Bridge - tunnel - bridge.. huh?

Approaching Norfolk, Va from the northwest, my Captain said there was a pretty cool bridge that we'd be flying over. I was thinking it would be a cool looking suspension bridge like you see in many cities, but that certainly wasn't the case. The bridge turns into a tunnel in a couple of places, allowing ships to enter and exit the harbor- sort of the opposite of a draw bridge! Crazy.

And those clouds in the background turned out to be some pretty decent thunderstorms; our radar painting numerous red cells, fortunately they were just to the south of the field and we made an uneventful approach and landing.

I just finished another 8 straight days of work, and I haven't posted in a while because... well, I'm lazy.

Another shot of crossing traffic; a Southwest 'Guppy', AKA 737, 1,000' feet above from the east to west. Another unkown plane trails the Southwest 73.

A decent shot of Chicago! To make up for my 'crappy' picture of a chicago a couple of posts ago..

This is the new Dash 8 'Q'-400. Looks kinda funny huh? It's basically a stretched version of the Dash 8-100/200 that we fly from Phoenix to Flag, and other places out west. It does have one pretty cool feature though: Active Noise Canceling. Kind of like those expensive Bose headphones you can buy, the plane has a system that 'listens' to the noise created by the engines and props and then generates sound waves that cancel out the noise produced by the plane. I've never ridden in one, but supposedly it is pretty quiet inside.

It's funny to me how airplane manufacturers will keep stretching a plane to make it more efficient and better suited for certain operations and markets. In fact, the CRJ is just a super stretched business jet from the late 70's.


Look pretty similar huh? If you don't think so, that's probably because the Challenger biz jet is just over 60' long, while the CRJ-900 is nearly 120' long! Of course there are quite a few differences between the planes, but Bombardier essentially just took the Challenger and started stretching it into the CRJ-100/200, -700, and eventually the -900.

Well, that's all for now. Back to work tomorrow to start a 3 day trip. I'll be doing Dulles-Nashville-Charleston, SC turns all day long for three days!