Calm down and put the blue pills away. I don't have access to the motorcycle hotties like some lucky SOB's on this site but I did manage to visit the Nellis airshow this last Sunday. Great show with lots of afterburners, noise and pyro stuff. And lots of cool planes doing that amazing flying thing. (BTW: if you've got the bandwidth, I'd suggest you click on the pictures to see them full size, but be warned, most of 'em are big.)

This opened the show. Fitting for the day before Veteran's Day I thought. Tadpole, two questions: was this one of your guys and how do they keep that monster flag from dragging on the ground when he lands?


The radome sees all. You KNOW you are being watched...


Across the airfield, I spot an old friend from the early '70's. The B-ONE was the first airplane I got to know on paper before it was built when I worked at Rockwell on her various pieces. I saw the first wing pivot pin installed amid a cloud of evaporating liquid gas.


I spent a long time trying to figure out how that landing gear folded up into that little biddy space. The vector diagrams of the loads in all those pivots and links kept me awake at night.


She picked up her skirts and put on a show for the visitors






The F-86 is my favorite of the early jets


pull UP....pull UP...





Then they rolled out the big iron. Some F-16's and F-15 E's.


This one is doing the final "remove before flight" pin checks. I think I now understand how those heat seeker missiles work.


Two F-16 "aggressors" attack while being pursued by an F-15E. They drop flares to spoof the heat seekers and then proceed to do some 300-400 knot 360's within the airfield boundaries and BELOW the top of the control tower. Some might call it reckless. I just called it freaking awesome!




You can run little guy...


...but you can't hide...


The crown jewel was the F-22 Raptor. Seems like once the F-22 pilots got over the death-by-inflatable-vest problem, they have grown very comfortable flying the beast. They were doing things that kept me saying "You can't DO that in an airplane." Of course, having 70,000 lbs of thrust available gives you some leeway, but hovering in a vertical attitude and then SLOWLY tail-sliding backwards a few hundred feet.... then pivoting through 90 degrees of azimuth and roaring away? I am convinced there is some Area 51 reversed engineering of our alien visitors at work here.






...and look... it blends right in with other airplanes so you hardly know it's there...





A nice piece of kit.


After that, the Thunderbirds were almost anticlimactic but still impressive. Wheels up!










All together, a great way to spend a day (and a huge pile of taxpayer dollars). At least I got some visible benefit from the expenditure. Now a confession: I didn't eat, drink or pee all day... just stood for hours by the fence in case I missed some "action". If that sounds like a hard core addict, well, it is what it is. Admitting you have a problem is step one.

My apologies for lack of backcountry stuff, but we addicts don't give a sh*t about other people's feelings.

I should have posted before I came out that way. I was there with the C5 crew. Would have liked to meet you. Excellent pics and the show wasn't too bad either.

Is this a annual show?
I would love to see the B1 fly and have not had a chance on the east coast?


Does this show rival Patuxent or Andrews or is it better? Looks like better weather that's for sure.

Thanks.

Pilotjpw1, this is the 71th annual show for Vegas. With upcoming budget cuts there is talk of cutting demo teams from the military budget. The weather was a little chilly for Vegas this time of year other than that it was a great show. I feel Andrews is a little better however. But it is a reason to go to Vegas.

Phenomenal! Thanks for sharing! I actually prefer the tactical demonstrations over the birds or angels.

EB

Thanks for the great pics.

Farmaule- Thanks for the info on the show. I can always find a reason for Vegas.

pilotjpw1:

Yeah the show is every year (so far). Some are better than others. This one was pretty good. Nellis is the T'birds home field and they do their final performance here each season. As Farmaule pointed out, it was a bit chilly. In fact, I live a couple of hours north of Vegas and decided to pass on the Saturday show when I found about 8in of snow on my driveway that morning.

Farmaule: I walked right past your C5. Maybe next year or the one after that. On cutting demo team budgets: I'd hate to see the Angels go away, but my impression of the T'birds was that the fun to folderol ratio is dropping way down. There was a lot of pomp before they got to the end of the runway for takeoff on Sunday. Then one of the F-16's was deemed unworthy for showtime. It took the better part of an hour to prep and start one of the two spares. They used the two-holer as part of the show. It's the forth one in line on the taxi back photo and has a belly pod on it (for socks and jocks I guess). My hat's off to the whole team for scrambling to cover the popup Mx problem and, of course, those guys who fly do it with unbelievable precision.

pilotjpw1 wrote:Is this a annual show?
I would love to see the B1 fly and have not had a chance on the east coast?


Does this show rival Patuxent or Andrews or is it better? Looks like better weather that's for sure.

Thanks.

pivoting

Sa:w one years ago and wow what a mind blower! The low speed flyby with steep climb out, gotta love pi oting wings.

Great writeup YB, especially the personal part about being involved with the design at Rockwell, ya done good!

Yellowbelly wrote:Tadpole, two questions: was this one of your guys and how do they keep that monster flag from dragging on the ground when he lands?

Yes it is. USAF Parachute Team, Wings of Blue....I miss doing that full time and I always loved performing at Aviation Nation at Nellis, such a top notch show. There are flag catchers, and with lots of practice, they and the jumper can pretty much avoid the flag touching the ground, though it does still happen from time to time unfortunately. It's not simple...especially as the flags get bigger and bigger.