I've been a little lax about writing lately. I'll write something substantial soon, but I've been in more of a photographic mood lately. In the mean time, I hope you've been enjoying my photo postings. Here's another of my favorite recent shots, a United Airlines 757. Approaching fast and pulling a nice, thick contrail, he's at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, going west. I'm at 34,000 feet, going east. I was fortunate to capture this photo, as our combined closure speed was over 1,000 miles per hour and the subject was less than a mile away.Often, Air Traffic controllers will point out impending closures like this. They try to give the pilots of each airplane a "heads-up" a minute or more before the event. Thanks to today's super-accurate GPS and INS navigation systems, aircraft following established airways often cross each other's paths with little or no lateral offset, a fact that allows me to attempt to get photos like this quite often. In the "old days" of VOR-only radio navigation, such crossings were much more rare.
