I’m totally psyched! We just got back from Fort Wadsworth where we drove to this morning to witness the final voyage of Space Shuttle Enterprise strapped to the back of Boeing 747 to New York Intrepid museum.
When several weeks ago I heard about Discovery flying in the same manner all over DC I was very jealous of Washingtonians. Needless to say when I heard that the same thing will be happening over New York I immediately took a morning off from work. The flight got delayed twice because of bad weather and it finally happened today, on Friday, April 27, 2012.
When I heard about the flyover I thought that Fort Wadsworth would be a perfect location to view it from. It is located pretty high up, overlooking the bay under Verrazano Bridge and has a good view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, although the statue is pretty far and is somewhat hard to see on the photographs taken with a normal lens.
Early in the morning I packed my gear — my usual 24-70mm lens, but this time I also took my 70-200mm lens and the 2x teleconverter that I have laying around which never gets any use. And I’m very glad I did.
We were really hoping that it will get closer to our location than the Statue of Liberty and this morning I had found two maps of its possible fly path and on both of those there was at least one pass over the bridge. Since NASA never disclosed an exact fly route I was hoping that these maps were true.
When we got to Fort Wadsworth I realized that my secret spot isn’t so secret. It was as crowded as I’ve never seen it before, but it wasn’t bad at all. There were plenty of parking spots left and we easily found a good viewing spot near the edge where I setup my tripod. Even though I knew I can’t fix the camera completely it still provided good support for those telephoto shots.
There were a couple of guys with radios who were getting constant updates. They told everyone when the plane was 2 minutes out. And then it appeared through the cables of Verrazano Bridge. I started with my 24-70mm lens to get good landscape shots of the bridge with the plane.
By the time it passed the bridge I switched over to my 400mm setup, but was quite late to get any decent shots. Nobody was sure if we were going to see it again or if it was going to cut through the middle of city on its final route to JFK.
Luckily we didn’t have a long wait. It again showed up over the Statue of Liberty — it was hard to see with a naked eye, but I could see it very well through the lens. To the happiness of all the photographers and observers the shuttle carrier did a second pass right over the bridge and I got a good number of great close up shots with the plane taking up the full frame.
I was so ecstatic that I started clapping and the other people followed too. It was a good and fun event for us, but Arosha found it quite boring. Later he is going to see these photographs and he’ll be able to say that he was there, although not too happy.
А то я Даньку всегда мучаю – “интересно тебе читать? или скучно? может, это убрать? или что-нибудь добавить?” 
April 27, 2012 @ 13:53
I did not know much about Enterprise before today, but I read about it a bit on Wikipedia and there are a few things that I found interesting.
First, it never actually went into space, but was used for different kinds of NASA testing.
Second, the shuttle got its name from the original Star Trek series, which makes it even more special to us.
And third, it was built in 1977. I did not expect it to be this old, but then again, I know very little about space programs in general.
April 27, 2012 @ 14:12
[...] this event and it was totally worth it. I’m still very very excited that we were able to witness the voyage of Space Shuttle Enterprise around New York City. And I’m even more excited that I managed to [...]
April 27, 2012 @ 15:03
Получились отличные фотографии этого исторического события. Второй раз такого уже не увидишь. Останется память. А что касается Ароши, то хоть пролет транспортировщика с шаттлом на фюзеляже его не заинтересовал, но он тоже был свидетелем этого события и спустя годы будет с гордостью (и смехом) об этом говорить.
April 27, 2012 @ 15:53
Да, шикарные фотографии получились! Такое зрелище надолго запомнится.
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