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On Saturday, Tracy, who was on vacation in Virginia Beach with her family, called me to say that there was an air show going on at NAS Oceana. I love airplanes, particularly military airplanes, and the noise of fighter jets always excites me. So I checked with David when he got back from work and we decided we'd head over to the show on Sunday. It's a long drive, but I figured it would be worth it.
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It was worth it. Aside from the pictures (nearly all of which were taken by Tracy - I looked at the planes through my binoculars), it was just a lot of fun being there. And the noise was great. My only real disappointment in the whole thing was in myself: I forgot to bring suntan lotion and all of us got burned - though David was burned the worst. The weather was odd: cloudy for a few minutes, clear for a few more; it downpoured for about a minute, and then the sun came out. The low ceiling (at times) canceled some events and postponed others. The first jet we saw fly (up close) was the F-15E Strike Eagle. The first picture shows the F-15 with the F-22 Raptor, a P-51 Mustang, and the swept-wing F-86 Sabre. The second shows the F-15 just after takeoff, on full afterburner. I've seen the Eagle fly before: I was at NASA LaRC for a summer, and the pilots from LAFB flew their Eagles overhead nearly every day. It was a great demo: low to the ground with many high-angle-of-attack (AoA) turns; there was so much moisture in the air that nearly every high-AoA maneuver resulted in
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In order maintain its stealthy profile, the Raptor carries its weapons internally: doors open (exposing the weapons to radar detection) just before a weapon is deployed. As part of the demonstration, the pilot banked the aircraft and cycled the weapon bay doors. You can see quite well where the weapons are mounted, in this picture. Here's another beauty shot of the Raptor, you can see (barely) the shockwaves from the afterburner:
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The last event was a demonstration by the Blue Angels: impressive formation flying and high-precision maneuvers. They were really pretty, but after seeing some of the very-high-AoA maneuvers we'd seen all day, it was less impressive than it would have been had we only seen the Blue Angels. Still, we got several good photos of the formation flights. Below is one of my favorites.
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1 comment:
Good post.
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