As I was mentioning to a friend yesterday, no photoshoot goes as planned. Something inevitably doesn’t work out. You don’t get to do a formation that you want, the weather can cause delays or cancellations, or any number of other things. When you’re dealing with air to air photoshoots, you learn to be flexible. And yesterday’s shoot was no different.

I’m very, very fortunate to have a great relationship with the folks at the Tutima Academy of Aviation Safety down in King City, CA, and when Eric Tucker shot me an email a month ago asking me if I could come down and shoot their new Sport Cub S2 from CubCrafters, I replied immediately with a yes!

The special occasion is that Tutima Academy is the newest California distributor for CubCrafters. Eric put me in touch with Chelsea Engberg, Business Manager for Tutima and Sales Rep for CubCrafters, and left it to us to setup a date for the flight. Some of you may already be familiar with Chelsea, as she’s an up and coming aerobatic/airshow pilot, former Red Barons Memorial Scholarship award winner, Hospitality Suite Coordinator and newest ferry pilot to Team Oracle, and owner of a sexy Pitts S-1S. And I was going to get to fly with her!

As with any shoot, planning and preparation starts weeks before we even climb into the cockpit. Chelsea was the go to gal for all of this coordination. She made sure to find a date that worked for everyone involved and setup up the times to make sure we got some amazing images with amazing light. But unfortunately, the one thing none of us could control was mother nature. So with all of us keeping a very close eye on the largest storm of the winter to pass through California, we ultimately decided to cancel the shoot.

So a week later and I was on the road down to Salinas, CA to meet Chelsea and get my introduction to a classic staple of American flying, the Piper J-3 Cub.  Cruising at 65Kts at 500′ above highway 101, we were flying down to King City, CA. And what flying it was! Chelsea gave me the stick for the whole 45 min flight and I was having a blast. Seeing our shadow over the green fields, the cars moving just as fast as we were, and the birds trying to keep up with us was amazing. The highlight of my flight was chasing down the Amtrak Coast Starlight as it headed south along the tracks.  Caught her just before we got to King City and did a sharp left turn over it and entered right base for runway 29.

So the plan was fairly simple. Chelsea and I would fly in the J-3 photo ship and Ben Freelove would fly the Sport Cub and get some air to air shots: left echelon, in trail, nose in door, top down, etc. Ben would then land at Metz and Chelsea and I would circle over head to get some ‘nature’ shots. Then RTB back to KIC, where I hop out and get some ground to air shots of the Sport Cub: head on with flaps up, head on with flaps down, landing shot. Then Chelsea and I would climb into the Sport Cub and take off for some quick wide angle in cockpit shots and then land. Not too bad right?

Well, as I mentioned, no shoot ever quite goes as planned. And today, unfortunately, the one piece that didn’t work was the J-3 Cub. Try as we did, it did not want to start.  The J-3 is one of those special airplanes that does not have an electronic starter, and you have to spin the prop to start it. Crank after crank after crank, Chelsea and Ben did everything they could to get it started.  But it wasn’t looking good and I was starting to think that we’d have to scratch once again.

But just when I thought all was lost, enter Chelsea’s awesome husband, John Kluenker and his 1958 Cessna 175 Skylark, affectionately named “Emma.” With the twist of a wrench and a pull of a pin, the window latch was undone and we had our photoship. Which in the end worked out to be better then the J-3 because I had one less strut to negotiate.

While not everything worked out to plan, we still got some amazing pictures thanks to the professionals that were involved in this shoot. But not everything was smiles and roses. No matter how much planning and preperation went into this shoot, we still were marred by the loss of one brave set of sunglasses. I hope the farmer that finds them will give it a nice home.

If anyone out there is intersted in learning more about these amazing aircraft, don’t hesitate on contacting Tutima Academy for further information at: http://www.tutimaacademy.com/cubcrafters.html Thanks once again to Chelsea, Ben, John, and Eric for making this shoot another success. Now let’s see if we can repeat it by teaching me how to land!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Adventures, Aviation, Life, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.