A friend of mine sent me this link to a demonstration flight of the F-22 Raptor at Farnborough – really an amazing flight. I’ve yet to see an F-22 in an airshow – looking forward to that one day!
How about you – have you seen the F-22 in flight?
This weekend the Blue Angels will be performing at the California International Airshow in Salinas.
I can’t imagine a more perfect venue for watching the Blue Angels – Salinas isn’t one of those massive airshows but, instead, almost a community event.
I was there last year – with the Air Force Thunderbirds – and the airshow was spectacular.
If you can make it to Salinas this weekend, you will enjoy a wonderful airshow! There’s nothing quite like a performance of the Blue Angels’ twin-engine F-18’s to make you proud!
One of our favorite local airshow events – a unique helicopter airshow – is hosted by the Hiller Aviation Museum every year at San Carlos Airport.
I’ve been fortunate to attend the last couple of years – here are some photos from the 2008 and 2007 editions.
The photo on the left is the Eurocopter Messerschmitt Bölkow Blohm Bo-105 CBS fully aerobatic helicopter flown by Chuck Aaron of the Red Bull team. Aaron is the first and only civilian pilot to be licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to perform aerobatics in a helicopter.
This year’s Vertical Challenge 2009 is being held on Saturday, June 20th. Details are available at the Hiller Aviation Museum web site. Hope to see you there!
One of my favorite writers, Mark Bowden, has a new article titled “The Last Ace” in this month’s Atlantic.
One section of the article is devoted to the McDonnell Douglas F-15 – an amazing airplane. I remember the first time I saw one in the mid-1970’s. It was at St. Louis’ Lambert Field – where the McDonnell Douglas factory was on the other side of the airport from the commercial airline terminal.
I was down in southern California this week teaching one of our Glenbrook Payments Boot Camps with one of my partners, Carol Coye Benson. We had a great time with a great group of folks.
Flying home from Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport last night on Southwest brought back memories. When I worked for IBM in the 70’s, I used to spend a fair amount of time in and out of that airport – mostly for visits to Lockheed across the street. From the looks of things, nothing has changed at this airport in the 30+ years since!
The best part about Burbank’s airport is its compactness. Landing, it feels like the aircraft comes to a stop, makes a quick turn left and you’re at the gate. No jetways, just old-fashioned ramps at both the front and rear of the aircraft. Felt a lot like San Jose Airport circa-1970.
Inside, there’s a sign displaying the airport’s mission statement – I smiled when I read it strived to provide a “state of the art” airport experience. But now that I think about it, I enjoyed the whole experience of flying in and out of Burbank – much more that I would flying in/out of some of my least favorite airports (Atlanta and Denver come immediately to mind!) Burbank is indeed providing a state of the art experience – the way things used to be!
On this day, 105 years ago, Orville Wright made two flights in the Wright Flyer at Kill Devil Hills, NC. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright brothers, and as a school kid we learned to be very proud of the Wright’s accomplishments in flight! I have fond memories of Dayton’s Carillon Park – where one of the 1905 Wright Flyers is on display.
As I fessed up to in my Airshow Junkie post over the weekend, I’m seriously addicted to airshows.
My earliest airshow memories are of those at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base when I was growing up in Dayton. I loved to go to those shows with my Dad – and, during the rest of the year, to the Air Force Museum which, at the time, was sort of a sideshow at Patterson Field (since then it’s moved to a much more appropriate setting at Wright Field and changed their name to the National Museum of the USAF).
But, my all-time favorite airshow memories are from a couple of years during the 1980’s when I was able to attend the EAA’s Oshkosh AirVenture airshow – both by flying in and by RV’ing in.
I’m an airshow junkie – much to the dismay of my family who wonder why anyone finds it fun to park miles away, hike into a crowded venue filled with greasy food joints, and then only to watch and listen to ear splitting aircraft zoom over your head plus getting a bad case of sunburn – and then waiting in an interminable traffic jam out of the parking lot to get home.
Honestly, I really can’t understand why they don’t want to come along with me!
Today’s airshow was the California International Airshow in Salinas. It was great – congratulations to the show organizers who seem to successfully mobilize the whole town as volunteers to keep things running smoothly!
Here are the photos from today’s airshow!
Frankly, I’m disappointed about some (the most important?) of my Hiller Vertical Challenge 2008 Airshow pictures.
It was a great event again this year – but, unfortunately, my photos of the aerobatic Red Bull helicopter demonstration flight were shot with a bad setting on my camera. Call it “operator error”!
There’s a moral in here somewhere – that smart photographers have to constantly be thinking “what am I shooting – and how am I shooting it?” Here’s my sad story.
Just prior to the Red Bull aerobatic flight, I had been playing around with the Shutter Priority setting on my Canon 40D during the Showcopters flight. The Hiller Aviation Museum’s Vertical Challenge page linked to some tips for photographers that I had read prior to the show. Among other things, that article advocated using a slower shutter speed for some airshow photography to get a “blur” on the prop (or the rotor in the case of a helicopter!). So, I had been playing around with settings between 1/160 and 1/500 of a second. The rotor blur was great – when the subject itself wasn’t moving too quickly.
Unfortunately, when the Red Bull aerobatic routine started, I had to scoot around a building to get a good view – and completely forgot to put the Canon back on fully Program AE mode. As a result, the Red Bull shots were taken in Shutter Priority mode at 1/160 of a second – and, with my new big lens and my shaking arms pointed overhead, that combination led to just too much blur in most of those photos.
I’m sharing all of this to remind myself that you don’t let yourself get “behind the camera” in terms of ALWAYS knowing the camera settings while you’re shooting – and, that if if you do, you’ll end up sloppy in the photos and just a bit disappointed!
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