- 5,049
- Panama City, FL
We had an airshow this weekend at Tyndall Air Force Base, immediately southeast of Panama City. It was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, but Saturday was cancelled by weather. We had the spring thunderstorm from Hell on Friday, followed by its little brother on Saturday morning.
Sunday dawned absolutely clear and a little cooler. Only problem with the weather airshow-wise was that the storm took all the moisture out of the air, so there was much less condensation off the aircraft during hard turns and high-speed passes.
Logistically the Tyndall show is quite difficult. They park you quite a distance from the flight line and provide shuttle buses, but they don't have anywhere near the bus capacaity for the crowd that shows up. You might have a half hour walk, but they won't let you walk, so you wait in line for the occasional bus, and it takes 70 minutes to get to the flight line.
After the show enough people walk out that they can't stop them, although the gates crossing the highway form a logjam. There's one portal a little larger than the front door of a house that thousands of people have to pass through.
Part of the problem with this is the fact that the base is split by the highway. US98 remains a public thoroughfare and the base has gates on either side of the highway, so you drive through the base without actually entering the base. The flightline is on one side, all other facilities, including parking areas, are on the other.
Its advantage over the other two bases I've been to near here (Eglin AFB near Ft. Walton, and Pensacola Naval Air Station) is that the sun is behind the crowd during the show. At Pensacola the sun comes into play to the left of the show, and at Eglin the crowd actually faces the sun. So Tyndall yields the best photography.
Pics!!! Camera is a Nikon D50, lens is the Nikkor 55-200 f4-5.6. For my previous efforts with this camera at airshows I elected to manually focus, with less than stellar results. I've been practicing shooting AF and keeping target items inside the AF sensor area, so this weekend I stayed AF. Any blur is motion blur, as I was switching from either 1/125 or 1/250 for prop-driven planes, to 1/500 or 1/1000 for jets, and sometimes forgot to switch. Only had two instances of focus hunt, both my fault, forgetting to focus-then-compose and half-pressed the shutter button with empty sky in the AF area.
Images are 600x450, clickable to get a 1024x768 image (Photobucket's largest free size.) I had a brain fart and forgot to check my camera settings. I'd been using the camera in a dark environment last week and never reset the ISO menu, so I started the day at 800, not what you want in sunlight and 1/125th of a second shutter speeds! I finally saw it saying hi at the bottom of the viewfinder and realized what I'd done. I kept my sunglasses on while shooting so the bottom area display of the viewfinder is not easy to see.
While I was waiting for the bus, a T-33 was in the air. This pic was later in the afternoon when he departed the field to head home, as I got no pics of the actual show.
As I got off the bus, still with a ways to walk to get to the flightline, a MIG 17 was flying. This shot is cropped from the center 1/3rd of the frame, which along with the ISO screwup made it a bit grainy. (I suppose in the digital world the correct term is "noisy.")
I got him taxiing in after landing, and then much later as he departed the field. He briefly lit the afterburner as he departed, which on the -17 is a Buck-Rogers style flame burning out of the tail, not the sharply-defined cone with shock waves we're used to seeing.
On entering the flight line, you find this display of the three jets currently in use at Tyndall: The F-15, the F-22, and the QF-4. Tyndall is a training base for fighter pilots. The F-15 is being phased out next year, the F-22 has been active here for 2 or 3 years and will become the only fighter being trained here, and the QF-4 is used as remote-controlled unmanned target drones for live fire training.
A shot of just the F-22:
A B-25 named Pacific Prowler. I can't imagine what it takes to keep that aluminum skin polished!
"Bombing" pass:
Taxi in after landing:
Next up was the F-15 demonstration. I don't know what the Air Force's schedule is on these, but there will be no more F-15s at Tyndall after next year. The F-15 is the most successful air superiority fighter the world has ever seen, with an air-to-air combat record of 104 victories without a single loss!
This biplane was themed as a pirate. The premise was that the pirates over the ages have been rejected by wherever it is that evil sailors go in the afterlife, because they're just too evil, so they've taken to the skies instead of the seas for vengeance. It flew two acts, one aerobatic, one with a wingwalker. The wingwalker show had plenty of aerobatics in it, too, though! Here it's doing a flat spin with the dude strapped in to a trapeze on the top of the wing.
Clearer shot of the wingwalker. For most of the show he was not strapped in, but for the aerobatic portion while up on top, he was.
Crossing swords! AArgh, matey!
Air Force Reserve jet car making its 300+ mph run (This is about the time I corrected my ISO setting):
The Sky Soldiers performed next. This is a private group of retired Army officers who run a foundation which has purchased these Cobra attack choppers, and they do some simulated rocket and gun attacks as well as some formation flying.
Diamond formation of rotor blades!
Next was a pair of P-51s, a P-51C and a P-51D. There were supposed to be three but the third was not at the show. They flew a choreographed formation display together. The sound system was cranked up to be heard over jets, so it almost covered up the wonderful sound of these Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12s. Some taxi shots, takeoff, and in flight.
The QF-4 flew a short demonstration, which was a cool comparison to the modern jets.
The F-22 was next. What an incredibly maneuverable aircraft!! It did a flat spin, turned itself around and changed directions while seeming to spin in place rather than banking, did a tail slide, and the thrust-vectored loop is something you have to see to understand: It's like the aircraft just nosed up over on its back, then kept through back to upright, without actually changing direction or climbing!
What does the vapor trail at the tail tell you about how hard this rotation to vertical was?
Weapons are all internal for stealth and low drag:
Hard turn:
Hard climb. The aircraft rotates so fast that in stopping the rotation the tail surfaces get fog!
Slow speed pass: Less than 90 knots! Direction of travel is straight towards the left edge of the picture.
High speed pass, just subsonic. With the dry air we only got a tiny bit of vapor, under the intakes.
REALLY hard turn!!
Another REALLY hard turn:
Now probably the coolest thing in the whole show. The Air Force Heritage Flight. We were told on the PA that nowhere else gets these three jets together in the heritage flight. Led by the P-51, with the F-15 on left wing, the F-22 on right, and the QF-4 in slot:
An echelon, by generation:
The Blue Angels C-130, "Fat Albert" They don't do the JATO takeoff any more, apparently the bottles are getting scarce, no longer manufactured. Instead, he does a low transition, builds airspeed, and climbs out at about 40 degrees. (Forgot to reduce shutter speed to blur the props. Damn!)
The Blue Angels themselves!!!! The first series is the takeoff by the #6 jet. Five and Six take off together after the diamond takes off. Five does a roll immediately on takeoff, leaving the gear extended. Six does a low transition, retracting the gear almost while still rolling on it, accelerating down the runway at about 10 feet, and pulling sharply into the vertical at the end of the runway. As it starts the rotation to vertical, the tail cones drop to within a foot or two of the runway. I've been trying for YEARS to get that shot. In Pensacola you can't get close enough to the fence for the crowd, and it's towards the low sun anyway. Even though I was a fraction of a second late, this would have been OK, except the &$^%%%#^$&^&&@! PA speaker got in the shot! Had there been a Saturday show as scheduled, I would have had two chances at this. It'll be two years before they come back to Tyndall, as the show alternates between the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds.
The best shot I've ever taken of the diamond:
Echelon right formation:
Sneak passes by Five and Six. Five comes from the left, Six from behind the crowd. When the humidity is up, the flat pass is surrounded by fog.
Some other shots during the show that I like:
This break is new this year:
And during the final pitch up for landing:
Sunday dawned absolutely clear and a little cooler. Only problem with the weather airshow-wise was that the storm took all the moisture out of the air, so there was much less condensation off the aircraft during hard turns and high-speed passes.
Logistically the Tyndall show is quite difficult. They park you quite a distance from the flight line and provide shuttle buses, but they don't have anywhere near the bus capacaity for the crowd that shows up. You might have a half hour walk, but they won't let you walk, so you wait in line for the occasional bus, and it takes 70 minutes to get to the flight line.
After the show enough people walk out that they can't stop them, although the gates crossing the highway form a logjam. There's one portal a little larger than the front door of a house that thousands of people have to pass through.
Part of the problem with this is the fact that the base is split by the highway. US98 remains a public thoroughfare and the base has gates on either side of the highway, so you drive through the base without actually entering the base. The flightline is on one side, all other facilities, including parking areas, are on the other.
Its advantage over the other two bases I've been to near here (Eglin AFB near Ft. Walton, and Pensacola Naval Air Station) is that the sun is behind the crowd during the show. At Pensacola the sun comes into play to the left of the show, and at Eglin the crowd actually faces the sun. So Tyndall yields the best photography.
Pics!!! Camera is a Nikon D50, lens is the Nikkor 55-200 f4-5.6. For my previous efforts with this camera at airshows I elected to manually focus, with less than stellar results. I've been practicing shooting AF and keeping target items inside the AF sensor area, so this weekend I stayed AF. Any blur is motion blur, as I was switching from either 1/125 or 1/250 for prop-driven planes, to 1/500 or 1/1000 for jets, and sometimes forgot to switch. Only had two instances of focus hunt, both my fault, forgetting to focus-then-compose and half-pressed the shutter button with empty sky in the AF area.
Images are 600x450, clickable to get a 1024x768 image (Photobucket's largest free size.) I had a brain fart and forgot to check my camera settings. I'd been using the camera in a dark environment last week and never reset the ISO menu, so I started the day at 800, not what you want in sunlight and 1/125th of a second shutter speeds! I finally saw it saying hi at the bottom of the viewfinder and realized what I'd done. I kept my sunglasses on while shooting so the bottom area display of the viewfinder is not easy to see.
While I was waiting for the bus, a T-33 was in the air. This pic was later in the afternoon when he departed the field to head home, as I got no pics of the actual show.
As I got off the bus, still with a ways to walk to get to the flightline, a MIG 17 was flying. This shot is cropped from the center 1/3rd of the frame, which along with the ISO screwup made it a bit grainy. (I suppose in the digital world the correct term is "noisy.")
I got him taxiing in after landing, and then much later as he departed the field. He briefly lit the afterburner as he departed, which on the -17 is a Buck-Rogers style flame burning out of the tail, not the sharply-defined cone with shock waves we're used to seeing.
On entering the flight line, you find this display of the three jets currently in use at Tyndall: The F-15, the F-22, and the QF-4. Tyndall is a training base for fighter pilots. The F-15 is being phased out next year, the F-22 has been active here for 2 or 3 years and will become the only fighter being trained here, and the QF-4 is used as remote-controlled unmanned target drones for live fire training.
A shot of just the F-22:
A B-25 named Pacific Prowler. I can't imagine what it takes to keep that aluminum skin polished!
"Bombing" pass:
Taxi in after landing:
Next up was the F-15 demonstration. I don't know what the Air Force's schedule is on these, but there will be no more F-15s at Tyndall after next year. The F-15 is the most successful air superiority fighter the world has ever seen, with an air-to-air combat record of 104 victories without a single loss!
This biplane was themed as a pirate. The premise was that the pirates over the ages have been rejected by wherever it is that evil sailors go in the afterlife, because they're just too evil, so they've taken to the skies instead of the seas for vengeance. It flew two acts, one aerobatic, one with a wingwalker. The wingwalker show had plenty of aerobatics in it, too, though! Here it's doing a flat spin with the dude strapped in to a trapeze on the top of the wing.
Clearer shot of the wingwalker. For most of the show he was not strapped in, but for the aerobatic portion while up on top, he was.
Crossing swords! AArgh, matey!
Air Force Reserve jet car making its 300+ mph run (This is about the time I corrected my ISO setting):
The Sky Soldiers performed next. This is a private group of retired Army officers who run a foundation which has purchased these Cobra attack choppers, and they do some simulated rocket and gun attacks as well as some formation flying.
Diamond formation of rotor blades!
Next was a pair of P-51s, a P-51C and a P-51D. There were supposed to be three but the third was not at the show. They flew a choreographed formation display together. The sound system was cranked up to be heard over jets, so it almost covered up the wonderful sound of these Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12s. Some taxi shots, takeoff, and in flight.
The QF-4 flew a short demonstration, which was a cool comparison to the modern jets.
The F-22 was next. What an incredibly maneuverable aircraft!! It did a flat spin, turned itself around and changed directions while seeming to spin in place rather than banking, did a tail slide, and the thrust-vectored loop is something you have to see to understand: It's like the aircraft just nosed up over on its back, then kept through back to upright, without actually changing direction or climbing!
What does the vapor trail at the tail tell you about how hard this rotation to vertical was?
Weapons are all internal for stealth and low drag:
Hard turn:
Hard climb. The aircraft rotates so fast that in stopping the rotation the tail surfaces get fog!
Slow speed pass: Less than 90 knots! Direction of travel is straight towards the left edge of the picture.
High speed pass, just subsonic. With the dry air we only got a tiny bit of vapor, under the intakes.
REALLY hard turn!!
Another REALLY hard turn:
Now probably the coolest thing in the whole show. The Air Force Heritage Flight. We were told on the PA that nowhere else gets these three jets together in the heritage flight. Led by the P-51, with the F-15 on left wing, the F-22 on right, and the QF-4 in slot:
An echelon, by generation:
The Blue Angels C-130, "Fat Albert" They don't do the JATO takeoff any more, apparently the bottles are getting scarce, no longer manufactured. Instead, he does a low transition, builds airspeed, and climbs out at about 40 degrees. (Forgot to reduce shutter speed to blur the props. Damn!)
The Blue Angels themselves!!!! The first series is the takeoff by the #6 jet. Five and Six take off together after the diamond takes off. Five does a roll immediately on takeoff, leaving the gear extended. Six does a low transition, retracting the gear almost while still rolling on it, accelerating down the runway at about 10 feet, and pulling sharply into the vertical at the end of the runway. As it starts the rotation to vertical, the tail cones drop to within a foot or two of the runway. I've been trying for YEARS to get that shot. In Pensacola you can't get close enough to the fence for the crowd, and it's towards the low sun anyway. Even though I was a fraction of a second late, this would have been OK, except the &$^%%%#^$&^&&@! PA speaker got in the shot! Had there been a Saturday show as scheduled, I would have had two chances at this. It'll be two years before they come back to Tyndall, as the show alternates between the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds.
The best shot I've ever taken of the diamond:
Echelon right formation:
Sneak passes by Five and Six. Five comes from the left, Six from behind the crowd. When the humidity is up, the flat pass is surrounded by fog.
Some other shots during the show that I like:
This break is new this year:
And during the final pitch up for landing:
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