on the 09 level of the island, so named because everyone stands up there to watch flight ops, like a row of vultures on an old west cactus or tree limb) so I had limited movement. Landings and takeoffs from the waist catapults I was beam on and had a good angle.

But anything launching off the bow cats I was pretty much shooting from behind. Which I thought would give me some great shots of the afterburners. But what I didn't count on was the afterburners. with the Jet Blast deflectors aiming all that wash straight up, it was like trying to shoot through the heat waves you see on a desert highway. Believe it or not, this shot was in sharp focus locked in before the F-18 fired the afterburners up. The haze is all jet wash.

The second thing I didn't count on was that for landings, they turn the flight deck lights almost totally off, so the pilot just sees the landing lights (which are directional) and lineup lights. The 2.8 wasn't fast enough for landings. I had to swap out the 70-200 for my 50/1.8 and bring the shutter down to 1/50 sec to get workable images. That meant that I wasn't freezing the plane's movements with shutter speed, which gave me my first real chance to try panning. Didn't really nail it, but I did get a couple of decent shots of some night traps.

So, lessons learned on this first endeavor...

1- Wash from Afterburners is hard to shoot through.
2- It gets really, really, really dark out to sea at night.
3- Panning works, I just need to practice it a bit more
4- Aircraft Carriers are pretty darn cool.
5- It's hard not to use Navy lingo when talking about ships. I tried to explain things, if something didn't sound like english, drop me a comment and I will translate.

Hopefully next time we go out the skies will be blue and I can get some day shots, or maybe it'll be a clear full moon, I think then I could get the 70-200 back on there and really get some good stuff.