Tag Archives: display

Armee de l’Air A400M

The A400M Atlas is now in service with a number of air forces. My encounters with them, though, have only involved the development airframes displayed by Airbus. That changed in Sacramento when The Patrouille de France arrived as part of their North American tour. They brought an A400M as he support plane. I was rather disappointed that it arrived late in the evening, after I had gone home and disappeared early the following morning to recover some delayed jets.

It was back for the day of the display though. It started up at a remote location but then proceeded to give a short flying display. It then taxied back to the crowd line where it shut down and was opened up for visitors. The people were lined up to get inside it for ages. The plane still looked pretty clean so I guess it had not been in service too long. I was glad to get a close up look around the outside as well as to see the crowds inside and the flying display itself. Not a dramatic performance like the test crews have put on but still good to see.

F-16 on a Pole

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Our overnight stop at Medford in Oregon was close to the airport. I took a stroll towards the terminal which had an F-16 mounted on a pole outside. This was an F-16A model. I assume it had been there for quite a while. There was a time a while back when units would detail bits of their jets with chrome. A-10 guns would be chromed and F-16s would have the port around their guns chromed up too. This jet had obviously had the treatment. The odd thing was that, over the years the paint had become heavily faded. However, the gun port looked exactly like new. These pictures won’t really emphasize this since they were taken wide to get the whole jet in but you might just be able to make out the gun port.

Canadian Hornet Cockpit Displays

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Previously I may have mentioned my recent efforts to go through images I took a long time ago. The evening show at Chino had a number of performers and one of them was the Canadian Hornet demo. When I go through my images, part of my process is to render all of them at 100% and then view the full size image on one screen and the zoomed in version on the other. This allows me to see whether the shot is sharp and also whether there is anything glaringly wrong with it like bits cut off or someone’s head in the way.

I was going through the shots of the Hornet which flew after the sun had gone below the horizon, I noticed that, as it flew over the top of a loop, I had a view into the cockpit. Normally, this would be dark as the brightness of the day overpowered the shade of the cockpit. However, since it was pretty dark, the glow of the multifunction displays on the panel is clearly visible. We aren’t going to be able to see the details of the displays themselves but they are very conspicuous which is not the norm.

United 757 Display

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You don’t often get to see an airliner maneuvering at low level. They tend to be up and away or approaching to land in a stable configuration. Each year at Fleet Week, united bring one of their airliners as part of the air show and it gets to be thrown around the bay, if not with abandon, at least with more vigor than is the norm for an airliner. In the past, the 747 has been the display aircraft of choice. Since I have been here, they have been using the 757.

The bay provides a nice backdrop for any display but one that uses a big airplane is well suited to the area since they have to maintain a reasonable distance from the shore at all times unless they are climbing out over the crowd. A combination of clean passes and gear and flaps deployed passes made for some good variety and some aggressive climb outs at high power and low weight were nice. Watching the plane turn over the Marin side of the bay was also pretty cool.

This may not be the most dynamic of air show performances but it has a novelty factor that makes it worth seeing and it certainly brought some variety to the show on the day. I’m just glad I got to see it this year. Last year they displayed on the day I was there but the low cloud base meant that we mainly heard them above the clouds but saw very little.

Wall of Fire Take Two

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While I was walking around the display line of the Airshow of the Cascades during the evening show, the Erickson collection’s P-38 was carrying out its display. I was in amongst a lot of people when the announcer told everyone to be ready for a special pass. My location was not great but I got ready as the P-38 ran in for a topside pass expecting the detonation of some pyrotechnics behind it. Nothing happened. The P-38 flew by and no explosions.

A short while later, the announcer had a second crack at getting us ready for the pass. Obviously the first pass had not worked as planned. This time the P-38 was coming in from the opposite direction. I also had a few moments to try and reposition myself to get a better view. This shot was the result. Some of my friends were further up the display line and got a different angle on the shot which was cool. Even so, I am pretty happy with this.

Helmet Mounted Sights

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A feature becoming more and more common in fighters these days is a helmet mounted sight/display. These allow the pilot to look at the target he is interested in and designate it or to have his attention cued to something courtesy of the helmet displays. The more complex helmets now coming in to service on the F-35 have access to distributed viewing systems around the aircraft so the pilot can actually look through the aircraft – just as well given how crappy the visibility is from the F-35 cockpit!

These helmets need to know exactly where they are all the time so they can align accurately with the other sensors on the aircraft. They also have to have the image generator for the pilot displays built in. Consequently, they appear a bit bulky compared to traditional helmets.

They still have to be kept light in weight since the pilot does not want a lot of weight on his or her head when pulling g or, even worse, ejecting. Therefore, the bulk is a space issue but less of a weight issue. Spotting the helmets is not too tricky. The accompanying shots give you a number of different pilot shots and you can see what they are all wearing. Some two seat jets only have the helmet mounted display for one occupant. Compare the normal helmets with the display helmets. The Typhoon’s helmet is very conspicuous with a load of bumps covering the positional sensors.

: The pilot of a Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 gets his plane airborne from Nellis AFB NV.

: A reconnaisance equipped Boeing F/A-18D of the US Marine Corps gets airborne from Nellis AFB NV.

Hornet After Dark

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The Canadian Hornet that was at Chino was the last display to fly during the sunset show. (We had a long discussion about whether it is a CF-18 or a CF-188 during the down time but that can be saved for another day.) The aircraft taxied out as the sun was just getting close to setting. We were thinking this would be the perfect combination. Taking off before sunset would allow us to get some shots of it in the low sun when it would look at its best and the, as the sun finally set, we would get the glow of the burners against the darkening sky.

Sadly, they decided to hold their departure until after the sun had already set. I think this was a missed opportunity. It did mean, though, that things were really dark by the end of the display. This was a time that really testing the capabilities of the camera. I was shooting at very high ISO settings in ranges that I would normally avoid. However, getting the shot sharp is better than having a low noise shot that is blurred.

The aircraft pulled off the runway pretty aggressively and the burners really showed up nicely against the runway surface. The display itself was fine but the camouflage of the commemorative scheme was a bit tricky in the conditions. The finale of the display was the landing with the hook lowered. The Hornet touched down and the arrestor hook dragged along the runway surface leaving a bright shower of sparks behind it. The effect was pretty dramatic! I talked to one of the maintenance technicians later about it and asked how many of those they could do. One landing is enough to kill the head of the hook. He did say that they are easy to replace and that he had brought five of them on the trip. A neat way to wrap up the show.

F-22 Over Chino

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The USAF F-22 Raptor is a popular air show performer but, with a relatively small fleet, they only have one display team and they have a limited number of engagements around the US each year. Chino was one of the shows that had them booked so it was probably the only time I was going to see the Raptor display this year as opposed to flying operationally. It flew twice while I was there. The first flight was a sunset display and the second was to wrap up the main display on the Saturday including the Heritage Flight performance.

I got a lot of chances to get good shots of the plane. The sunset display had great light but both displays included some tight elements that brought the plane well into view. However, I am now going to tread on dangerous ground and say that I don’t think the display is that good. The flight control system design of the Raptor allows it to undertake some unusual maneuvers which the display makes a lot of. While they are certainly not the norm, I don’t think they should focus on them so much. Certainly show off some of the special features of the jet. Just don’t pretend they are tactically useful and spend more time showing people what they like about jet displays. Being low and slow is not a great place to be.

A crowd of people might be mildly amused by a jet coming down flat while gently rotating about its axis. However, turn up the noise and blast into some fast passes, tight turns and some more aggressive vertical maneuvers and your get a lot of crowd reaction. I once watched a Typhoon display being flown by a test pilot. It carried out a lot of high alpha rolls around the velocity vector. A few pilots around me appreciated the technical skill but everyone thought the display was boring.

Maybe, as the aircraft has been on the display circuit longer, they will evolve into a better combination. A little of the unusual stuff but more dynamic performances that show off the bits the public like.

Curtiss P-36

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Vintage aircraft are not my specialty. I know my P-51 from my P-47 but I am not too knowledgeable of the different types of the more famous aircraft and I am certainly on shaky ground when it comes to the less numerous types. Consequently, when I was preparing to go to Chino for the Planes of Fame airshow, the GAR team told me to get shots of the Curtiss P-36 Hawk that was going to be on display for the first time. I agreed while secretly wondering what a P-36 was. Fortunately, the internet is a wonderful source of information and I was able to get an idea of what it was I was looking for before it got there!

This P-36 has been restored at Chino and will shortly be heading to the UK to join a collection there. Not only was it on display in the static area but it also participated in the flying program. Therefore, I got many opportunities to get some shots of it for the GAR piece. It is an interesting looking aircraft, even if it didn’t end up being a huge seller. It looked great coming from restoration and was flown together with the AT-12 (which is apparently a two seat P-35 – so I am told). On a sunny spring day in California they looked very nice together. I hope everyone in the UK enjoys them when they arrive.

Fat Albert tearing the turf

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Lots of my retro posts come about because I was doing something else that led me to a shot I had forgotten about. Having a system like Lightroom is a great way of throwing up some interesting shots that appear when you run a keyword search. In this case, I was looking at an old air show which had featured the Blue Angels. As is usual for their shows, the first part of the demonstration was the USMC C-130 display, Fat Albert.

At the end of the display, they land the C-130 and throw the props into reverse aiming to stop as quickly as possible. (A little bit of bouncing is also apparent in the top shot!) On this occasion, I guess the ground alongside the runway was not too stable. The wash thrown forward by the props ripped the turf up ahead of the plane and threw it into the air. It made for a pretty dramatic view. Even through the viewfinder, I could see what was going on. The shots afterwards just confirmed how much material they threw around that day!