Friday, October 11, 2019

While Sarge's away....The kids will play!

Back at the dawn of time, when dinosaurs roamed and Sarge started this blog, he used to have a feature called the Friday Flyby.

Then someone got his knickers in a twist and reported him to the copyright police, so he stopped.

But, he's away from the helm stick, and I got a little bored, so we're going to do a Friday flyby redux.

This, of course, was generated by his "Out of here" post yesterday.

We'll call this first one Danse Macabre.  (You may want to click the link and get the music started before starting this video.  I thought it worked.)




Because this is indeed a Dance of Death. The F-22's ability to point its nose at anything is phenomenal. There is no way I'd want to be in that fight with him, in anything but another F-22. However, I would very much like to be outside that fight looking in and loaded with all aspect heaters (AKA Aim-9M or X). He's giving off a lot of heat and doesn't have enough energy to generate any angles to mask that heat. Whomever he's fighting is going to lose, however, the Raptor's chances of leaving that fight are minimal.

Still, it is cool to watch an airplane do a ballet.

For our second taste of Friday Flyby, we'll visit Wales to watch (and critique) a four ship of guys flying my personal favorite.



No, that preview shot is not in the actual video.  The four ship is training in some low fly airspace in Wales called the Mach Loop.  No, it is not cleared for supersonic flight (the speed of sound is called Mach 1).  This nickname is for one of the towns near the airspace named Machynlleth.  No earthly idea how that's pronounced.

These are Air to Air Eagles, F-15Cs.  One of the no-no's about flying low is to highlight your jet with sky as background.  The sky is cool, your engines are not.  Heat seeker's love that contrast.  Keeping the jet with ground as a background complicates the missiles guidance problem.

The video shows the different experience levels of the four pilots.  Theoretically, the lead is the most experienced, 3 is next, then 2 and finally 4.  You can see the difference in how they fly and keep the airplane from being highlighted.  1 does a great job, 3 is pretty good at it also.  2 is getting there, and 4 needs a wee bit more practice.

That having been said...  I wish I were there doing that.

To round out this Friday Flyby quickie, I thought I'd share some Really Low, Really Fast.



There's some classic flyby's in that one.  Loved the rain of umbrellas and such after the first pass, and got a chuckle out of the brave guy standing out there with his back to the Harrier. And #3 in the last pass...Freakin' nuts!

I can neither confirm nor deny that I have done anything like this.

But it is fun. 

41 comments:

  1. My combat vet said the flybys were neat, but he was waiting for the "burrrrrrrrrrrrrrp!" or the "boom!!!!"

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    1. The T-Birds were performing at Holloman while I was there. One of the guys in my squadron had tried out with them and so knew the ins and outs of the show. We're standing together watching and it's time for the dirty fly-by. My friend is watching the solo who will endeavor to pass the formation as it slow flies by center show. As he sees the solo's smoke disappear (the smoke is just incompletely burned fuel) he says "Uh oh, he's late." In order to make up time, he had lit the burner which fully consumed the smoke. Of course, it also makes him go faster. However, he forgot that the higher up one is the lower the speed of sound is. Yep, he caught the formation center show. The sonic boom made it even better.

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  2. Whooeee! Watching these is a good way to wake up. Elwyn R did a pretty good job keeping those planes centered in the camera. But that last vid....Seeing a larger plane like the Buff, that big and that low..... cowabunga! And a couple of those Harrier passes..... talk about cutting grass! Appreciative of the info you impart from your experience also. Nice, very nice posting juvat

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  3. Great film.

    My wife and I were attending an airshow at Willow Grove and an F-14 made a flyby. I saw the wings move into the high speed positon and I told my wife to make sure her earplugs were pushed in.
    The F-14 flashed by us and well, yes, I did feel the earth move.
    It was awesome.

    Thanks for waking up that memory!
    As Nylon12 said, very, very nice post.

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    1. Change "positon" to "position." Sigh.

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    2. I love airshow noise!

      I remember the B-1 demo at the Dayton airshow in, like, the early 1990s. He made a couple passes where the plane came in, turned away from the crowd at show center, and unassed the area with all 4 giant burners pointed directly at the crowd. Holy crap.

      Also the new F-35 “tactical demo” is pretty great, because the whole thing almost seems like it’s done at full burner, and that’s a big engine.

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    3. John,
      Never seen an F-14 in a flyby. In gun camera film however :-)

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    4. Also, took me three reads to find the typo.

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    5. A bear, a B-1 flyover would be interesting. As would the F-35. I wonder if it can point the nose as well as the F-22. May have to check around a bit.

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    6. I had another F-14 flyby experience, but in the words of Sgt. Schultz, I saw nothing.
      The Rush was somewhere at sea, and the lunch chowline was on the port side weather deck as we were someplace warm.
      I'm standing in the chowline BSing with somebody and then there was an earth shattering kaboom.
      Unbeknownst to those squids in the chowline, a pair of supersonic F-14s had approached from dead astern and then climbed over the ship.
      As as general rule, loud and unexpected kabooms on a surface combantant are usually a bad thing, and measuring the total amount of adrenaline released in that second may require scientific notation.
      By the time we took a breath, the birds were long gone.
      I wasn't the only one that almost needed clean skivvies.
      And our shouts of wonder might have been mistaken for the high pitched shrieking of a frightened little girl.
      I wish I could have seen it, and I doubly wish there was film of our reaction.

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    7. Assuming they were "only" at Mach 1, that's 767mph (660K) or just over .2 miles per second at sea level (your ship WAS at sea level right?). So, with a reaction time of say 5 seconds they're over a mile away and even as large as an F-14 is, tail on at a mile, they're hard to see.

      Oh, and they probably weren't at "only" Mach 1. I bet they checked to see exactly how fast the airplane could go in max power.

      I know I would have.

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    8. At the end of a Bright Star circa 1983-ish the boat did a day-long VIP cruise for a bunch of heavies from the exercise partner forces. Whole load of 19-star generals and admirals complete with dense mustaches above the lip and over the eyes, each sporting many kilograms of shiny uniform bling. About 400 of them were lined up along the foul line in VIP chairs while the airwing put on a show. The funniest part was the supersonic pass of a section of Turkeys who overflew the boat from the starboard side (from "behind") just after a four-ship of SLUF's obliterated a smoke float with Mk 82's. IIRC, not a single VIP failed to go over backward in their VIP chairs. Needed to drag Tilly out to get a couple of them back on their feet. The funny thing was that the Sea King that pitched out the smoke float target for the Corsairs cut the line a little fine and there was shrapnel pinging off the side of the ship as the earth-shattering kaboom arrived.

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    9. Must have been difficult to keep a straight face, a smart move, but difficult.

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    10. I love A-7s. Beautiful planes, used to see them at Patrick AFB, NatGuardsmen flying over to Avon Park to drop. Loved watching them play over the base.

      The 'Turkey' reference lost me, until I remember that until the great re-engining, the Tomcat was a bit of a dud.

      Heh. The NatGuard SLUFs used to beat the snot out of the 1st Gen A-10 pilots at bombing competitions. I think the AF A-10 pilots finally won by default once the Corsairs were decommissioned.

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    11. The A-7 used to beat the snot out of F-16s also. 1st Gen A-10 didn't have a lot of automation, just one honkin' big gun. So dropping bombs was just like WWII all over. That changed for both the A-10 and F-16s as they matured. Fortunately, the A-10 still HAS that gun.

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    12. My only experience with the A-7 was attacking one with an orbital sander, to get it prepped for paint. Holy cow, SO MUCH DUST. I’m sure it was toxic, too.

      This one, at the MAPS museum in Canton, OH:

      https://www.cityvisitor.com/library/Attractions/mapsmuseumA7_CorsairII.jpg

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    13. Well, the results were worth it. Looks pretty nice. Just spent the morning cleaning up the shop after the sanding job from hell. Dust collector was full, air filter was full, crappy dusk mask even crappier than usual. John's recommended dust mask was a godsend. (Thanks, John.) So, I've got some idea what you went through.

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  4. It is indeed fun to watch the Raptor Danse. I wonder if the slats are purely aerodynamical or if Mr. Windows 22.4 million is driving them? They seemed to retract the couple of times he got a little smack on, otherwise they were out. Do they even let aerodynamic forces participate anymore? Also I kept thinking, yeah, great airshow, but what if somebody kicks you in the nuts while you're busy showing of your karate moves? Is anyone going to throw a raptor out there to BFM with PLAAF assets? From the tiny bit I've read the F-22 is going to be an intel and battle management platform, tooling around like an invisible Drut, erasing bad guy airplanes with missiles thrown into the basket by a couple of wings of leaky old Eagles. So I'm wondering what the doctrine is. Prob'ly oughta do some research rather than blather on in a blog post comment, eh?

    The White Boyz seem to be there more for fun than for training and appear to be rather aware of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition crew of photogs. That said, it may just be the way the video is cut and I have no idea what their training rules are. Besides, how often are Albinos gonna need to use terrain masking these days? If the PLAAF makes it to Wales and the F-15C's are in the weeds we're in trouble. Be a lot of floor morts I imagine. BTW, if you want to see some interesting cockpit vid of a USAF low-level in Scotland bitd (when giants roamed the earth) https://youtu.be/CN9jU4NW9K0

    The RAF have a tradition of killing themselves while beating up the air patch. You probably want to be careful mixing it up with the survivors. Those Jag guys who flew with the Omani's...

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    1. I forgot to say, Sierra Hotel Post!

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    2. Thanks, PA.

      I don't know for sure, but I'm sure that the flight controls are more like the F-16 than the Eagle. The Eagle would let the pilot override the computer. The 16 is vice versa. I think the Raptor pilot uses the stick, rudder and throttles to tell the computer what he/she wants to happen, the computer makes it so.

      Very cool video, BTW.

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    3. Most of that low level was flown at 500 to 1000'. Some of the ridge crossings were much lower though. Pretty much like I'd have flown the F-4. Felt my stomach and leg muscles contracting during some of the turns. Obviously I pull a lot of g's in my desk chair. ;-)

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  5. awesome post, juvat - and while the planes sporting compressors are mind-boggling, I still love to see and hear the old piston driven warbirds. As to a B1B flyby, there was one at Sun 'n Fun a few years ago. I wasn't there unfortunately, but a friend who was said it was LOUD!

    The Swiss AF F-18 vids of target practice in the Alps are fun, too!

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    1. Hope you're having fun. Nice array of adult recreational beverages in your liquor cabinet, I must say. Well...Were in your liquor cabinet....:-)

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  7. Regarding your comments about the F-22's dogfighting supremacy: I remember reading some remarks by a WW2 fighter pilot who had flown and assessed different types after the war. He said that, all the way to the end of the war, a really hot pilot in a light(!) Me-109 might have been the terror of the skies in a one-on-one dogfight, but that that wasn't the way the war was being won. The message comes down through history: A man alone is a liability, a two-ship team is a force. (Compare the F4F Wildcat to the A6M Zero. Joe Foss said "If it's one Wildcat to one Zero, you're outnumbered: go home.") I think you're dead-on about it. But it's a show, after all.

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    1. Coming into the F-4 as my first operational assignment, I had the good fortune to be assigned to Kunsan. That assignment is a remote, meaning no families. Most of the guys in the squadron had served at least one tour in F-4s in Vietnam. All we had to do for entertainment was talk about flying, shooting hands (and drinking adult recreational beverages, but that's not relevant right now). Additionally, there were few restrictions on flying. One should expect to be bounced on takeoff. In fact, I was on my first ride there. The attacker was the Wing Commander. Suffice it to say, while I didn't get a lot of flying time there (Thank you Jimmuh CahTuh! Not) what I did learn stood me in good stead. The key idea was that the next most dangerous place to be other than being in someone's gunsight was to have someone IN your gunsight. Even in 1 V 1 in the Eagle, my practice was to get the best shot I could within 90 degrees of turn and then exit outside of range. It was loads of fun to swoop and pull and race around, but it taught bad habits. It took a while after I became a flight commander to get my guys to realize that, but old age and treachery won out of youth and strength...eventually.

      Yeah, it's a show, got to show the Taxpayers what they're paying for, and an explosion from 20 miles away isn't that awe-inspiring.

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  8. Ah, the Raptor. We (the USA) shoulda bought a whole lot more of those birds. And the F-22 should have been named Lightning-II as it was designed as a long-range twin-engine interceptor, much like the original Lighting. Bummer.

    Good vids.

    And I still can't believe some jerk called out our benefactor for posting pics that weren't listed as copywrited. I've heard from other blogs that there's a real racket in posting pics on a pic site and not claiming copywrite privileges, then suing bloggers.

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    1. Thanks, Beans. Yeah, had to cut a lot of my programs to fund it, and then only to have Billy Jeff take more money from the budget. Remember me? I'm the guy that had to shut down the SR-71. Guess why?

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  9. (Don McCollor)...probably the greatest carrier flyby ever was the B52 below flight deck level at 50 feet (no video, just photos)...fighter jets may be loud, but those eight engines must have sounded like the Second Coming...

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    1. It always takes me by surprise when I see Buff's in flight, that while their angle of attack (angle of the wings verses direction of flight) is positive The angle of the fuselage is pointed down. But what do I know? I'm not 67 years old, much less been flying for that long.

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    2. (Don McCollor)[68 actually & civilian]...maybe the most dangerous flying outside of carrier ops - the B52 minimum interval takeoff in the 1960's...a nuclear armed B52 lifting off every 15 seconds (clip from the movie "A Gathering of Eagles" shows it)...one lifting at the end, one halfway down the runway fighting the turbulence, another starting it's takeoff roll..

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  10. Here's a vid of low flying by the RF-4s of the Nevada ANG. It's worth watching until the end.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9khQr1iOPfs

    And here's the biggest aircraft to have come through the Mach loop:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmK5roc3HwY

    He made 2 passes. The 2nd pass was definitely low.

    - Victor

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    1. Just watched the first one. Holy Crap! Hopefully it wasn't shown to the Squadron Commander until AFTER his change of command and NEVER to the Wing Commander. Both would have had cardiac problems.

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    2. Who knows, one of them may be the Squadron Commander. :)

      - Victor

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  11. Hey, Juvat - if you haven't seen it, this one will get your stomach and legs going a bit - Typhoons in the Mach loop from the cockpit

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT7qrYi8R_M

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  12. I had seen that one. Bit Chatty, isn't he? Other than that, it was fun.

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  13. We do some training with RAF Buccaneers in the late 80's at AFWTF, I believe. I honesty thought they might hit the mast of our FFG - it was fun to be a part of it.

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