California Air Show

[Kawidude]

I had the pleasure of attending the California Air Show on Saturday. It was an absolute blast! There were several types of aircraft being flown, but the big draw was the Blue Angels. Just thought I'd post a few of the shots from the day. :cool:

The A-10 Warthog has always been a favorite of mine!

 

[Kawidude]

One of the coolest moments of the show was when they launched Fat Albert, the C130 that the Blue Angels use to transport their staff and supplies around the country. Fat Albert performs a specialized take-off maneuver called a JATO (Jet-Assisted Take Off). It sort of lumbers down the runway and 8 solid rocket boosters fire off the back of the thing. It shoots up into the air and a ridiculous angle for a plane that size. My camera was level with the horizon when I took the take-off shot. I highly recommend checking Youtube for the Fat Albert JATO footage if you've never seen it before. It's impressive.

 

[Kawidude]

And of course, there were the Blue Angels. I have seen tons of footage of these guys, but never had the honor of seeing them live. It was definitely a treat. I was stunned at the precision they demonstrated not only in the air, but on the ground. Right down to the way they board their planes and the maintenance crew removes the blocks from the tires. They did many maneuvers packed in really tight and had several knife-edge passes that were amazing.

 

[RM85rider123]

SWEET! About a year ago, there was a show at langley airforce base here in VA. They had a raptor 22 demonstration, and talk about AMAZING. They didn't have the blue angels though. They had the thunderbirds.

 

[Kawidude]

They did different clusters of 4 and six planes throughout the show. The speed and sheer power is amazing.

 

[Kawidude]

Near the end one of the pilots came straight at the crowd and banked hard right above us. That's my last shot.

 

[Rich Rohrich]

Great shots Kawi. It has to be pretty tough capturing something moving that fast.

 

[Kawidude]

Great shots Kawi. It has to be pretty tough capturing something moving that fast.

Yep! I used AI Servo and pretty fast shutter speeds for the jets. I think I was around 1000 - 2000ths of a second for the jets. It's amazing how slow some of the prop planes seem by comparison. I got away with 200 - 300ths of a second with those.

Although, at one point two of the Angels did a demonstration of their slow speed capabilities. Two of them popped smoke and dropped their tails down low. The official Blue Angel announcer said they were each doing less than 150 miles an hour, which felt like they were crawling.