Future of Flight - day trip from Seattle

Boeing has a museum of sorts and a tour of their assembly line in Mukilteo, Washington.

It was impressive, to say the least. But we constantly learn that technology and grandeur alone are not enough to carry the show.

First the impressive stuff.

They had the Rolls Royce Trent engine on display. This puppy is supposed to be the latest and greatest to power the 787 (yes, we saw three being built on their assembly line and one near completion) but the guide did tell us that everyone is going for the more proven GE engines!

If you are a materials engineer who did work on composites and you are in the high tech industry, this is as impressive as it gets to watching materials meet mechanics with a whole bunch of electronics thrown in, and we are not even talking about those cool aerodynamic wing tip designers !!!

They had sections of the plane on display, and an evolutionary history of the 7x7 series we are so familiar with today, in a self tour bay.

Let us say that the new 787 is a smaller plane than the 777 but is more spacious and fuel efficient and can go from Vancouver to Sydney non-stop! How? How? How?

Well, they switched from Aluminum to Composites for the entire body, a thing that was the holy grail of materials scientists for over 25 years! You see, these composite structures cannot be welded that easily and cannot be reformed or reshaped either. So you have to get it right the first time and we all know how difficult that can be!

There is also a lot of ergonomic improvements. The whole cabin area looks streched in x and shrunk in y (might be a problem for tall folks, but my guess is finally Boeing and its customers have figured out that the average person is 5 foot 5 inches and it makes sense to go wider and shorter).

They had a nice display with the cockpit. Kind of cramped and your head just spins after seeing all those dials and knobs and makes you realize why the "driver" (Jr. slang for pilot) is so important.

There were no cellphones, cameras, anything electronic allowed on the factory tour. So no pictures of the half built planes I guess.. Also the release date of the completed 787 is a closely kept secret. All we know is the first plane goes to All Nippon Airlines and is having technical difficulties!

Now, for the comment earlier about not everything being perfect. Boeing does not understand the concept of customer service (being one of two companies that makes such monster planes, probably never had to understand the concept!)

We asked for six tickets for a tour and they gave us 3 each for two different tours and did not bother to mention that they split our group! So our subsequent plans got all messed up and they had a big issue with accepting the fact that they screwed up!

That episode apart, the tour guide was extremely nice and the rest of the tour was uneventful.

Expensive but if you are a high tech or flying enthusiast, a must see if you go to the Seattle area!

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The tourguide becomes the tourist ?!

One of the books that stuck to my memory from the college library reading days is "The Stone Leopard" by Collin Forbes. In that book, the line that stood out was "The hunter became the hunted!".

Along similar lines, someday I plan to become a tourist for the very same places I take visiting relatives, in my role as the family tourguide.

San's uncle was here this weekend, after attending a conference in the east coast and on his way back to India.

"Two and a half days in the bay area, maximum coverage!" declared the wife. I took up the challenge and inspite of one of the worst wheezing attacks in recent memory on Friday night, went on to drive to the following places:

The livermore temple (this was not a tourguide thing, just the usual drive and back)
The Mystery spot (my 8th visit to the place, 4th on the tour)
Santa Cruz boardwalk
Route 1 from Santa Cruz to Golden gate bridge with stops on the beaches.. (yes, we ate the packed Tamarind rice and curd rice on the beach, and yes yes, it was delicious, as usual!)
The golden gate bridge (somewhere in the 25-30 range on this vista point)
Crooked street (same thing.. and not once have I actually managed to take in the beauty of this street because as the driver I am always hanging on the steering wheel for dear life on the way up)
The chocolate factory (this, like the temple is just plain fun)
Carmel by the Sea (6th trip)
Monterey Bay aquarium (4th trip)

400 miles of local driving with lots of help from my friends Pseudoephidrine Hydrochloride, Azelastine Hydrochloride, Loratadine and of course Salbuterol who came through and helped me in some tough spots!

There will be some detailed posts with pictures of this hectic travel experience.. but leave you here with the customary stitch shots of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is one tough place for a merge shot but is also a good candidate for the shot. Even if you have a lens that goes to 18mm, you cannot capture the panorama from the vista point. That said, you need multiple shots.

Let me explain why is it a difficult place for stitch photos. Too many moving things, the water, the boats, yachts, the vehicles on the bridge, not to mention you and the camera (it is very windy at the vista point). You are better off trying this when :

a. there is good visibility

b. there are not that many vehicles on the bridge (at least avoid the huge trucks which move bigtime between your continuous shots)

c. avoid big barges on the water which also move perpendicular to the bridge. If they move parallel to the bridge, it does not matter much.

d. Use a tripod and swivel the camera across

e. The biggest thing I realized...do not do this in AUTO mode.

Go focus on the bridge in auto mode,
find out what the camera thinks is the best aperture and shutter speed,
then go to manual mode,
reduce the aperture by one stop to allow more light in (go to a smaller number),
decrease the shutter speed by one (ie., if auto says do 1/250, then do 1/400th of a second)
and then sweep the camera and shoot in manual mode.

f. Do NOT change the zoom throughout this sweep. That messes things up big time.

g. If you are worried about barelling (when you stitch a photo panorama, you get a barrel shaped composite picture, with the ends becoming short and the center long), shoot with the camera rotated 90 degrees. Take more shots, vertically and stitch them!

Now, hope all that advice works for you. I plan to take my own advice next time (there will definitely be another next time) and do all of the above instead of just some of the above.

ps. Don't try to upload them in blogger with the original size. You will probably get an internal error! Resize and then upload, save yourself some pain.

Now, my dear friends are inviting me to a party. Got to run. Ciao!

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