Tag Archives: R. Doug Wicker

April 19, 2013 · 5:35 am

Fun Photo Friday


As you can tell, last weekend was a busy one for El Pasoans.  Things were getting blown up, knocked over, and demolished left and right.  It was almost as much mayhem as living in a Die Hard movie or watching Tea Partiers backstroke on presidential birth eligibility requirements since Canadian-born Ted Cruz became their flavor of the week (gee . . . it really was about race after all, it turns out).

Anyway, because City Hall was also on this past weekend’s demolition list, Ursula and I went down town to photograph it as well.  While we were there, I took the opportunity to snap a few other fun photographs, which you can see below (the graffitied railroad cars were snapped near the ASARCO stacks):

The Plaza Area
Graffiti on Yellow
Anson Mills Building
Downtown Icons
San Jacinto Plaza
Graffiti on Red
Mills on Mills

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April 12, 2013 · 5:35 am

Fun Photo Friday


Here are nine of my favorite shots from Monument Valley taken back in October, 2006:

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And here’s an example of filtering for color in Black & White conversions.  For this demonstration I took this shot:

Monument Valley105

And then two conversions to Black & White (one filtered for green; the other for red).  Note that green filtering (left photo) lightens the sky and darkens the red earth and brown tree, while red filtering (right side) has the opposite effect of darkening the blue sky and lightening the red dirt and brown limbs:

Green Filtered Red Filtered

A trick to help analyze the visual differences in the two:  If you hold your CTL key and click on the left image, then do the same with the right, you’ll open up two additional browser tabs.  By clicking back and forth between the two tabs, you’ll alternate between enlarged versions of both pictures.

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April 2, 2013 · 5:35 am

Congratulations to Frank Van Haste


McDonnell 119 / McDonnell 220

McDonnell 119 / McDonnell 220

Yesterday I ran an aircraft identification contest with pictures I took of the one-of-a-kind McDonnell 119/McDonnell 220 business jet.  The prize for correctly identifying this relatively obscure example of aviation history consisted of Kindle or Nook versions of my two mystery novels:  Decisions and The Globe.

And the winner is (may I have the envelope, please) . . . Pilot, Aircraft Enthusiast, and Fellow Blogger Frank Van Haste.  You can visit Frank’s wonderful aviation (and occasional book review) blog at N631S.blogspot.com.

Frank recognized the McDonnell 220 because of his long-time interest in the Air Force contract that in the 1950s pretty much created the modern business jet.  That was the once famous but now mostly forgotten UTX/UCX (Utility-Trainer Experimental/Utility-Cargo Experimental) contract.  The eventual winner of that contract was the Lockheed Jetstar (L-329/C-140), an aircraft that sent shivers down my spine whenever it showed up at RAF Lakenheath because that was the aircraft used to evaluate air traffic control services at Air Force installations throughout Europe back in the 1970s.  If you’re a movie buff, you can see the Jetstar in action in the classic James Bond film Goldfinger.

Another winning entry for the UTX contract was the North American Sabreliner (N-265/T-39), which went on to become quite successful in the civilian market.  Indeed, over 800 examples of the Sabreliner were eventually built compared to just over 200 Jetstars.

Now for a bit of self-congratulatory housekeeping.  Yesterday’s post was the 400th for this blog.  That’s over three a week since this blog’s inauguration in January of 2011.  Looking forward to bringing you many more in the future.

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