Community Charity Airshow

  Recently I attended the Community Charity Airshow in Brantford, Ontario. I thought to myself that having an Air Show on a Wednesday at 2:00pm was pretty strange. But by the looks of the turnout, that was far from the truth. Gates opened at 11:00am for a 2:00pm show. I contemplated going a little later but thought that parking might be an issue, so I decided to get there just before the gates opened. And good thing I did. I was there about 10:45am and there were cars lined up out on the road to get in, and the parking lot was already filling up. A fantastic turnout for a the Rotary Club of Brantford and the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Both great causes.
  
  There was a fee to park for the free show, and donations taken as you walked in that weren't mandatory. I made a donation, which was the least I could for the fantastic event. Certainly got my money's wroth.

Noorduyn Norseman. A bush plane that was used in the Second World War by the Royal Canadian Air Force for radio and navigational training

  There were static displays, as well as performers in the sky. Having the gates open well before the show gave me time to walk around and look at the vendors and get pictures of the planes on the ground. There were souvenir vendors including a group making T-Shirts on the spot, as well as lots of food vendors.

  Some of the static displays were the Noorduyn Norseman, Beechcraft Expeditor, Aero L-29 Delfin, Boeing Stearman, Fouga Magister, North American Harvard, de Havilland Canada Chipmunk, and the de Havilland Tiger Moth. 

A couple young fans checking out the Fouga Magister from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

  One of my favourites was the Noorduyn Norseman. A bush plane that was used in the Second World War by the Royal Canadian Air Force for radio and navigational training. Even though this was a static plane, I did see it fly after the show. Unfortunately my camera wasn't available. 

  Another favourite was the Fouga Magister from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. 
It is said that he Fouga is one of the best handling jet trainers ever built. Another great looking plane.

Captain Matthew Kutryk flying the Canadian Forces CF-18

  Some of the performers were the CF-18 Demonstration Team from the Royal Canadian Air Force, Canadian Forces Snowbirds, North American B-25 Mitchell, Hamilton Sport Parachute Club, Canadair T-33 Mako Shark, World War I Replica Demo planes, North American T-28 Trojans, and the Russian built Aerobatic Yak-50 flown by 75 year old Gord Price.

The Canadian Forces Snowbirds. Always a great show!

All of these performers did an outstanding job. The show was kicked off in the best way possible, with the Hamilton Sport Parachute Club flying the Canadian Flag during the anthem. 

The Hamilton Sport Parachute Club.

  I have to say that my favourites here were the extremely powerful CF-18, and of course the Canadian Forces Snowbirds. The shear power and sound of the CF-18 made everything worth while. Truly a sight to behold. And nothing really needs to be said about the Snowbirds. To see the high speed precision of 9 jets never gets old!

  All in all is was a great show that I hope goes on for a long time, and can't wait to see it again next year. Be sure to check it out too at http://www.communitycharityairshow.com.

  To see more pictures please visit and like the 3 West Photography Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/3westphoto/ .

Till next time,

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Backup, Backup, Backup!

  After a rather long hiatus due to an unfortunate flood event that I had, I have returned. It took me a long while to get a working computer back up and running, but here I am.
  
  Fist of all, I have to thank Canon for making an incredibly weather resistant camera and lenses. I also have to thank Sigma for making great water resistant lenses. The outcome of this flood, could have been much, much worse. One thing is for sure, I will be much less paranoid of a few raindrops while out in the field.

  So this brings up another issue that everyone needs to think about. Backups! After learning a hard lesson a couple years ago about backing up to more than one drive, I have learned another valuable lesson. Not only do you need to backup to a couple different places locally, you need to have an offsite backup location as well. 

Grey Catbird in Waterford, Ontario.

  After losing a drive a couple years ago, I learned that I need to backup to two different backup drives. If one fails, I would still have a copy of all my pictures. When it happened to me last time, I lost a lot of pictures due to not thinking things through properly. So since then, I have been backing up to two drives. 

  I recently filled my two backup drives, and had purchased a couple new 4 TB drives. I had just copied the old drives to the new drives, and thought I was doing pretty good. But the more I thought about the situation, I realized I also need offsite storage in case the worst case scenario happens. 

  I just started copying my pictures to the cloud storage, and literally only a few folders of photographs copied and my worst nightmare happened. Yes, that's right. The Flood! I was devastated. The worst feeling in my stomach as you could imagine. As I was scrambling to dry things off and salvage as much as I could, I had a look at my computer and drives and they were ok. I have no idea how they survived, but they did. This made me happy and upset at the same time. Happy that they survived, but upset that I didn't start the cloud storage earlier. It was the scare of lifetime. I thought I had lost all my pictures in my collection.

Moon shot from the front yard.

  The insurance company has said that my camera and lenses are fine, but of course I had to test that theory out for myself. I have to say they didn't check anything other than turning them on and looking for visible corrosion. Hopefully this doesn't cause a problem later on. 

  My first trip out was a late day adventure in Waterford, Ontario at my favourite birding spot. Certainly not an ideal time of day to go looking for bird picture possibilities, but yet again the location didn't disappoint. The only unfortunate thing was I could only look at the picture on the LCD screen on my camera because I didn't have a computer to use right away. This was torture.

  The second photographic adventure was a few moon shots. I always love night photography, except that time when something was growling at me in the dark, but that's another story. 
  
  The latest was getting out during the Perseid Meteor Shower. I only went out to my backyard, but seeing all the meteors was great even if there wasn't photography involved.

Shot from my backyard during the Perseid Meteor Shower, August 2017.

 But now I have most of my computer back. Enough to look at my pictures and do what I need to do, while I patiently wait for my house to be put back to the way it was before.

  So I pass on to you this valuable lesson that I learned. Always backup your photos to two different local locations, and also to an offsite location. Because you never know when the worst can happen. Always be prepared!

  Till next time,