Air Show
Below are some photos from the Oceana Naval Air Station Air Show that I attended with lavinrac on September 20th. I took a total of 551 photos. :) It never rained, but most of the day was dominated by a 1500 foot cloud ceiling that caused them to cancel the parachute teams and to scale back a lot of the jet demos to limited set of maneuvers so they'd stay out of the clouds. Still, it was a great show. We ended up walking a few miles over the course of the day, up and down the flight line and then back to the car. There we other vendors and things to see and do besides what happened in the air, including static displays, food, cars, home improvement vendors, stuff for kids, shops and tables for various flight units.
The C-17 is huge but can fly at almost 45 degrees for several hundred feet right after takeoff. It's very surreal to watch it take off this way. It appears to just barely make it over the top back to level flight.
The guy flying this biplane was absolutely amazing, doing crazy stunts right above the runway. The plane lacks an inverted flight system for oil and gas, so part of the show was him stalling out and doing a "flaming restart" every time he flew upside down for an extended time.
Here's an F-18 screaming by and pulling some G's. The poor weather did have the benefit of producing some nice vapor effects. F-18's are very, very loud. It's probably the loudest jet I've ever heard. This is the primary jet that flies out of Oceana, and it was funny to see a pile of them parked down in one corner out of the way to make room for parking. We parked on the run out area of one of the runways that crossed the one they were using for the show, while others parked on the tarmac where the planes usually sit.
Here's the F-22 climbing almost straight up. Due to the low clouds we missed some of the cooler things it can do, such as hovering in a tail stand. It was still an amazing and beautiful plane to see.
The image below is of the Heritage Flight performed at this event.
I didn't even notice the effect in the image below until I was reviewing the photos later. Apparently the tips of the props are creating their own little contrails.
Of course the Blue Angels were there. During their show the weather started to break. Too bad it was too late and they had already cut a lot of the other shows.
This was an interesting moment:
This one also ended up being an interesting angle. What kind of plane is that in the middle?
It was a lot of fun, and the new camera performed well once I got the hang of it. It would have been nice to have better light and a blue sky though.
The C-17 is huge but can fly at almost 45 degrees for several hundred feet right after takeoff. It's very surreal to watch it take off this way. It appears to just barely make it over the top back to level flight.
The guy flying this biplane was absolutely amazing, doing crazy stunts right above the runway. The plane lacks an inverted flight system for oil and gas, so part of the show was him stalling out and doing a "flaming restart" every time he flew upside down for an extended time.
Here's an F-18 screaming by and pulling some G's. The poor weather did have the benefit of producing some nice vapor effects. F-18's are very, very loud. It's probably the loudest jet I've ever heard. This is the primary jet that flies out of Oceana, and it was funny to see a pile of them parked down in one corner out of the way to make room for parking. We parked on the run out area of one of the runways that crossed the one they were using for the show, while others parked on the tarmac where the planes usually sit.
Here's the F-22 climbing almost straight up. Due to the low clouds we missed some of the cooler things it can do, such as hovering in a tail stand. It was still an amazing and beautiful plane to see.
The image below is of the Heritage Flight performed at this event.
I didn't even notice the effect in the image below until I was reviewing the photos later. Apparently the tips of the props are creating their own little contrails.
Of course the Blue Angels were there. During their show the weather started to break. Too bad it was too late and they had already cut a lot of the other shows.
This was an interesting moment:
This one also ended up being an interesting angle. What kind of plane is that in the middle?
It was a lot of fun, and the new camera performed well once I got the hang of it. It would have been nice to have better light and a blue sky though.