I felt like a little boy at a monster truck rally today, only I don't
care about monster trucks; I went to the 2009 Joint Service Open
House/Air Show at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC, and anyone
who knows my love for aviation will understand how exciting it must have
been. The last big air show I remember going to that featured very
cool military aircraft was in Chicago. I don't remember all the planes
we saw then, but the stealth bomber and Harrier jet (the one that can
hover) stick out in my memory. But as cool as that show was, this one
was even better.
I think one of the reasons was that in Chicago, everyone is basically
gathered along the shoreline of Lake Michigan waiting for the planes to
arrive and do their thing. Today's event took place right on the
airfield at Andrews AFB, and the first thing you saw as your shuttle
(from FedEx Field) pulled in were the HUGE transport planes used by the
Air Force to transport tanks & such, including a C-130 Hercules (the
one where the front nose opens up). You got to walk right up to the
planes, walk inside, and talk to the pilots, and in some cases go into
the cockpit.
It turns out there were just tons of military aircraft parked for you
to come and see and get inside. Everything from the huge transport
planes to the B-52 Stratofortress bomber to the F35 Joint Strike Fighter
to Blackhawk and Apache helicopters. They even had the B-17 Flying
Fortress that was used in the film
Memphis Belle.
One unexpected treat that those who came today got to see was that
President Obama was departing in the morning from Andrews AFB to South
Bend, IN, to speak at the Notre Dame graduation ceremonies. They
announced that this was going to happen, and we saw the three Marine
helicopters come in (the President is always on one of the three, but
very few actually know which one, exactly). Then he boarded Air Force
One and we got to see it take off. Very neat.
The highlights of the show were seeing an authentic Russian MiG
flying, as well as the F18-F Super Hornet, the A-10 tank killer (which
is surprisingly quiet), and the new F-22 Raptor. It's simply amazing
what the F-22 can do, and after seeing the demo, I can see why everyone
thinks that anyone flying against this guy doesn't have a chance. It
was also fun being right on the front row at show center and watching
these planes taxi right by. Then, of course, there were the Air Force
Thunderbirds, a group of six F-15's flying in formation and doing
dangerous head-on maneuvers at crazy speeds. And the helicopter that
could somehow do loops and fly upside down, which should be impossible.
I had a crappy little camera that did no good for most of the live
demo shots - I would probably need an SLR camera with good zoom to get
good shots of the live action. Plus it ran out of battery relatively
quickly, so I didn't get any shots of the A-10, P-51, or the F-15s
flying around. But I did get a bunch of shots from the many aircraft we
were able to explore and a couple short videos of some of the live
stuff. They're in our photo gallery under
Day-to-Day, 2009 Spring, Andrews AFB Airshow, and also on my Facebook page.
What little boy wouldn't get excited to climb into planes you only
see in the movies or on TV, or to watch a jet zoom by silently only to
be followed a couple seconds later by its sound, or have his eardrums
blown out by the intense crackling and bright glow of full-on
afterburners zooming by again and again, or watch a jet zoom by just
under Mach 1 only to abruptly go vertical and shoot 2 miles straight up
into the sky? The answer is no little boy would not get excited by
that, and this little boy/pilot had BIG fun today in aviation heaven.
