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Edwards AFB open house


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Wow! What a show! I wish I could've gone both days, but I'm grateful with the one. The T-Birds were awesome, but the Raptor was the highlight for me, since I'd never seen one in person. The funniest thing was during the A-10 demo when it did it's, um, "high speed" pass. A lady behind me pipes up "wow, he's going to break the sound barrier" :banana:.

Anyway, here's the monstrous shuttle transport 747.

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And the NASA B-52 (the one whose wings kept me out of the sun between demos).

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I don't know what was up with this NASA Hornet. Did it have cooties or something? There was like nobody around it all day .

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Here's another giant. C-17 out of Travis AFB. Bet that thing was packed all day with people trying to get out of the sun. I walked by and took a quick look and snapped this picture, but that's about it.

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There's another group of pics for me to put on PhotoBucket, so either later tonight or tomorrow I've got more to share...including one of the F-35 JSF and a couple from inside the shuttle's 747. Enjoy :D.

Edited by TomcatFanatic123
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Neat stuff. Do you know what NASA uses the B-52 for?

John

This one I'm not 100% sure about, but their last one, a B-52B that they recently retired, was used as a launch platform for a whole host of X-planes, including X-15, X-38, and most recently the X-43 Hyper-X scramjet program. It has also supported NASA's "lifting bodies" vehicles from back in the day, and I believe, a few Pegasus launches (I may be wrong on that one). I'm assuming this new B-52H they have will be used for similar things. It was also used, as I said, to keep me from baking in the 90 degree heat, which, I must say it did not do a very good job of...I still roasted :P.

Edited by TomcatFanatic123
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Well, here's some more pics...

This is my first time taking in-flight shots of aircraft. Not bad for a middle of the road digicam, I don't think. I had so much fun taking these pics I'm thinking of investing in a more professional model.

This is the "Edwards AFB Pass & Review". 2 Vipers, a T-38, F-117, and a Raptor make up the "fast movers" as I called them, a BUFF and a big bad B-One make up the bombers, and a C-17 and KC-135 bring up the rear.

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Here's a few shots of the C-17. This was it's slow photo pass. During the demo, the pilot cranked that thing up to full speed and did a fast pass. For such a lumbering giant, that damn thing hauls booty!

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The BUFF and it's eight air-polluting engines was there in all its glory.

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I know I promised the JSF and the shots from inside the shuttle transport. They're coming...just a little further down the list. I'll put up the rest probably later tonight or tommorow. Enjoy :wave:!

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I'm getting the same results as Raptor Supporter - the first batch is all red X's with "IPB Image" in them, the second set is perfectly visible. There must be some setting on my PC that needs to be changed, but I have no idea what.

Really wanna see those first photos, though. That mass formation shot is excellent, BTW.

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Wow! What a show! I wish I could've gone both days, but I'm grateful with the one. The T-Birds were awesome, but the Raptor was the highlight for me, since I'd never seen one in person. The funniest thing was during the A-10 demo when it did it's, um, "high speed" pass. A lady behind me pipes up "wow, he's going to break the sound barrier" :thumbsup:.

I know its sad to laugh at this lady, I am sure she does not know much about military aircraft, but I as well, do not know as much as I would like to know, but come on :worship: The A-10 breaking the Sound Barrier... *Sighs* Some people's children...but that would be freaking sweet....Just imagine.... WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH the a-10 breaks the sound barrier... That would be like the B-52 breaking the sound barrier :worship:

If only.. mwaahaha

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You've gotta remember, Claw - lots of folks believe that:

-Every USAF aircraft is supersonic.

-Every US military airplane is flown by the USAF - yep, that's the Air Force taking off from carriers...

-Every member of the USAF (and there's no distinction between officers and enlisted) is a pilot.

-Those pilots mentioned above fly whenever they want, go wherever they want, and can fly any aircraft the Air Force owns, from a B-52 to an F-14 (remember, all military planes are USAF...) and often engage in pointless "hot dogging".

-The USAF still flies the same planes they had in WWII and Korea as well as the current stuff.

-Every USAF aircraft is some sort of fighter or bomber.

-Combat aircraft can be classified as "weapons of mass destruction".

People see stuff sometimes and make guesses and assumptions based on their imaginings of "how things probably are", and really have no idea of the real facts. So their reality has to fit around the gaps in their knowledge.

My mother, for example, saw (probably) an A-10 fly low over her house one afternoon. She wanted to tell me what it was, but didn't know how to describe it, so she borrowed one of my books and flipped through it until she found a photo that approximated what she witnessed. To this day, she insists that she saw a U-2 fly low (under 500ft!) and fast over the house, only it wasn't black, it was grey and the wings were shorter...

Edited by BAM'n'IVM
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Aaaaaand every loud noise from a plane is a sonic boom ...

Ohhhhh, and every pointy thing on a plane is a gun and every large round item under a wing is a bomb ....

James, the first set of pics are not showing up for me now either, saw them last night though ....

Gregg

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Aaaaaand every loud noise from a plane is a sonic boom ...

Ohhhhh, and every pointy thing on a plane is a gun and every large round item under a wing is a bomb ....

James, the first set of pics are not showing up for me now either, saw them last night though ....

Gregg

Oh, yeah, forgot about that. The first airshow I went to, there was a trainer on display (I don't remember what it was - this was about 25 years ago, so my memory's hazy...) and a little kid was asking his dad what the refuelling probe on the nose was. His dad, in a very "informative" voice, told his little boy that it was a missile. :thumbsup:

Yeah, drop tanks, travel pods and jamming pods are regularly believed to be bombs, and pitot tubes are often identified as gun barrels.

...And let's not even discuss how the press mangles things...

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My mother, for example, saw (probably) an A-10 fly low over her house one afternoon. She wanted to tell me what it was, but didn't know how to describe it, so she borrowed one of my books and flipped through it until she found a photo that approximated what she witnessed. To this day, she insists that she saw a U-2 fly low (under 500ft!) and fast over the house, only it wasn't black, it was grey and the wings were shorter...

Try this one out... My mom told me a few weeks ago she saw a strange military aircraft land at the local airport. It was big, had a bubble canopy, a weird silver-like paint job, and the front end of it was bird-like in it's appearance, that "it's nose looked like a eagle's (the bird, not the plane) beak."

Now, based on that description, what do you think she saw? Mind you, we're in SE Tennessee.

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I don't know why you all are getting :D's. I'll post the pics as links instead.

Shuttle 747

NASA BUFF

NASA Hornet

NASA Hornet 2

NASA Hornet 3

Hope this works :monkeydance:...let me know!

Say, how was the Raptor's performance at Edwards this year? Did Dozer do the "Dozer Profile"?

The Raptor was awesome...probably the highlight of the show for me, and, yes, he did do the "Dozer Profile". So cool... :lol:.

Edited by TomcatFanatic123
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Try this one out... My mom told me a few weeks ago she saw a strange military aircraft land at the local airport. It was big, had a bubble canopy, a weird silver-like paint job, and the front end of it was bird-like in it's appearance, that "it's nose looked like a eagle's (the bird, not the plane) beak."

Now, based on that description, what do you think she saw? Mind you, we're in SE Tennessee.

A civilian-owned T-33 with a shiny NMF finish?

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A civilian-owned T-33 with a shiny NMF finish?

Nope. I gave her a copy of World Air Power Journal and she pointed to two different planes that it could have been. One was an F-16, the other was a Mirage III.

I drove out to the airport to see for myself and what was parked on the transient ramp?

t45.jpg

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Try this one out... My mom told me a few weeks ago she saw a strange military aircraft land at the local airport. It was big, had a bubble canopy, a weird silver-like paint job, and the front end of it was bird-like in it's appearance, that "it's nose looked like a eagle's (the bird, not the plane) beak."

Now, based on that description, what do you think she saw? Mind you, we're in SE Tennessee.

Global Hawk? Only thing I can think of right off the bat with long straight wings and not black.

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OK, here's a few more pics from the show. If you can't see them, well, you're screwed...just kidding. Seriously, let me know if you're getting :thumbsup: and I'll post them as links instead.

Old and new...

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One of my favorites...into the sun.

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This is inside the shuttle's 747. Wow, talk about cavernous...

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Here's the B-2. I was hoping these guys would move, but I just said "to hell with it" and snapped the picture.

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Here's the Predator. Note the Hellfire hanging off the wing there.

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And finally (for now) the JSF. I wanted to find out if this was an actual flying model or just a mock-up, but I had to split because there was a fly-over about to happen.

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Enjoy!

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