Saturday was Luke Air Force Base open house in Glendale, AZ. I found out about it at the last minute, so went out to see what was happening. They only do this event every other year, so now you are all notified for the next event in 2013.

The event was estimated to be 200,000. I've got no way to know if that is accurate, but the apron was so big, that it didn't seem that crowded. They had 30 school buses running from the parking area to the event.

The apron was covered with all sorts of mostly current warbirds. They were opened up so the public could go inside and see all the neat stuff. The crews were there and did a great job of answering questions. You could see the pride in what they were doing. There were a few WWII birds, but this is the place to see newer stuff. B1 bomber was sitting next to a B52. It was really cool to look up inside these beasts and see the difference 40 years of development has made. For the freighter crowd, there were two C130s and a C17. Damn, what a monster. It had a continual flow of sightseers up the ramp in back, and then they spilled out all sorts of other doors. They had a predator drone on display. Lots of fighters.

The airshow was great. I was only able to stay for the A10, F18 Hornet, and the Red Bull helicopter. Later were the F22 Raptor, a Harrier, and the Thunderbirds. While the loop performed by the helicopter was pretty neat, the F18 was simply amazing. He did a "square" loop, with straight up and down verticals. A low pass at about 600 mph (half of full speed) did not make a sonic boom, but was really impressive: no sound of it's approach, but suddenly its right in front of you, and then as it left, the roar. It sure would be scary to be the subject of a real attack. He did manage to make a lot of babies cry. No wonder he didn't go supersonic. Then, he repeated the run, this time right on the edge of the slow speed part of the envelope. With the nose up nearly 45 degrees, and lots of power from the engines, he could have kept up with a Cessna. I bet is would suck to fly a light plane under him then.

This was a real opportunity to see stuff that most of us never get near. I'm very glad I got the chance.

tom

Here's the F18 doing a low pass at half of max speed:


Different airshow, F18 slow pass:


F22 going through it's paces:


Again, a different airshow, Red Bull Helicopter stunts

Tom,

Glad you had a good time. Judging from Facebook, I know there were a few other BCP's there. The hard part is identifying them.