Just got back from the airshow
 

haven't been to one since I was a kid. A first for Beest and our sprogs, one of whom is a plane nut and was a jet pilot last Halloween.

Was great. Jet noise is sound porn for me. Was not so impressed with the wait to get in and parked -the traffic marshalling sucked... and that's straight after a swim meet where the swimmer marshalling sucked (i'm renowned for being the awesomest swim meet marshall around -and also for having little patience when the marshalls at away meets suck donkey bollocls, so let's just say i wasn't in the best frame of mind for a second crappy marshall job of the day :lol: (it was so bad the traffic jams made the local headline))

anyway, enough of my whining, here are the blue angels:

Looks like the Blue Angels. What other cool flying demos and planes did they have?

The Thunderbirds were in Dayton this year. We trade back and forth with the Blue Angels and the T-birds. I didn't see any of it though.

I agree monnie. I love to see and hear the jets. My dad used to own a lake closer to the Air show, and often the planes did their turnarounds right over us. We'd cook out, swim, fish, and hang out watching the planes.

One year, my whole family, including grandma and aunts and uncles, were down at that lake. Out of nowhere a Blue Angel flew right over us, came from behind us. It was going so fast we didn't hear it before we saw it, but it was so close we almost felt like we could touch it. My entire family was cheering and yelling, and a lot of us got a bit choked up, it was just so cool. Even my elderly grandma was astounded. I will never forget that moment...so thrilling.

monster, have you ever been to the Air Force Museum in Dayton? I think you'd love it, if you love the planes.

We're trying to get there, Shawnee. One day....

'splode, yup, that's why I said "here are the blue angels" ;) I suppose I should've capitalized their name.

Doh!

i love air shows! looks like you had a great time! i haven't been to one in years but my home airport is next to ellington field where they hold the airshow so when it does come around in november i still get to see a little bit....

A good aerobatics display brings tears to my eyes. I'm one of those spectators that gets the "airshow grin." You've seen it -- this huge, sloppy, slightly misty-eyed grin that is nearly constant.

And of course, when the old warbirds come by, my eyes go up because first I'm hearing that round-motor sound -- the fast, bluggablugga roar of the radial engine. Then for variety, the smooth, crackling drone of a V-12 aero engine like the P-51's Packard Merlin or something Allison-engined. Various props sound different too -- a T-6 has a snarl all its own (along with the roundmotor note) from its twobladed, geared propeller, and a T-28 has this portentious, I'm-a-big-deal thunder from its larger radial engine, and no snarl.

When they start these things up, you discover those high-compression piston aero engines really do go through all those histrionics: the cough-sput-wheeze chug ROAR crackle vrrrRRRMMMMcrackleRRRRM goings-on of the inline engine, or the Harleyish bass-toned sput-wheeze-chug bluggetta bluggetta blugga cough ROARclatter of a radial firing up. Radials always, always, shoot puffs of smoke on their first couple of turns because their bottom cylinders always accumulate a little oil. This is why they pull the prop through a couple of revolutions before ever hitting Start -- if they don't the oil in the cylinder will hydraulically bind up the piston and bend the connecting rod or even the crankshaft, I'd imagine. Even at their tightest, radials use oil and they carry around rather a lot of it, and they clear out the remnant oil in the bottom cylinders by burning it. Jets -- their oil capacity is like a sedan's.

Then there's the smell of the thing if you're downwind, or down-wash: burnt 100/130 octane doesn't smell like an automobile's exhaust. It's a race car odor, like gunpowder and kerosene together.

The only thing louder than an F-4 Phantom jet going overhead is an F-104 going by in afterburner, really giving the taxpayers a show for their money. Which is not like an F-18 from the Blue Angels is exactly quiet in a high speed pass either!

I can't decide whether that is poetic or incoherent...

Some people would say there's no difference between them.

I'd go for poetic.

As far as I can tell, no posters were called idiots in the making of that post.

I even found something we agree on: jets.

Sharks.

I liked the Lancaster, P52, Hurricane, Spitfire display, also a solo aerobatics display by one the Spitfires.

Couple of Hueys and stuff in a combined Vietnam era display.

I liked the way all the aircraft were parked immediately behind the crowd, so would start up and taxi out the 'strip right were you could see and here them close up too. Particularly cool with the Hueys, which taxi'd at 10 ft off the ground at 10 mph, for the full sound pressure effect.

F4 vs Mig 17 dogfight.

etc.

Someone gets in our way
Someone don't feel so well


ETA - dolphin!

Brings back memories. My dad had three girls, no boys. I was the youngest, so I got to pretend to be into stuff like this for his sake.

We did see a stealth plane fly very low over our house the other evening, which was pretty cool. The kids were impressed.