air shows are great

[tgies]

hee hee

Highlights of the air show:

• MITSUBISHI A6M DAMN ZERO IN REAL LIFE WHAT THE HELL also lmao the announcer said "jap" you can't say that. NOT EVEN FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY
• The MiG-17F is basically awesome; Randy "Complete Maniac" Ball was flying it and he did a bunch of low passes with full afterburners at upwards of 550 kn
• but the F/A-18 was faster and better in every way. they made a point of this. reds go home.
• USAF did that "heritage flight" thing they do where an A-10, a P-40, and an F-15 (three generations of aircraft) buzz around in formation for a little while.
• "And now: thrust reversers"; C-17 touches down and immediately rolls backwards very very fast
• Fagen Inc. showed up with their MX-2 ethanol-fueled stunt plane, right? And the announcer was making hell of a deal about how it is ~environmentally friendly~, right*? Well, that's exactly when it chose to belch a ton of soot all over everybody. It was the weirdest thing. I'm still picking soot flakes out of my stuff. Unsurprisingly, the pilot then "[saw] something he [didn't] like" and went back in early. I'm not sure what that was about; I bugged the Fagen guys, but they were pretty tight-lipped about it.
• Why did they play Kraftwerk's "Schaufensterpuppen" during one of the aerobatic demonstrations? I think this is a good question

---

* The ~environmentally friendly~ bit was repeated for the C-17, so I don't think that these guys have the same definition of "environmentally friendly" as everyone else

Comments

[anti-esque.livejournal.com]

A6M DAMN ZERO IN REAL LIFE WHAT THE HELL

what OH MY GOD
MY FAVORITE 8D

why wasn't I there

I like planes

[tgies.livejournal.com]

I know I was like what. There was also Tora 101, which is a replica Zero they made for the film Tora! Tora! Tora! by gluing some stuff to a T-6 Texan variant. They staged a mock dogfight with that and a P-51.

[secretcow.livejournal.com]

i laughed a lot at your post but couldn't think of anything to say in response

also shit you guys get cool big aircraft to do shit like globemasters all we get is "AAAAND HERE COME THE SNOBIRDS again"

ALSO WE BORROWED ONE OF THE RCAF'S CF-18'S OOOOOOH LOOK WE HAVE AN AIR FORCE NOW

:(