Tag Archives: fighter

Edwards AFB 2010

My first trip to Edwards AFB was in 1990 as I wrote about in this blog post. My next trip was quite a bit later. This was a visit arranged by my friend Richard ahead of an ISAP symposium. It also allowed a lot more opportunity to see the aircraft. The visit was broken in to two main elements. The first was a walk along the flightline and the second was heading to the other side of the runway to shoot arrivals and departures.

The diversity of types on the flightline has dwindled since 1990. Now there are an awful lot of F-16s and not so many other types. However, test jets look cool in their non-operational colors. Shooting under the sun shades is good for protection from the elements but it does make for some wide ranges of lighting conditions and some odd color casts.

Once on the other side of the runway, we had some great options for shooting the jets in action. Heat haze is always a problem, particularly somewhere as warm as Edwards can be, but you can still get some interesting aircraft. We were hoping to see some F-35s but were disappointed this time. However, we did get one of the F-35 test support F-16s from Denmark which was nice to see. We also had aircraft from the Test Pilot School out doing their thing.

A couple of more unusual aircraft showed up while we were there. One off the NASA Shuttle Carrier Aircraft was on a training sortie. With the program now curtailed, this was the last chance I had to see one of these 747s in the air although not with a shuttle mounted on it! NASA was also using one of their Global Hawks UAVs and it landed while we were there. An old Gulfstream also landed. It had unusual markings to simulate a missile for tracking systems. This used to be undertaken by a C-135 aircraft but it has been retired and replaced by the Gulfstream which, while not a new jet, is still probably a lot cheaper to operate.

We also got to see some of the museum aircraft including the twin seat A-10 I had shot in 1990! The trip was over far too soon but we had a great time and saw some cool stuff. Thanks to Richard for organizing. Now I need to get myself back there to see what the latest fleet is up to.

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.

Anyone See Any Mustangs?

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Half Moon Bay might not have been an air show in the strict sense but it did bring in a nice mix of warbirds. A good selection of P-51 Mustangs launched together to carry out some flypasts. We ended up being well placed for them taxiing out. Having a group of Mustangs rumbling past you is pretty cool. Having them lined up on the taxiway for their power checks before taking off was even better. What a great looking group of aircraft.

Canadian Battle of Britain Hornet

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1940 was a tumultuous year in the UK. While the war had started in 1939, 1940 was the year in which it came home to the British. The German air campaign was supposed to be softening up the defenses ahead of an invasion. Things turned out differently as a consequence of some valiant defense, some great pilots and aircraft and some strategic blunders by the Germans. As a result, Operation Sealion was cancelled and the UK remained out of German control although still subject to constant bombardment.

Seventy five years later, there are many celebrations planned to commemorate the Battle of Britain. Many air forces participated as part of the Royal Air Force with squadrons being operated by crews from individual countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Canada. Canada is marking the anniversary in many ways but one is decorating a CF-188 Hornet in a special scheme.

The paint finish is replicating a Hawker Hurricane from 1940. The colors are reproduced and there are even red marking on the wing leading edge to represent the locations of the gun ports on the Hurricane. It also carried commemorative markings to recognize those that took part in the battle. I was lucky to see the jet at Chino. It flew after sunset on the Friday and then as part of the main display on the Saturday. The sunset show concluded with it dragging the hook along the runway in a shower of sparks!

This jet will appear at a number of venues throughout the year. If you can see it, do try and make the effort. The RAF has a Typhoon marked up similarly and I am sad that I won’t see that. This is a great alternative for me.

NAS North Island

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The north end of Coronado Island is the home of the US Navy’s NAS North Island. Home to a lot of helicopters as well as an overhaul facility for F/A-18 Hornets, it also seems to have a lot of transient traffic. We were on vacation so I was not going hunting for airplanes. I even managed to not have the camera to hand as we walked along the water when an MH-60 came heading towards us. I have had some crummy luck when trying to shoot at North Island in the past anyway.

However, when we were up at Cabrillo National Monument, we had a great elevated view of Coronado with the station laid out in the foreground – relatively speaking. Shooting long range is not going to get great shots but the haze was relatively controlled and the light at that time of day was starting to be on your side. I got a few shots of the base as a whole which give you an idea of how it is laid out.

Edwards AFB 1990

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My first visit to the United States was in 1990. I had just graduated from university and was joining my Dad on a trip he was making at the time. I was to meet up with him in Los Angeles and travel around California before ending up in San Francisco for a week. Since I had a date to meet him but no previous constraints, I made the flight out a couple of days early so I could go and explore. Where did I want to go? How could I not come this far and not visit Edwards AFB.

A famous flight test center, seen of many records, home of some unusual aircraft, Edwards was a place I really wanted to see. In those days, there were two tours available. The Air Force had a tour in the morning and NASA had a tour in the afternoon. Make an early start and you could cover both with ease.

The Air Force tour included a bus ride along the side of the flightline. You didn’t get to step outside near the active jets but they did take us out onto the lakebed and to see a few of the stored aircraft that would be part of the museum in years to come. The flightline was full of F-16s and F-4s with F-111s and other jets scattered amongst them. So much that is now gone was on show. This was also just after the YF-23 had been rolled out. We were told we couldn’t take any pictures of it if we happened to see it but sadly it was tucked away while we were there. It would be a long time before I finally saw one for real.

After lunch it was over to the NASA part of the base. This was paradise for someone like me. So many test aircraft either in maintenance or storage. There was an SR-71 in one hangar, plenty of F/A-18 Hornets (including the HARV demonstrator and another airframe that appeared to have been used for mocking up the engine paddles), F-104s, an F-15, the HiMAT and, out in the storage lot, the supercritical F-8 and the Sikorsky RSRA all stuck in a fenced off area. I missed some other things I would liked to have seen including the X-29, X-31 and the STOL/MTD F-15 but it was still an impressive lineup.

The end of the 80s was a great time with so many programs funded. It might not have been as diverse as the 50s and 60s but it was still great to go there when so much was to be seen. These days, visits require a lot more planning and the number of types in use has dwindled. However, it is still worth a trip and another post shall cover that.

Planes of Fame Review

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After a period of relative inactivity, I have been a bit busier recently on getting material together for GAR. After a piece on the tenth anniversary of the first flight of the A380 and a review of Dream Machines at Half Moon Bay, I had my first real show of the year. I took a trip down to Chino for the Planes of Fame show. This was the first time I had been to this show, despite the fact it is one of the highlights of the airshow calendar.

The piece went live on GAR recently and can be found at this link. http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2015/05/12/airshow-review…e-airshow-2015/. Meanwhile, here are a few shots that I liked from the event. I will say how much I enjoyed the access you had at this place and it was a very pleasant change not to be herded out as soon as the flying stopped. It was also a lot of fun to hang with Mark, Kev and Jim. Their company made a good weekend great and also meant I didn’t miss the sunset show! Cheers guys.

Cutlass

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When I was a kid, I saw a picture in an aircraft modeling magazine of the Vought Cutlass. The planes caught my imagination at the time but they were already long gone from service so the chances of seeing one in the UK were not good. However, I did come across one much later when visiting the Museum of Flight’s restoration facility in Everett WA. My first visit to the facility was when it was just a location where work was undertaken and you could drop in. More recently, it has been turned into a visitor location with a shop and entry fee.

Nothing has changed with the Cutlass though. It is apparently a bit of a basket case for restoration purposes with a lot of problems in the structure. Consequently, I don’t know what will happen with it or whether it will remain a work in progress indefinitely. However, it is cool to see a Cutlass at all. When thinking about this, I decided to see whether I had ever come across a Cutlass at any museum. However, I couldn’t find an example anywhere in my files so I guess this is the only one I have seen.

Thunderbirds and the Missing Pylon

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A discussion on Facebook between a few people I know recently turned to a discussion about the USAF display team, the Thunderbirds. While I can’t now remember how ended up the way they did, at some point, there was discussion about the time the Thunderbirds touched in mid-air with one aircraft losing part of the wing tip missile rail. This occurred at the Chicago Air and Water Show and I was there that day.

At the time, not many people knew anything had happened. Indeed, for a while they flew on before pulling out of the display routine and orbiting overhead and then eventually returning to Gary to land. No-one on the ground had any idea what was going on. I did not capture the contact between the jets. However, when I looked through my shots afterwards, I realized I had a shot of the four ship formation with one aircraft missing the rail and another showing some signs of damage on the tailplane where the rail had impacted. Below is one shot to prove they started out intact!

Night Launches

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When the daylight flying activities are over, there is still the night and Red Flag has a night mission that is flown on most days. Therefore, after dinner, you can head up to a spot north of the speedway where there is a great view over the base with Las Vegas in the background. It is dark up there so there are not many good chances for shooting the jets but you can sometimes get some shots of stuff flying over if it lights itself up.

However, you can get some shots of the base with the launching jets showing up either from their afterburners or from the heat distortion they leave behind.

The other thing is to run a time lapse and see the jets moving around on the base and then streaking off into the sky. I ran a couple of them over two nights. Below is the result of one of them. Two things to note. First, the launch was very spread out. The main jet launch was actually quite late and I was tired and cold so cut short the sequence while they were still heading out. The second is that a weird optical effect shows up in the video. It is a movement of the image a bit like heat haze. However, since the shots are taken over such a long period of time, you would think that would not be an issue. Something is going on though so if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to comment with your thoughts.