OV-105 Final Flight: Viewing (Going to Los Angeles)

[scotty125]

I've got to second that!  I made the trip to Dulles from Portland, and will be taking a day trip to LAX on the 20th.  To see the SCA and shuttle make a low pass at 1500' AGL is phenominal, whether you're an aviation geek or member of the unwashed masses.  My dad lives in Sacramento and couldn't tell a shuttle from a P-51, but I'm sending him out on the morning of the 20th to go see the fly-by there.  I'm assuming it will be over the capital dome...any one heard for sure?

[dwfx]

Any word when/where the Shuttle/SCA will fly over San Francisco?  Will it likely be a single loop around the bay over the Golden Gate Bridge then departing the area?

I need to schedule a flight from SF to Burbank on the 20th so I'm trying to plan around the best opportunities to see the shuttle!

[WheelsStop]

Any word when/where the Shuttle/SCA will fly over San Francisco?  Will it likely be a single loop around the bay over the Golden Gate Bridge then departing the area?

I'll hazard an educated guess on timeframe: Between 8-10AM, more likely in the second half of the window. 

The known constraints are sunrise departure from Edwards and arrival in the LA area a little after 11A.  Sunrise is 6:38A.  It's about an hour to either San Francisco or Sacramento.  I would opt for Sacramento first to allow more time for any coastal clouds to burn off.

For the aviation purists, I suppose since a loop is a vertical maneuver, the SCA won't be doing any of those at all

The inside of the bay is pretty tricky airspace that would conflict with the arrival/departure corridors for SFO and OAK airports.  I've included a snapshot of the SFO VFR flyway chart below for context.  In very simple terms, flight in the grey shaded circles around SFO and OAK will require more coordination compared with staying outside.  In comparison, flight in the areas indicated by the blue shaded arrows is straightforward and doesn't even require talking to ATC.

Weather permitting (and assuming arriving from the direction of Sacramento), they could wind counterclockwise at 2000' from Berkeley to the Golden Gate, over the city and around the west side of the peninsula to Half Moon Bay and then towards Stanford (basically following that blue shaded path).  From there, there are a few options to get to a low pass at Moffett.  One possibility that would avoid the more significant areas of controlled airspace would be to overfly San Jose, then make a left 270 over Fremont and the southern end of San Francisco Bay to make a north-south pass at Moffett.

Again, all this is just my speculation.  We'll have to stay tuned to see what additional info is given in the next few days.

[johng]

Any detailed ground track info for KSC/Central Florida would be most welcome.

[Go4TLI]

Wonderful news they will be taking her on such a good tour. Really nice touch for the centers and those involved with the program outside of KSC.

Yep, JSC was originally snubbed with the vehicle just going to WSTF for a flyover and then all around CA as political payback....I mean a sight-seeing and photo-op tour. 

I'm very glad the rumor turned out to be true and now the vehicle will be here for two days (hopefully) for everyone to see it and all the people who worked these ships to see her one last time and bring the families. 

[WheelsStop]

Any detailed ground track info for KSC/Central Florida would be most welcome.

In the absence of any Endeavour specific updates, the ones published for Discovery's ferry are probably a good reference point:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27689.msg882978#msg882978

[dwfx]

Any word when/where the Shuttle/SCA will fly over San Francisco?  Will it likely be a single loop around the bay over the Golden Gate Bridge then departing the area?

I'll hazard an educated guess on timeframe: Between 8-10AM, more likely in the second half of the window. 

The known constraints are sunrise departure from Edwards and arrival in the LA area a little after 11A.  Sunrise is 6:38A.  It's about an hour to either San Francisco or Sacramento.  I would opt for Sacramento first to allow more time for any coastal clouds to burn off.

That makes sense.  Hopefully the marine layer will burn off early then - it's been pretty thick this past week.

The inside of the bay is pretty tricky airspace that would conflict with the arrival/departure corridors for SFO and OAK airports.  I've included a snapshot of the SFO VFR flyway chart below for context.  In very simple terms, flight in the grey shaded circles around SFO and OAK will require more coordination compared with staying outside.  In comparison, flight in the areas indicated by the blue shaded arrows is straightforward and doesn't even require talking to ATC.

For almost all of the flybys I've seen over the Golden Gate they start over the ocean and fly east, although most of those demos make multiple passes. I would expect the SCA to do something similar.

If they really wanted to do a spectacular Bay Tour they could fly over the Golden Gate, east past Alcatraz, turn south and cross the Bay Bridge and Candlestick Pt, fly directly over SFO, then follow the 101 south to Moffett.

Generally, ATC is very accommodating for this sort of thing so the SCA should be able to fly whatever route they want.  I haven't seen any NOTAMs published yet but hopefully that will help narrow it down when they do.

[Jon Long]

OK, you're making me think this through a little further.  :-)

At this point, I'm thinking I should keep my reservations for the Proud Bird to be close for the final approach and touchdown views and photos.

After she has rolled out and people start to disperse, I'm thinking we could venture up to Imperial Hill for side on views and any activities around the UAL hangar.

Does anyone know how long to expect Endeavour/SCA to remain on runway 25L after touchdown? Will she be moved off the runway to demate area right away, and if so, is the demate area near the UAL hangar and still visible from Imperial Hill?

Just curious if we'd have enough time after touchdown to depart the Proud Bird and start making our way through the crowds to Imperial Hill for additional views.

Also, if you could take just one lens assuming the itinerary I mentioned, on a 1.6x crop camera would it be the 28-300 or 100-400? Extra reach or a wider angle?? Thanks guys!   

Roger that, the landing runway is planned to be 25L. Very little chance of the opposite 7R unless the winds are unusual. Discovery's arrival at Dulles was planned for 1R, and despite a fairly strong cross wind, made it fine.
The elevated view from Imperial will make for great views of the fly-by's before landing. As indicated, touchdown is 1.5 miles away, with the parking spot at the United hangar also distant.
The touchdown from Proud Bird is 500 yards, and should be visible through the perimeter fence. Again, the fly-by's from here will be great, with the 'money shot' being the final approach (all unobstructed) which should be awesome and very close here. After touchdown, maybe a drive up to Imperial to see them parked.
They are planning on letting those with a reservation in at 9AM (maybe earlier), so plenty of time to get set up and relax with a coffee! Hopefully the masses up the hill will not be having a nightmare with parking and getting the best spot (maybe camping out overnight there would sort that!). I was amazed at the amount of people that came out at Dulles for Discovery, and have no reason to doubt this last 'chance in a lifetime' will not have even more.
BTW, the flight up to Dulles used the callsign 'Pluto 95' and was blocked on flightaware, unfortunately.
Fingers crossed for no tech/weather delays. Ciao

[BritBoy]

With 1.6x crop, the 28-300 will be perfect for 25L from Proud Bird. Enough to fit the whole subject in with option to zoom in for close ups, which also look great. Plenty of time to practice if you get in early.
I think there was a shot of the United hangar from Imperial posted earlier. Looks a bit distant and obstructed? Maybe get a half decent shot from somewhere along there, though heat haze could be in effect.

Does anyone have any word on a FAA TFR being thrown up around LAX for the arrival?

Starting the 15,000KM journey to the States tonight! Houston EFD first, which is looking great for public access 

[WheelsStop]

Does anyone know how long to expect Endeavour/SCA to remain on runway 25L after touchdown? Will she be moved off the runway to demate area right away, and if so, is the demate area near the UAL hangar and still visible from Imperial Hill?

The SCA should be off 25L in a matter of minutes.  LAX will need to recover 25L for regular traffic quickly.  It's a short taxi over to the ramp in front of the United hangar, so by the time you get out of Proud Bird and over to Imperial Ave, she should already be on the ramp.  Once there, you should have plenty of time to get an eyeful as she'll be there for a couple days for demating (which would be a sight in itself).

To BritBoy's point on heat haze, it might be worthwhile to plan to go out to Imperial Ave early Friday morning before things heat up. 

[Jon Long]

Great, thanks for the info WheelsStop.

Looked again at your photos of the UAL hangar from Imperial & Sheldon at 210mm on a 1.6x sensor.

Do you think 300mm / 1.6x will be good enough to get decent closeups of Endeavour/SCA when she is on the ramp? I'm not familiar with the ramp location and how close it is to the runway or UAL hangar.

My fretting about lenses is just due to me being limited on what I can bring with me this trip - I'm actually piggybacking this visit onto a 10 day trip to Vegas, so I'm limited on how much stuff I can bring. Attempting to have a one lens fits all for this trip, so thinking the 28-300mm would be the most flexible. Just want to make sure it has enough reach. Thanks!

Does anyone know how long to expect Endeavour/SCA to remain on runway 25L after touchdown? Will she be moved off the runway to demate area right away, and if so, is the demate area near the UAL hangar and still visible from Imperial Hill?

The SCA should be off 25L in a matter of minutes.  LAX will need to recover 25L for regular traffic quickly.  It's a short taxi over to the ramp in front of the United hangar, so by the time you get out of Proud Bird and over to Imperial Ave, she should already be on the ramp.  Once there, you should have plenty of time to get an eyeful as she'll be there for a couple days for demating (which would be a sight in itself).

To BritBoy's point on heat haze, it might be worthwhile to plan to go out to Imperial Ave early Friday morning before things heat up. 

[Jon Long]

Apologies if this is off-topic, understand this is not a photography thread but thought I'd throw this out to BritBoy and WheelsStop as it may help others attending.

Having shot the shuttle launches a number of times, I'm familiar with settings for good results. I'm not a plane spotter though, so quick question -- shutter speed and metering? Given an IS lens to compensate for hand shake, would you run 1/1000 to freeze the SCA in flight/touchdown? Faster/slower? Would be really unhappy with too slow of a shutter and blur.   

Also, I've seen mention of other spotters using center-weighted metering instead of a normal evaluative setting. Presume this is to getting a better read on the aircraft against a presumably featureless sky.

Any opinions on these two settings? Thanks guys.

With 1.6x crop, the 28-300 will be perfect for 25L from Proud Bird. Enough to fit the whole subject in with option to zoom in for close ups, which also look great. Plenty of time to practice if you get in early.
I think there was a shot of the United hangar from Imperial posted earlier. Looks a bit distant and obstructed? Maybe get a half decent shot from somewhere along there, though heat haze could be in effect.

Does anyone have any word on a FAA TFR being thrown up around LAX for the arrival?

Starting the 15,000KM journey to the States tonight! Houston EFD first, which is looking great for public access 

[BritBoy]

Roger that, just after sunrise on the Friday should light the stack up very nicely from Imperial. Maybe by the Saturday morning the demate will be done?
Would be nice to shoot the stack on finals then get to Imperial for the rollout, but i don't think its possible! Even after breaking a few laws, there probably won't be a parking place within a mile!
There is the chance of a couple of hours practice from Proud Bird to perfect your settings. High shutter speed is the safe bet... not much point in going low for motion blur with no backdrop to blur. Best chance for that will hopefully be at Ellington for the departure on 19th, not long after sunrise, for those able to get there.

Sent from an old fashioned iPhone 4

[WheelsStop]

Do you think 300mm / 1.6x will be good enough to get decent closeups of Endeavour/SCA when she is on the ramp? I'm not familiar with the ramp location and how close it is to the runway or UAL hangar.

My fretting about lenses is just due to me being limited on what I can bring with me this trip - I'm actually piggybacking this visit onto a 10 day trip to Vegas, so I'm limited on how much stuff I can bring. Attempting to have a one lens fits all for this trip, so thinking the 28-300mm would be the most flexible. Just want to make sure it has enough reach. Thanks!

The LAX briefing mentioned here (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27986.msg935679#msg935679) might be useful.  There's a small but readable diagram of the arrival and tow-out routes in there.

The ramp is right in front of the hangar.  As one more point of reference, the photo below was from Imperial and Sheldon, at 400mm/1.6x, of a B757 on the taxiway in front of the hangar.  The B747 will be half again as long, but a 300mm and an extra few hundred feet of distance will offset some of that.  My figuring says the 747 should take up 80% of the width of a 300mm frame from there (~4000ft away).

From down the street at Imperial and Hillcrest is about 3000 ft distance (but with a low hill in the way), and you'll note in my earlier photos at 200mm/1.6x the 747 nearly fills the frame.  If you do some scaling math or mental gymnastics, you might get an idea of how close you can get with your 28-300.  At the short end, you might consider how much context you want to capture.  Note there's a 100mm shot there and that's as wide as you'll be able to get if you just bring the 100-400.  To some extent, what you bring depends on what you want to achieve.

Having shot the shuttle launches a number of times, I'm familiar with settings for good results. I'm not a plane spotter though, so quick question -- shutter speed and metering? Given an IS lens to compensate for hand shake, would you run 1/1000 to freeze the SCA in flight/touchdown? Faster/slower? Would be really unhappy with too slow of a shutter and blur.   

Also, I've seen mention of other spotters using center-weighted metering instead of a normal evaluative setting. Presume this is to getting a better read on the aircraft against a presumably featureless sky.

This thread is probably the most appropriate to discuss photographic issues.

With the caveat that I'm not usually a plane-spotter photographer, I'm with BritBoy in faster shutter speed.  I'm not familiar with the 28-300, but if it is a faster lens, that might be another thing going for it.  My  100-400 is much sharper at f/8, for which high shutter speeds are hard on anything other than a sunny day.  If there's cloud cover, I suspect I'll wind up relying heavily on my 70-200mm/f2.8.

All of the various shots I posted were evaluative metering, which seemed ok to me.  You'll have lots of opportunity to experiment on the other arrivals while waiting...  Usually if auto-metering annoys me too much, I'll just dial in a manual exposure based on the metering results.

[Jon Long]

Great info here guys, very helpful!

I'm thinking I'll bring the 28-300mm and hope for the best. That lens and the 100-400 are both not much faster than f4 or f5.6 at the longer lengths, so there is not a clear speed advantage in either one.

I'd rather have the flexibility of a wider angle to capture more context and personal photos - while at 300mm/1.6x looks like it should reach out quite well over the expected distances.

We'll start at the Proud Bird and try to make our way to Imperial Hill once the crowds die down for some viewing on the ramp by the hangar.

Hope for sunny skies and low ISOs! See you guys there!   

[WheelsStop]

Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) have gone up around the metro areas where the Endeavour will be doing overflights:

9/17 1500-1700Z (10A-noon local) below 3000' 20 nautical miles around JSC
http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_2_4280.html

9/20 1500-1630Z (8-9:30A local) below 5000' 25 nautical miles around McClellan AFB, Sacramento
http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_2_4352.html

9/20 1530-1730Z (8:30-10:30A local) below 5000' 25 nautical miles around San Francisco Airport
http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_2_4353.html

9/20 1830-2030Z (11:30A-1:30P local) below 5000' 30 nautical miles around LAX
http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_2_4354.html

These pretty much define the time windows to expect flyovers.  On the final leg out of Edwards on Thursday, it looks like Endeavour will indeed be heading to Sacramento first, then San Francisco.

[gchockry]

I've traveled Florida to view the Endeavour Fly-Out from KSCVC. Also going to the new tours of the LCC, VAB, Inside Pad 39A (now with flame trench!). Plus, the Endeavour Tour for Endeavour/SCA mating on Friday and Saturday.

Somewhere on the Discovery Fly-Out threads I noted that someone was going to the KSCVC parking lot only (not entering the Visitor Center) to view the combo fly over the Rocket Garden.

FYI, KSCVC is now charging ($10 for cars) to use the parking lot. Annual Pass holders have free parking.

[DrGuano]

Tickets to view the departure from the SLF have been occasionally appearing on the KSC site. I bought three earlier this week. The operator at Delaware North was quite surprised at this when I called to ask that the General Admission be refunded because I have an annual pass. At 3:00 today, we took the last bus tour to see Endeavor atop the SCA. I was surprised that there was hardly anyone visible at the SLF. It is very impressive and sad to see this for the last time. I may have to fly out to LAX on Thursday to watch the arrival.

[spacecane]

I have tickets to view the flyout from the SLF through the visitor center.  I have a few of questions.

1) Is the SCA/Endeavor combo going to be parked by the MDD Monday morning when spectators arrive or will it have already been taxied to the runway threshold?

2) Where do the busses drop off at the SLF?

3) Where are you allowed to view from?  Is it like the causeway launch viewing where you can pretty much walk as far down as you want to or is there a designated area.  Related to this, how close to the runway is the boundary for viewing?

4) Also related to #3 are there any obstructions that get in the way of seeing to the end of the runway from the viewing area?

[WheelsStop]

I have tickets to view the flyout from the SLF through the visitor center.  I have a few of questions.

1) Is the SCA/Endeavor combo going to be parked by the MDD Monday morning when spectators arrive or will it have already been taxied to the runway threshold?

2) Where do the busses drop off at the SLF?

3) Where are you allowed to view from?  Is it like the causeway launch viewing where you can pretty much walk as far down as you want to or is there a designated area.  Related to this, how close to the runway is the boundary for viewing?

4) Also related to #3 are there any obstructions that get in the way of seeing to the end of the runway from the viewing area?

I was at the SLF for the Discovery flyout.  If things happen the same way:

1) The SCA will start the morning on the ramp at the MDD.  The Discovery ferry flight took off from north to south (Rwy 15 departure): the Pathfinder aircraft and the SCA taxied down the runway and made a stop in front of the viewing area for a couple minutes for everyone to get an eyeful, then proceeded to the far end of the runway for departure.  If they take off to the north this time, I don't know if they'd come down halfway for the photo-op since the MDD is at the Rwy 33 threshold.

2) You'll wind up at the bleachers here.  The buses drop off in the parking area behind the bleachers.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=28.616577,-80.690627&num=1&t=h&z=19

3) They keep you in the immediate vicinity of the bleacher area.  If you zoom in on the Google satellite image, you can kind of see where the fenceline is about 50 ft in front of the bleachers.  You'll be about 1200 feet from the closest part of the runway.  They have TV cameras and stuff set up on the big pad closer to the runway, but you won't get to be there.

4) Yes. Trees.    Again referencing the Google satellite image, the dark green groves to the west and directly south of the bleachers will block your view.  In some spots where the trees are lower, they only block the SCA, so it looks like the orbiter is floating over the trees.