Once the magic smoke comes out, it won't work any more.
John Kasunich
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Mon, 03 Sep 2007
Saturday I took my camera to the Air Show. I watched from the deck of the William G. Mather, a former iron ore hauler, now a museum ship. The air show flies out of Burke Lakefront Airport, and most of the demonstrations are centered on a point about half way down the main runway. The Mather is docked about 4000 feet away from that point, but its stern is only about 200 feet off the runway center-line and planes on final approach get very close. (Aerial photo of the Mather and the airport)
I was running a little late, and arrived just as the Navy F18 was finishing its exhibition flight. I saw the end of the Navy "Heritage Flight", as the F18 flew in formation with a World War II Corsair fighter. The only photo I was able to get was as the F18 came in to land.
(click on photos to enlarge - images range from 150K to 400K each)
The next thing in the air was a C-130 Hercules transport. It took off, did a couple orbits of the field, and landed. Although we couldn't hear the PA announcer at the show, I think they were demonstrating its ability to land on short fields. The landing run was VERY short. (According to Wikipedia, in 1963 a C-130 successfully landed and took off from the carrier USS Forrestal, stopping after only 267 feet.)
The C-130 was followed by three Life-Flight helicopters from a local Hospital, and by a TS-11 "Iskra", a jet trainer used by the Polish Air Force. (No Polish jokes please!)
The next several performers were aerobatic pilots flying propeller driven planes. Because of their relatively low speed and tight turns, they stay close to the center of the show. From 4000 feet away even a 300mm lens can't bring them close. Most of the following pics have been heavily cropped and don't have much detail.
The aerobatics guys seem to really like to fly straight up until they run out of airspeed, stall, and seemingly fall out of the sky.
I never saw a software company as an airshow sponsor before, but I guess it was inevitable. It's uncommon to see two very different planes flying in formation.
After the slow planes finished, it was time for the F-15 demonstration flight. Lots of high-g turns, lots of afterburners, and a vertical climb from near the deck to virtually out of sight in about 30 seconds. What goes up must come down, so a vertical dive followed.
As the F-15 was winding up its performance, it was joined by a Korean War era F86 Sabrejet, for the Air Force "Heritage Flight".
I got a couple solo shots of the F-86 as it was coming in to land, and looking at them later I was surprised to see that the pilot had opened the canopy in flight. I guess he decided it was sunroof weather.
Another round of aerobatics followed, and then an Army helicopter team flying four Apaches. They stayed very close to the flight line, and I didn't get any decent pictures. Also no photos of the Golden Knights skydivers - tiny spots in the sky aren't very photogenic.
The last act of the day was the Thunderbirds.
Planes 1 through 4 spend almost the entire performance in the tight diamond formation. They generally do big sweeping maneuvers like loops, barrel rolls and smooth banked turns, at a variety of speeds, including the "dirty diamond" pass. made at very low speed with landing gear deployed. In the second photo below, you can see that the pilots of the #2 and #3 planes have their eyes locked on #1. During most of the show they don't even look at their surroundings. (The numbers are visible on the sides of the air intakes.)
While #1 through #4 are flying in tight formation, #5 and #6 do solo and pair maneuvers. They do the more aggressive moves that can't be done in formation, such as snap rolls, high-g turns, and afterburner vertical climbs. The first photo below shows a high-g turn. The trails at the wingtips and the clouds at the leading edge of the wing roots are caused by water vapor condensing due to a sudden drop in pressure. The strong vortexes at the leading edge strakes are a significant source of lift at high angles of attack.
In the last photo above, note that the 5 on the intake is upside down. That's so you can read it during the "mirror-image" passes, as seen below.
Eventually the #5 and #6 pilots do join up with the diamond. The photo below was assembled from five shots taken over an interval of ten seconds, showing the solos joining the diamond to make the six-plane delta formation. The full size version of the image has time-stamps; at the beginning of the sequence the solos are closing at about fifty feet per second. During the entire join-up, the formation is in a steeply banked turn out over the lake.
The next three photos show the delta formation beginning a big loop, flying inverted just past the top of the loop, and level again after finishing it.
(posted: 03 Sep 2007 21:22) (permalink)