CB1100 Monthly Photo Challenge

[Gone in 60]

Nobody up for snapping a sunset? Granted, took me a while. But, due to a lengthy cleanup after a painting accident at work (long story), I found myself stumbling out of the office high on acetone to get some fresh air, and realized it was almost sunset.

Cleared my head and jumped on the CB to see where I could grab some pics. Here are a few that sort of go together.

John Wayne is my home airport, not too far from home and a quick jaunt to the office. It's situated in a very unique spot, wedged between two freeways which make quite a short runway, and limit the size of commercial planes that can use it. It's also a short distance north of the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve, which is a great place to hike after work. The trail surrounds the bay, which is home to several species of wildlife who don't take kindly to jets flying right over them.

As such, John Wayne uses what they term a "Noise abatement takeoff", which involves a steep climb, followed by throttling the plane back a bit, so that planes are as high as possible, making a minimal amount of noise when they pass over the reserve. In all of my walks around the bay, they seem plenty loud, but I guess they'd be louder with a normal takeoff.

Anyway, the bay is a great place to watch the sunset. After taking it in, it was back on the perpetually under-construction 405 to get back to my painting project.

Since I came up with the challenge this month, and seem to be the only participant so far, I will abstain from coming up with next month's challenge.