What an awesome event...Daytona Beach is going crazy right now before the Daytona 500. The Air Force Thunderbirds come in two days early to practice flying around the track, then showtime tomorrow when they roar over as the Star Spangled Banner finishes before the race. Their practice flights take them right over our house, and then again as they fly off on race day. Just able to snap off a quick shot this morning....hope to get more tomorrow.
Love those Thunderbirds. And the Blue Angels. I know we have the Red Arrows and how bloody perfect they are, but the old Hawk doesn't have the theatre of an F16 or F18. I suppose the manageable platform of a trainer lends itself to 9 plane tight formation flying, Not sure if that could be done with consistency in performance fighters. Love those you tube clips of the Angels in San Francisco Bay.
The start of the Jimmy Johnson Farewell Tour. I've lost interest in NASCAR since Gordon retired, but I'll be watching the Daytona 500 today
#48 has been my driver since he started in NASCAR and I started somewhat following the sport. What a run he and Knaus had, a domination that may not happen again. I’m in Chicago visiting family, but have the race set to record so I’ll watch when we get home tonight!
Crap. I have my two sisters, an aunt and both of my parents here visiting right now. Someone turned on the dang TV and put it on the Daytona 500. Ugh, it is painful to watch Nascar. Makes sense they like it, as I have ridden with all of them and most do not know how to brake and take turns My son did get to catch the Blue Angels right when the TV was turned on, so there is a tiny bit of a silver lining.
Farnborough - 1958. World record - 22 plane loop for the Black arrows. Beating the F86 Sabre loop done by the 16 plane Pakistani Airforce. My point was consistency - took em months, and more than one squadron... They need to be recognised! XG194 SqnLdr Roger Topp XG170 FltLt "Oakie" Oakford XG200 FlgOff Marcus"Oscar" Wild XF515 FltLt Alan Brindle XG201 FltLt Patrick Hine XG171 FltLt Brian Mercer XG592 FltLt George Ord XE563 FltLt Matthew Kemp XJ715 FlgOff Ron Smith XG189 FltLt Bob Smith XF416 FltLt Bob Barcilon XF424 FlgOff Roger Hymans XE616 FlgOff Peter Jennings XG190 FltLt Les Swart XE656 FlgOff Norman Lamb XE584 FltLt "Will" Scarlett XG193 FlgOff "CJ" Clayton-Jones XJ687 FltLt "Chas" Boyer XG266 FltLt Frank Travers-Smith XG160 FltLt Mike Thurley XF506 FlgOff Tony Aldridge XG191 FltLt David Edmondston Sorry to hijack the Daytona post....
Thunderbird was about 1000ft altitude. AF1 was about 800ft. Canon EOS w/400mm telephoto. Simple camera with a fat lens (and a steady hand). My wife was on car lookout while I stood in the middle of the street to get a clearer view.
I know NASCAR isn’t very popular with the OF crowd, but I watched the race (delayed a day due to rain yesterday). Denny Hamlin won but there was a terrible crash and the status of Ryan Newman (driver of Ford Mustang #6) is still unknown. Scary outcome and awfully reminiscent of 2001...
Flyovers are the best. I used to live in the flight path for Lambeau Field, a block and a half from the stadium. We'd get gameday flyovers and occasionally practice runs so low they'd shake the house. I'll never forget the B-2 Spirit flyover when I was a kid. For a stealth plane you sure could hear and feel it from that height. My dad said it felt so low it was like he could have thrown a baseball and hit it.
I had the luck to experience a B-2 flyover at a large annual Memorial Day road race, and I will never forget it. Every year there is a flyover at this event, usually fighters from Colorado Springs or sometimes vintage WWII aircraft. But this was the 25th anniversary of the race, and they planned something really special, but kept it a secret. We were in a stadium, and the plane came in low and slow from the north during the national anthem, so quiet that you didn't hear it coming over the music until suddenly this massive wing was directly overhead seemingly covering the entire field, like an Imperial Cruiser from Star Wars. It felt close enough to touch. Absolutely mind-blowing. Nothing like any other flyover I've ever experienced.
Beautiful photo to open this thread; the F-16 is still a favorite of mine. My lucky/chance encounter with a B-2 was on an American Airlines flight heading to Chicago. A B-2 out of Whiteman AFB in Missouri was seemingly in mutual agreement with our AA pilot for a close encounter and gave a nice show off the port side. Indeed a very sci-fi looking airplane to this day even though Jack Northrop conceived the Flying Wing some 80 years ago!
Your close encounter just reminded me of one I had last year May. A bit off-topic but hopefully you'll find it interesting. I was staying out in South Dakota with some friends while working on a project on rural life. We were in the middle of nowhere, truly. And by middle of nowhere, I mean this is one of the more remote places in the lower 48, with 2.5 hours in all cardinal directions to a hospital, going 70mph. A few days earlier someone had mentioned how they once had a crew filming on their property but the audio kept getting ruined by jet planes overhead. I hadn't ever seen one in the sky but I looked up and sure enough, you could see contrails occasionally way off in the distance. They remarked offhand it was nothing like the when the planes came through from Ellsworth Air Force Base. Earlier that day I was driving past a grain bin and noticed a big burn pit going next to some kind of industrial gas tank, like propane or something, and thought "man that would be bad if the wind drifted the wrong way." I went back to the house I was staying at, played some cribbage, and settled in to edit photos from the night, looking out the window toward town about 3 miles in the distance. Out of nowhere - BOOM! - the house shook. I looked toward the grain silos in the otherwise dark night but there was no big fireball. It took me a few seconds to piece it together, but it could only be one thing. It was a B-1 Lancer out from the 28th Bomb Wing going supersonic as it flew low above the draws of the otherwise flat section of the Great Plains. The next day it was the talk of the town for about all 300 people that live there. Apparently it happens a lot less nowadays than it used to, but people swore to have seen them in the past, weaving through the dried up riverbeds practicing their bombing runs at insane speeds, viewed from nearly eye-level up on nearby hills. Since it was dark I didn't see the Lancer myself and I never saw one fly over the rest of the time I was there, but I'll always remember that BOOM. The U.S. sure knows how to make some impressive warbirds.
