DAL | June 2010 | 13-Left Ops | Dammit, it's HOT!

This past Wednesday I had some time while waiting for some of the Chicklets' summer activities to finish to head over the Dallas Love Field to get some bizjet action in as it had been several months since I last spotted there. Holy schnap it was hot. Damn hot. Real hot. So I did some in-car spotting with the A/C on full blast with the scanner dialed into DAL Tower/Ground. For these shots, I was parked at George Coker Circle off Lemmon Avenue and had way more shots than these, but with the heat haze and shooting through an 8-foot chain link fence, this was the best I had. And I sure as hell wasn't going to climb on the roof of the car to shoot over the fence. Not in this heat.

But the advantage of George Coker Circle is that it sits abeam 13L where the bizjets rotate and where the incoming aircraft rollout. George Coker Circle was once the circular drive for the original DAL terminal before it was demolished when the current terminal opened in the 1950s.

N621CS is a Cessna Citation Sovereign (Cessna 680) belonging to McLean Aviation of Virginia, built in March 2007. This particular day she had left Love Field about an hour earlier and then returned, I'm guessing either a training flight or functional test flight after some maintenance work was done. I thought that tail numbers ending in "CS" belonged to the Citation Shares fractional operation and N621CS's history indicates she's flown everywhere which would fit a fractional jet's pattern. The following day she left DAL for Dallas Redbird (sorry, I can't call it Dallas Executive) for a short stop before flying on to Shenandoah Regional Airport.

N708LX is a Cessna Citation X (Cessna 750, oooh-la-la, I so love those curves!) belonging to the Flight Options fractional operator and built in March 2000. Here she is headed to the departure end of 13L on Taxiway A. Looks like this bird is blocked on flight tracking as the last data Flightaware has is from last month.

Citation X, GTFO! Caught right at the moment she left the ground for who the hell knows where. I just dig the looks of the Citation X.

N7HB is another Cessna Citation Sovereign built in April 2008. The owner of record is listed as Wells Fargo Bank, but there was an N7HB Citation Encore that belonged to Hunt Building and I wonder if this that aircraft's replacement. She was headed out from DAL to Dona Ana County at Santa Teresa outside of El Paso. You can nicely see the supercritical wing profile on the Sovereign in this shot, compared to jets this size, the Sovereign has impressive field performance, being able to use less than 4000' of runway fully-loaded is damn good for a transcon bizjet that seats 12.

Honest to God, I had pics of Astras, Gulfstreams, Beechjets, and so on, but those all came out looking like donkey balls. These Cessnas all came out okay, though. Go figure. N77HF is a Citation VII (Cessna 650) owned by Taft Sales and Leasing of Dallas. Her flight history is blocked (argh), but it looks like she was built in January 1995. Caught this one as the thrust reversers were starting to deploy.

Cool catch of the day and spotting while getting broiled was worth it! A T-45A Goshawk from Training Air Wing TWO (TW-2) of NAS Kingsville in South Texas made an appearance at DAL. Not sure why, it parked at one of the FBOs off Lemmon Avenue, maybe delivering someone of rank to a meeting. I don't think TW-2 does many of their cross-country flights up this way, I sure don't usually see Goshawks in the area often. Super sweet to catch one landing, though!

Rolling out a bit further with the airbrakes deployed and some Southwest action in the background. Had to have at least one shot with some LUV in it for this set!

DAL | Love Field Terminal Modernization Project

The Love Field Modernization Project now has their own website and I have to say I'm impressed with what I see so far. It's going to be quite a construction project as I understand it will be built in phases with flights moved gradually from the current Southwest concourse to the new concourse. During the transition period some flights will be using progressively more and more of the new terminal as it's completed. Some of the images from that site:

DAL | April 2009 | Frontiers of Flight | Collings Foundation warbirds....

Some artistic type shots I took back in April at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at KDAL when the Collings Foundation's warbirds were in town. The weather that morning was horrendous and I didn't get the shots I wanted to get originally but found the ambient lighting and mood was ideal for a style of shot I wasn't planning on when I left the house for Love Field:

The B-17 and P-51 are part of the Collings Foundation's collection of warbirds.

DAL | August 2009 | Arrivals on 31R | Gettin' some LUV and more.....

Arriving from its home base in Shreveport, LA, is N8KU, a Socata TBM 700 built in 2004 and owned by the Aeolus Group.

Getting ready to turn onto Runway 31R for departure, this Dassault Falcon 900EX, tail number N909SB, belongs to AT&T (and before that SBC Communications before they bought AT&T) and was previously registered as N404A with Bell South.

N12934 is an Embraer ERJ-145EP that was built and delivered in July 1997 to ExpressJet and operated under the Continental Express banner. This flight was departing for Houston Intercontinental (KIAH).

Starting its takeoff run down 31R, N637SW is a Boeing 737-300 that has yet to modified with blended winglets. This aircraft was built and delivered to Southwest in September 1996.

N380SW is another Southwest Boeing 737-300, this time with winglets. Here she is rocketing down 31R with the Love Field tower in the background. She was built and delivered to Southwest in April 1994.

Not long after the earlier SBC/AT&T Falcon 900EX departed, another one from the same company rolled out on 31R for takeoff- not sure if it was headed to the same destination as the previous departure. This 900EX, N900SB, was built in 1998. Unlike N909SB, this one has what I think is a satellite communications fairing atop the vertical fin.

Didn't get the tail number of this Continental ERJ-145 arriving from Houston. I'm surprised it came out decently considering a bank of clouds moved into the area briefly.

First time I've caught a Citation Mustang, this is N352AS, the 201st Citation Mustang built and owned by CNC Aircraft of Venice, Florida. By the time this one got into a good position, I had to shoot past the barbed wire atop the perimeter fence. Grrrr...next time I'm standing on the roof of my car. I somehow think trotting out a 10 foot ladder to shoot from may not go over well with the local authorities.

N797MX is a Boeing 737-700 built and delivered to Southwest in March 2001. I've never seen "MX" used in Southwest's tail numbers before. 

One of my favorites of the day, here's N797MX (Boeing 737-700) up tight and close as it turns onto 31R for departure.

Southwest's flights at Love Field leave in waves and N497WN was part of a pack of flights leaving in rapid succession off 31R. This particular Boeing 737-700 was built and delivered to Southwest in December 2004.

N925WN is a Boeing 737-700 built and delivered to Southwest in June 2008- probably the newest Southwest jet I've photographed so far.

Another one of my favorites of the day, here's N925WN accelerating down 31R with the Love Field terminal in the distance.

N403LM is a Gulfstream 200 owned by Lockheed Martin, built in 2003. The G200 was originally designed and built by Israeli Aircraft Industries as the IAI Galaxy and was the product of a joint development between Yakovlev (based on the Russian company's own Yak-48 design) and IAI (using the IAI Astra's wing). In 2001 Gulfstream acquired IAI's Galaxy division and renamed the Galaxy the G200.

DAL | July 2009 | Frontiers of Flight

^N269WN is a two and a half year old 737-700, here I shot it from the parking lot of the Frontiers of Flight Museum as it departed off 13L. This was a trickier shot shooting into the sun, but with the clouds in the sky I thought I might be able to get something different. I think I overexposed the clouds, I'll have to try this again the next chance I get.

^This attempt came out a bit better. This is N519SW, a 737-500 built and delivered to Southwest in September 1991. I think that it came out better than the other similar shot with the 737-700 because this one took off at a flatter angle and wasn't as close to the sun.

DAL | July 2009 | Bachman Lake

Back in July I finally had a nice block of free time to go spotting at Dallas Love Field. The traffic there doesn't have the volume that DFW has, obviously, but can be more interesting as there are a lot of business aviation operations out of Love compared to DFW and knowing that nearly all the commercial flights would be Southwest, I was going to try the time to see what I could do to make shooting nothing but Southwest *interesting*.

My tactic was simple. There are only two runways at Love Field and that day 13L and 13R were in use. Southwest flights pretty much use 13R for arrivals and most of the general aviation action uses 13L with an occasional bizjet to 13R if they're bound for one of the few FBOs on that side of the airport.

I set up on Shorecrest Drive (the south shore of Bachman Lake) and with a flight tracking app on my iPhone, I would move up and down Shorecrest depending on whether it was a Southwest flight or a general aviation flight. At least that way I could anticipate where to be for each shot. Almost. Did miss a few....but it was easier than chasing flights all across DFW hoping you'd be in the right place.

^Here's Southwest's N348SW, a 737-300 that has been flying its entire life for Southwest since its delivery from Boeing in April 1989. If I remember right, this flight was coming in from Lubbock.

^This is N662SW- built and delivered initially in June 1985 to leasing giant ILFC, it flew with charter airline Sunworld before it was returned to ILFC, sold to Piedmont who flew it past the merger with USAir, who in turn sold it Southwest Airlines. The paint job on this aircraft was quite noticeably faded compared to most of the Southwest aircraft I'd photographed that day.

^Wider-angle shot of N638SW on short final, a relatively young 737-300 that was built and delivered to Southwest in January 1996, just a year before the first new-generation 737-700 was delivered to the airline.

^My best catch of that day and a surprise as it wasn't on the flight tracking data- 2127 is a Dassault HU-25A Guardian that ironically got sent to the desert boneyard at AMARC/Davis-Monthan AFB in 1994 and was then brought back into service just last year. She's based at CGAS Mobile, Alabama, which if I remember right is where HU-25 pilots and crews are trained.

I've always liked this bird- the Coast Guard colors look sharp on the sleek lines of the Dassault Falcon 20 and you just can't help but love those crazy reverse flow Garrett turbofan engines.

^N713HC is a Bombardier Challenger 600 built in October 1996. I've always thought the 600s were stubby and lacked the sleek lines of the CRJ and the Global Express that sprang from this design.

^N547CS is a Cessna Citation 560XLS operated by Citationshares, Cessna's fractional jet ownership program.

^N617AC is a 2003 model Bell 407 that operates as a photo bird here in the DFW area.

DAL | April 2009 | 13L/13R Depatures

The cool thing about where the Collings Foundation aircraft were parked at Love Field last April is that it was inside the airport perimeter at the approach end of 31R. That meant you could get some really great shots of operations on that runway while moseying around the warbirds. If the weather was BETTER. Dagnabbit.

This is one of Pace Aviation's planes used to transport the Dallas Mavericks.

DAL | April 2009 | Collings Foundation B-17G

Having enduring gusty winds, rain, and less than ideal lighting conditions this particular morning at Love Field, these came out better than I thought.....

Of course, the weather got better after I left. Bastards.