Every summer, the Blue Angels perform in Seattle at SeaFair. For those that don’t know, the Blue Angels are the US Navy’s acrobatic flight team, and they perform all over the world. When in Seattle, they fly over Lake Washington, which I can see from my back porch. I set up the eVscope this afternoon to try to catch them during practice, and as I suspected, it was really hard. The eVscope has a fixed and limited field of view, it’s slow to move, and the screen refresh rate is probably 5-10 frames per second. They’re in and out of your field of view in 3-4 frames, so you have to watch, click, and pray. I took 22 pictures this afternoon, got planes in 12 of them, and the only ones where they’re any good are below. Still, it was fun to capture them with the telescope!

Also, to get these, I had to manually adjust the gain and brightness, and the telescope had the annoying habit of occasionally (and apparently randomly) switching back to automatic mode – which entirely blacked out the screen, as it reset both to effectively 0. That forced another half-dozen clicks as I had to go to the adjustment screen, switch back to manual mode, and adjust the sliders to be able to see anything.

To capture the photos below, I picked a spot near the horizon where I knew they often flew past, found it in the telescope, and then watched for when they approached. As they did, I started watching my phone screen, and as soon as I saw them, I clicked to take a photo. Sometimes I was early, but usually I was late.

Blue Angels

2025-07-31

snapshot

Seafair 2025 practice

Blue Angels

2025-07-31

snapshot

Seafair 2025 practice

Blue Angels

2025-07-31

snapshot

Seafair 2025 practice

Blue Angels

2025-07-31

snapshot

Seafair 2025 practice

Blue Angels

2025-07-31

snapshot

Seafair 2025 practice

Blue Angels

2025-07-31

snapshot

Seafair 2025 practice