In June 2001 I was fortunate enough to be able to make a visit USA and Canada. The purpose of my visit wasn't merely for plane spotting, but I enjoyed my time at various airports like MAN, IAD, SEA, RNT, BFI, PAE, SFO, OAK to name a few. What I didn't realise at the time though, was the curious goings on at Renton Municipal Airport.
Day #0 was sort of wasted
travelling. It was thirty-two hours long and involved departing MAN at 12pm local (+0100), landing IAD at say 1pm local (-0400), hanging around Dulles for two and a half hours watching compatriate Brits gather at the bmi gate to return home whilst far too many United Airlines Boeing 727s took off and landed (surely they're too old to be economical?). Anyway, adding another six hour United Airlines flight to Seattle (on a single-aisled plane, ugh, which I nearly missed by purchasing USA
tee-shirts for take-home presents) meant we landed at around 7pm local (-0700). Well, it was just a very long day.
Day #1 involved a trip to SEA, BFI and the then plainly fine RNT. It was Friday 1 June 2001, and it was raining. I understand it does rain occasionally in Seattle. The airport was interesting, and I took a few photos, but it wasn't until I returned home to England and saw the developed photographs that I realised something was weird in Renton Municipal Airport.
It was a weird one axle truck. That's right. One axle. At the front. Nothing at the rear. Read on...
Renton is a city to the south east of Seattle. The city possesses a designated relief airfield for SEA (Seattle-Tacoma Airport) which is Renton Municipal Airport. The city's website is www.ci.renton.wa.us.
The map is courtesy of mapquest.com reproduced without their permission.
I found Renton Airport to be rather a neat place. Take a look at the map. It's bordered by a road on two and a half sides, rather much like a mirrored letter J. The airport's road entrance is at the foot of the letter J. From the road entrance, taking a right turn to the east, up to a bridge over the River Cedar, the road seemingly terminates at some hangars. Whereas taking a left instead, the road runs all the way to Lake Washington at the north, allowing a viewing point right at the end of R33.
Whilst searching for information on Renton Municipal Airport I discovered a website. Well, actually it headed up a google search. Thinking a webcam of any airport is interesting, I followed the link to the Renton Webcam site.
Imagine my incredible surprise when I saw that the webcam is located in exactly the right place to have seen my weird truck!
Unfortunately, it appears that the webcam's owner moved away at the end of August 2001, but this webcam site is another lead to explain my weird photograph, so I'll email him (still no response at 2001/12/04).
This photo is a terrific image capturing the presentation of the airport. It was taken from a southern approach. The photo is courtesy of a Renton City website page reproduced without their permission. The place where the weird photograph was taken is just to the west of the most northern tip of the runway.
What was most interesting about Renton Municipal Airport was the diverse array of aircraft. I saw many small single-engined prop jobs, quite a few jet aircraft like Boeing 757 and 737s which I thought were present for positioning, cleaning or refitting, and a plethora of wet planes.
This photo was the last of the 36 exposure film which started the day before (Thursday 31 May 2001) in Manchester, England.
It was taken just to the west of the north end of R33. The photo shows various sea planes, single engined props, a few apartments (the Renton Webcam might have been situated there), and an airport building, which can be seen on the Renton Webcam shot too.
Here's a close up of the photo at 1200dpi. I've scanned the photo to the physical extremity, and whitespace from the scanner lid shows on the left-most edge. Notice how the front of the truck abutts a sea plane? I wonder if that is significant.
The rest of the film contains photos like an Antonov AN-124 at Manchester, a view of Manhatten island from 35,000ft in our bmi Airbus 330-200, a small collection of aircraft at Washington Dulles like a Sun Country 727 Adv Super 27, and again at Sea-Tac, like this pig. I mean this pig †.
This photo was the first of a 36 exposure film which started and finished on the same day (Friday 1 June 2001).
It was taken at exactly the same spot as Weird Truck Photo A. It's a little more difficult to see what's going on at the front of the truck in this photo, but at least it shows there's a decent amount of space behind it.
Here's a close up of the photo at 1200dpi. This is the first photo in which I noticed a peculiarity. I had fifteen 36 exposure films of the whole trip to look through, which took some time, even skimming through, but I was immediately caught by this one.
These closeups are JPG images, compressed at 25%, but I have the original closeup TIF, straight from the scanner. You can download these too, but be warned that the file sizes are huge, so expect a long wait. Weird Truck Photo A TIF 3Mb and Weird Truck Photo B TIF 4Mb.
Well, the weird truck was so weird it blew the Air Berlin's 737-800 crazily huge winglets into thin air.
You might have noticed the winglets on the Boeing 747-400 series, and the Airbus A320 series aircraft which I believe are there to reduce drag thus increasing economy and range, but these 737-800 winglets are something to behold!
I was ready to dismiss the Air Berlin's 737-800 winglets as a sort of testing ground. Perhaps they bought or were renting a couple just to try out on behalf of Boeing. But then a few months later, I noticed this advertisement in the 30 October edition of Flight International
magazine. Apparently, the winglets save fuel, climb faster, and are quieter on take off and landing
.
I saw this land, taxi and park near to the weird truck. Of course, I didn't know it was weird at the time. Interestingly, this aircraft has an incident logged at the NTSB.
What happens at RNT to these jets I don't know.
Nice view from the rear.
I emailed Renton Municipal Airport on 2001/12/01 and received this response from Ryan Zulauf the Airport Manager: The one axel truck you refer to is a modified Chevy pickup used to drag seaplanes around the airport and drop or extract seaplanes from Lake Washington. These trucks look like something right out of the TV show "Junkyard Wars" which still has me in disbelief, but at least the existence of the truck was confirmed!
If you have any comments on this, don't hesitate to contact me at website at
stevepotts dot
com. 2002/09/27.
