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Unannounced air show


Steve C.

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I watched an interesting event this past Monday morning (May 22).  I guess it was a secret air show that no on knew about.

Looked up and saw this.  I saw the plane just before he went out of sight to the west, after making a big turn.  It was going clockwise as you look at this pic.

It took his big loop over 30 minutes to drift away to the east, still intact.

The little splotchy clouds are remnants of earlier straight runs. The rest of the day remained very hazy after starting out as a beautiful clear morning.

This is about 12 miles south of St. Louis.

IMG_20230522_102503445.jpg

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We get one now and then, there are a couple Air Force bases within under 200 miles of me, they seem to like to do maneuvers over our area. Was doing a job on a generator one day and there were 2 jets looping around each other, was maybe 15 minutes or so I could see them. 

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I see no logic in this practice just downsides, which seems to be the only common theme in climate change racket 

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What's with all this talk about "clean air" and then they go putting chemicals into the atmosphere???

Seems to me the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. 

Mother Nature has her hands full dealing with natural disasters, like the smoke from forest fires up north, right now. 

Let's quit piling on. 

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Eons ago... maybe 20yrs or so…I was at my folks’ in NE Nebraksa and witnessed one of the most impressive ad-hoc air shows I’d ever seen. While we were out pheasant hunting, we watched a big, fat, slow strato-tanker performing evasive maneuvers (dips, dives, chaff, flares, the whole bag of tricks) while running from two fighters. The jets would come at the tanker head on, peel off make a u-turn, and come again from the rear. This went on and on for probably 15 minutes.  At one point, the jets were low enough (and close enough) that we could read the markings on the tail and (I swear this is true) the pilot waved at my brother and I. What the pilots didn’t anticipate was their aerial stunts spooking a 10K head feedlot enough that the feedlot guys spent the next 2 days trying to round up the several hundred head that ran though the fences. 

There's an airbase in Yankton and, growing up, it wasn't uncommon to see fighters or tankers periodically...but this was one of the most impressive displays of air power I’ve ever seen. 

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My cousin was in the seat of an H cultivating corn one summer evening in the early 1970's just East of the Omaha SAC Base in Western Iowa. He was startled nearly out of the tractor seat by an tremendous roar and looked skyward to see a B-52 barely 500 feet off the deck on a SAC training mission.

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Travis Air Force Base is the training base for the Air Force C5(X) transport planes. Reserve pilots do lot's of practice on the eastern side of the Sacramento bay, which is also a great family outing area. Nothing like being 1000 feet below a big-a$$ 4 engine  plane doing low level based touch and goes. Or what ever the fly boys call having fun at the practice area.

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6 hours ago, tperson said:

Eons ago... maybe 20yrs or so…I was at my folks’ in NE Nebraksa and witnessed one of the most impressive ad-hoc air shows I’d ever seen. While we were out pheasant hunting, we watched a big, fat, slow strato-tanker performing evasive maneuvers (dips, dives, chaff, flares, the whole bag of tricks) while running from two fighters. The jets would come at the tanker head on, peel off make a u-turn, and come again from the rear. This went on and on for probably 15 minutes.  At one point, the jets were low enough (and close enough) that we could read the markings on the tail and (I swear this is true) the pilot waved at my brother and I. What the pilots didn’t anticipate was their aerial stunts spooking a 10K head feedlot enough that the feedlot guys spent the next 2 days trying to round up the several hundred head that ran though the fences. 

There's an airbase in Yankton and, growing up, it wasn't uncommon to see fighters or tankers periodically...but this was one of the most impressive displays of air power I’ve ever seen. 

Take your thoughts and go back to the teens and dogfighting with a spad or a fokker, then go to the forties and think about the battles of WW2 with prop fighters and then jet fighters in Korea and Vietnam, what you saw was training I could not imagine what was going on in the minds of the pilots in the aforementioned fighting from days of yore, because one thing all the movies in the world never really put forward was the fact these were teenagers and early twenty somethings, I started out early in my worklife so my teen years wasnt as frivolous as some others but to try and put a handle on what all these young fellas did is kinda hard to comprehend, thanks for your memory.

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17 minutes ago, Dasnake said:

Take your thoughts and go back to the teens and dogfighting with a spad or a fokker, then go to the forties and think about the battles of WW2 with prop fighters and then jet fighters in Korea and Vietnam, what you saw was training I could not imagine what was going on in the minds of the pilots in the aforementioned fighting from days of yore, because one thing all the movies in the world never really put forward was the fact these were teenagers and early twenty somethings, I started out early in my worklife so my teen years wasnt as frivolous as some others but to try and put a handle on what all these young fellas did is kinda hard to comprehend, thanks for your memory.

...right on Jake

....years after this conflict   (WW2)   my long departed Dad's,   navigator ,    (one Ray Smith of Essex  UK, )who  completed 45 missions with Dad....made it out to New  Zealand...to visit the family.....

..among the many stories, was the simple fact that he had just  turned  twenty ...when heading out to India with   RAF 684 Mosquito   PR  Squadron....and Dad who was 31 yrs old   was regarded , literally, as an old man....

Mike

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4 minutes ago, mike newman said:

...right on Jake

....years after this conflict   (WW2)   my long departed Dad's   navigator ,    (one Ray Smith of Essex  UK, ) completed 45 missions with Dad....made it out to New  Zealand...to visit the family.....

..among the many stories, was the simple fact that he had just  turned  twenty ...when heading out to India with   RAF 684 Mosquito   PR  Squadron....and Dad who was 31 yrs old   was regarded , literally, as an old man....

Mike

Thanx mike, you and I both know what old is now don't we........haha.

 

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1 minute ago, Dasnake said:

Thanx mike, you and I both know what old is now don't we........haha.

 

""Ha Ha ""   Jake ??????????????????

...more like ''  boo   bloody   hoo  ''   I would  have thought   !!!

Mike   :) 

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On 5/25/2023 at 3:32 AM, jeeper61 said:

Wa and ID do extensive cloud seeding.  Been few years...

Google it a sec. It's interesting....and goofy.  ID just said they are going to ramp it up.  Iirc they even have permanent "cannons" on some mt tops to disperse the ..alum oxide (?).

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