August Update

During the last week of July/beginning of August my nephew from Iowa, Connor, came out to Seattle for a visit. It was a good week for a visit since it was SeaFair Week in the Seattle area, which meant there was a lot going on, including a port call by a number of U.S. Navy ships and performances by the Blue Angels.

Navy tugs push USS Halsey (DDG-97) up to the pier in downtown Seattle.

I won't cover all the stuff we did with Connor, but I will touch on a few things we did that might be of interest to those of you that read the blog. With the Blue Angels in town, we decided to take a trip to the Museum of Flight. We arrived as the team was landing after a practice run and didn't get any good photos of their F-18s. But we did get a good shot of the Blue Angels "Fat Albert" C-130 as it was moving along the taxiway and an Air Force A-10 was landing.

'Fat Albert' taxis while an A-10 lands

I also got a few shots of the new Indian Navy P-8I maritime patrol aircraft as it was coming back from some test flights. This was pretty much a bonus, since the P-8 wasn't part of the air show. This was the first time I've seen the P-8 up close and it was fun to see the test Harpoon missiles mounted under the wings.

An Indian Navy P-8 taxis by (note the Harpoon missiles under the wing)

A good profile view of the P-8 (although that guy in the pick-up truck is in the way)

A good view of the insignia and Sanskrit writing (the other side of the plane says Indian Navy in English)

We also went over to Bremerton to tour the old destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951).

Connor and I on the gangway to see Turner Joy

The group running the museum has kept the ship in pretty good shape. You can tour a lot of the ship, including a gun turret, one of the engine rooms, the bridge and a peek into the CiC.

Overall we had a good time with Connor and I even got him to play some boardgames with us. He really liked the old Ace of Aces dogfighting books and I gave him a copy of the Powerhouse series. So, I might turn one of my nephews into a gamer.

As summer winds down, I'm hoping to get back into painting and gaming.