On a hot sunny afternoon Monday, July 28, 2014, two Marine Corps MV-22 B Osprey's were heard coming in from a distance and landed at Boeing Field around 12:15pm.

West Seattle Herald photojournalist David Rosen was lucky enough to go on a media flight aboard one of them. They took off to the North and circled around near Mt. Rainier and then came back over Ballard and then next to the city skyline.

"The experience was definitely a once in a lifetime and it was cool to see out of the back the entire flight, " Rosen said The flight lasted about 30 minutes.

The Osprey is the world's first production tiltrotor aircraft, with one three-bladed proprotor, turboprop engine, and transmission nacelle mounted on each wingtip. It is classified as a powered lift aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration. For takeoff and landing, it typically operates as a helicopter with the nacelles vertical and rotors horizontal. Once airborne, the nacelles rotate forward 90° in as little as 12 seconds for horizontal flight, converting the MV-22 to a more fuel efficient, higher speed turboprop aircraft. STOL rolling-takeoff and landing capability is achieved by having the nacelles tilted forward up to 45°. Other orientations are possible, such as the "80 Jump" takeoff which uses nacelles at 80° to quickly achieve high altitude and speed.

The MV-22 is equipped with a glass cockpit, which incorporates four Multi-function displays (MFDs, compatible with night-vision goggles) and one shared Central Display Unit (CDU), allowing the pilots to display a variety of images including: digimaps centered or decentered on current position, FLIR imagery (from the Turreted Forward Looking Infra-Red System) primary flight instruments, navigation (TACAN, VOR, ILS, GPS, INS), and system status. The flight director panel of the Cockpit Management System (CMS) allows for fully coupled (autopilot) functions that take the aircraft from forward flight into a 50 ft (15 m) hover with no pilot interaction other than programming the system.