Thanks for posting those, guys! So jealous!
@CraigM, what are those shapes made from lights? I can see the shapes of a jet, Sputnik, and Space Shuttle, but what am I looking at? Is it some kind of fixed or temporary light display?
It’s a drone display, it cycled through a bunch of images. After each image (about 10-20 seconds each) it would turn off and go into what I call ‘glitter mode’ while setting up the next image.
There was an Eagle, the Wright Flyer, a Sopwith Camel, an F-4, a 737, Saturn 5, Sputnik, Space Shuttle, ISS, then a series of geometric shapes.
It was done by a company called Skyworx.
Ah, of course! Drones! That must have been so cool to see, like UFOs! And of course that’s a facet of airshows now.
Ooh. Awesome pics. I forgot to post mine from a last months air show. Blue Angels flew over our neighborhood a few times towards the end of their show. I missed the closest flyover because I thought they were already finished but did hear them later and caught a few pics with my phone at least. Not as cool as @CraigM shots, but still was pretty nice. An attack copter flew over earlier in the day but I wasn’t ready and it never came back. It was super low and crazy loud.
Yeah we have a Blackhawk appearance today. There was also an F-35 flyby to open last night, but as I didn’t realize it was only a single pass, I was not in position to catch it. By the time I realized what it was, it was out of filming position.
I’m about 5 miles west of Lockheed Martin and the Joint Reserve Base so we get a decent amount of F-16 and F-35 flybys. Oh, and boring old C-130s. But not as many as where we used to live which was directly under one of their normal training flight paths. I know folks who setup on some of the parks and stuff in the area and will get some amazing pics. I keep saying I’ll do that but haven’t yet.
The best is the occasional random F-18 or A-10. Or whatever is using the JRB for training or as a layover on the way to somewhere else.
Must viewing for aviation geeks:
No pictures because of reasons, but I got onto a German Army base today and got to play around with an EC-135 simulator. Sadly the movements were turned off, but I did get a good taste of the flight and systems modelling, the excuisite controls and the joy of having a big dome projector screen.
I fully expected this thing to be hard as hell. It’s what real pilots train on. Bits of it are classified, hence the no fotos. But I completely rocked it. Flew it through bad weather. Landed on a roof and in a stadium, the last one with the stability augmentation system off even!
So apparently, if you can fly a chopper in DCS, you can fly an official sim. And that makes me believe, I might actually have a non-zero chance of surviving it if I were to run up to the medicopter and steal the thing!
That’s a life event right there. You’re like the guy at the concert who has a sign that says “pick me” and when they pick you, you get in the seat and rock it. Nice.
It is interesting these 2 posts (about EC-135 simulator and Blue Angels) came close together.
While I have never been on a serious grade sim, I have always wondered how hard real flying was vs sims. I’ve flown a few sims, and pulled off some seemingly difficult things.
But then I compare to what I saw in the Blue Angels documentary, and I know for certain they are performing at levels I can barely comprehend. Its beyond beyond.
I don’t want to give the specifics, because if you are into this thread you need to go watch that film.
I always had a feeling that the real thing was more intuitive, because it’s easier to operate the cockpit - even using a headtracker, you’re still laboring more than you would in real life - but especially because you have a physical sense of what the aircraft is doing, which is of course completely missing from a commercial sim.
In real life you can sense what it’s doing, but in a simulator you’re purely relying on your eyes. I think that makes it harder to control a virtual aircraft.
But hard is a relative term. I really appreciate that screwing up in a simulator doesn’t lead to my death. It’s also cool that flooding an engine doesn’t get me grounded. And of course the countless courts martial from just randomly popping off ordnance in populated areas.
You also don’t have to worry about gravity kicking the crap out of you whenever you do something a little cool.
I can’t believe nobody talked about this, that is incredible. I will watch that until the streaming bits are worn out.
A few minutes ago I heard this really loud rumbling of a helicopter, but it was louder and heavier than I’d ever felt before. Everything started shaking and I could hear a roar. I raced to a Window and what looked like a Special Ops Chinook passed directly overhead and then banked around and flew off. It had the refueling probe and the ramp was down. It was insane. If I had a minute’s warning I could have grabbed my camera.
Obviously they had just dropped off the scrubber team to sanitize the alien landing site. It’s clear as day, couldn’t be anything else.
The Army was doing some kind of helicopter exercises out of JBLM last month that involved a bunch of Chinooks flying over Seattle and the northern suburbs at around dusk. It caused a lot of posts on r/Seattle and Ring Neighborhood. Kinda interesting because while it’s not unusual to see military helicopters or aircraft flying to and fro the various military installations, it is unusual that they’re doing exercises over the city.
Chinooks make an impressive noise, especially if there’s a gaggle of them. Even more impressive ar CH-53s. I can’t wait to experience a -K, the latest and greatest iteration of that.
Fwiw, DCS gets a shithook next week, along with an Afghanistan map.
We don’t get much air activity here, other than the Air Guard’s F-35s, which are LOUD but cool looking. We live very close to the Army’s Mountain Warfare center, though, and get to hear mortars, machineguns, and other booming things quite often. And of course the occasional convoy of Humvees and various support trucks.
In the Army, I got to ride on Hueys, Blackhawks, and Chinooks. At least in the flights I was on, the Chinooks were less interesting than riding with your legs dangling like on the Hueys. The Chinooks were like flying busses.
But my rides were on training trips, so I expect the Chinooks in hostile territory could be quite exciting. On one of the Huey flights the pilots (8 Hueys total) simulated a hot LZ approach and landing, and it was a breathtaking rollercoaster ride.
The Seafair Air Show in Seattle is coming up in a few weeks and for the first time ever they’re going to let people get really close to the Blue Angels flight line. Before, photographers had to settle for shooting outside the fence. I just bought my ticket for Saturday. Of course I’m bringing my camera and lenses.
