Wings Over Houston

Ellington Airfield, is a tiny airport on the Spanish settlement of Houston, the southeast corner where you are alien if you are neither Mexican nor poor. The airfield is home mostly to cargo planes and this once a year airshow which I went to this year in October. The day started off well with two friends burping away breakfast at What-a-burger and then finding the roads leading to the airport as choked as our arteries were from the b’fast.

This would be the first time I was experimenting with slide film or popular name – transparencies. I was using Fuji Sensia ISO 200 (although I am much against Fuji for their being heavy on the green compared to red and blue), in a Nikon FE2 with a 70-300mm tele-macro Quantaray lens. Half of the pictures are shot on regular Kodak 100 Gold and I will leave it to the discerning eye to sort out which from which.

The show had F-16s, one F-15, a Stealth, formations by the Canadian Snowbirds and an impressive re-enactment of the Pearl Harbor bombings by well preserved B-2 bombers. Details about the planes can be found on the airshow’s website. Some pictures I took of the bombings are pasted here faithfully.

Of course Texas had a trump card up its sleeve and it rocketed out in the form of a Truck designed by NeXplore Shockwave Jet Truck. Its basically a truck strapped with 3 Jet engines, with 36K hp (yeah K) and goes about 256 mph in 6.36 seconds. It beats chutput planes in races for lunch and has its name in the Guiness Book of World Records for dinner. Here is a picture I took, standing near the front row fence, braving the loud Texan drawl laden announcements from the high pitched squealing loudspeaker installed 2 feet away from the fence.

The strip was well populated with refreshment stands serving the regular American fare of hotdogs to pretzels, well avoided by me and my watan-ke-saathis. A bright lemonade cup made its way into my camera.