February 15, 2022 Freeze Frame

The Liberty Gazette

February 15, 2022

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: A co-worker and I were in Pontiac, Michigan, just north of Detroit, to take photographs of a new airplane. Lucky for us, that plane was in a heated hangar. The cargo version of Aerospatiale ATR-72-600 had recently arrived from the factory in Toulouse, France with only 28 hours total time. We’ve already been teaching pilots to fly this airplane, but the company wanted to update our courseware. So, when a customer offered a new airplane for a photo shoot unfettered by maintenance personnel and not out flying, the company dispatched us to the great white north to do the job. 

The cargo-only version of this airplane is new, and FedEx is replacing its older aircraft with them for smaller capacity and feeder routes. On the airport ramp outside, amidst a bleak white-grey scene, airplanes covered in varying amounts of snow were scattered and tucked into out-of-the-way corners. Whatever the depth of the snow on them was a result of the direction they were pointed and the lake effect from Lakes Michigan, Huron, and St. Clair. A cold front blew through here only a couple of days ago. Plowed ice mounds were piled between rows of operational airplanes and carcasses permanently parked, corroded from exposure to weather and the salt they used to clear the ramp. We were happy to be inside the hangar because it was eighteen degrees outside with a stiff wind, making the wind chill factor was about six degrees. Fifty degrees in the hangar felt balmy.

The photo shoot was needed to create a virtual walk-around inspection of the aircraft. This inspection is what pilots perform each time before the aircraft is flown, looking in wheel wells, opening inspection covers on the wings, tail, and fuselage, checking for anything out of place or irregularities. 

We wanted consistent lighting for the shoot. Natural light is anything but consistent due to moving clouds and changing angle of the sun, shrouded by the gray overcast. Besides that, we had to get into those recessed areas of the aircraft and scoot under the plane, which would not be fun on a sheet of ice. Capturing images outside carried risks of slipping, dropping and breaking expensive equipment, and snow and ice fogging and contaminating the lenses. 

My co-worker was using a special 360-degree camera that, once set up, took 75 photos in eight minutes automatically. She’d stitch them together later with a computer program. I was there as a subject matter expert on the airplane to provide focus areas for her to shoot. We walked away to avoid being caught in the photos. I used some of those eight-minute sessions to wander out in the cold among the old airplanes stripped of their engines. If they could talk, what kind of story would they tell? I wonder what they would say to the new plane on the block. 

It took two full days to complete the job, covering the aircraft from nose to tail, inside and out. This is the thoroughness needed when teaching pilots about an airplane.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com