LYNX THOUGHTS

whoosh

So, about those Thunderbirds.

For one thing, the airshow was run rather oddly. It's a civvy affair, done by a company that does airshows accross the USA. Compared to the other airshows I've been to (all of the others were military organized affairs) this one seems a might shorter and less varied. But the weirdest thing was that they had a break between their second-last act and the final act, that of the Thunderbirds. A break of nearly an hour. Very odd way to run things. Doubly weird for us since we were on a roof at work, rather than at the airshow and could hear announcements...

But back to those Thunderbirds. Their planes were slick, there were 6 of them, they had smoke. Four tended to fly in formation, two were the 'solo artists' who did a few flyby and near-miss maneuvers at centre stage. Both performed their maneuvers well, but nothing was really out of the ordinary. Then, halfway though the show, it stopped. For some 5-10 minutes they circled around and when the show resumed there were only 5 -- some sort of mechanical problem? With a C-5 galaxy following them wherever they go loaded with parts and people they had a mech problem? Who knows.

The rest of the show was, again, technically well done, with a few moves that were very precicely excecuted, with a many 'nicely done' comments, but nothing sock-blowing. Until their last maneuver. Time to get the mental imagery on: four planes fly in formation to centre stage, and go vertical. There, they do an upward bomb burst, one to each cardinal direction. This, in itself, was beautiful. But then the fifth plane flys up the centre at great velocity, rolling as he goes upward (all with smoke). Beautiful. Then the four continue their movement from the bomb burst into a loop (so a loop in each direction, all the while with smoke on) converging once again at centre stage. Very nice. But that's not all! From that, they all peel off in order to re-convene stage right and form up in line once again for a pass down centre stage, where they each peel off one at a time. Nice long sequence, all tied together, all with smoke.

I will have to say that the upward bomburst is one of my favourite maneuvers, and to see it done with only four planes, each heading at 90~ angles to each other was spectacular. That the rest happened afterwords was icing. Best moment of the day for sure.

So, overall the Thunderbirds show was neat (and perhaps abbreviated if a plane did have to drop out, so maybe it couldn've been more), but mostly it made me ever more amazed at the Snowbirds. All the maneuvers I saw the TBirds do were maneuvers I have seen the Snowbirds have done, only with more planes in their formation, slighly more wing overlap, and (most impressive being) with CT-114 trainer airplanes (oy! no fly by wire or 1:1 thrust:weight ratio here), flying to their shows with only the aircraft and the mechanics&parts riding shotgun.

Next, I need to see the Blue Angels. Maybe during Fleet Week this year...

It was really good to see an airshow again. I know some people think the sound of an american V8 engine is somehow sexy; they are so wrong. The sound of two low-bypass turbofan engines with full A/B, now THAT is sexy.

Going to see Supersize Me tonight -- should be good. Looking forward to it.

Posted by kannik at May 29, 2004 05:50 PM in Daily | TrackBack