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For those living on or near Air Force Bases. Coolest planes?

My boss has several P51 Mustangs and enough parts to build numerous more planes which they are always cool to see. We also have 75-100+ engines and who know how many engines worth of Merlin V12 blocks, cranks, heads and parts laying around.

One of our co-workers is big into model rocket launching and does launching events with the Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts at our local air force base and there is sometimes a Stealth plane left outside the hanger and he said in the mornings there are dozens of dead bats on the ground that flew into the plane overnight. Apparently, the sonar deflection does work well.....

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North of Wichita, in a city called Hutchinson they have a great Cosmosphere and space museum. Very, very worth your visit. They have an SR71 inside the building.

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Memories of Air Force bases .... we lived not too far from Biggin Hill RAF Base in southern England a few years back. We went to the big Air Show they had in 1990.....I wanted to have a nosey around at all the old planes. They had a Memphis Belle all painted up....half-way through the show an announcement came over the speakers that a surprise visit by an RAF Tornado would happen in 15minutes...about 30 seconds later it was 5 minutes....and about another 30 seconds later it was "Ladies & Gentlemen, get your cameras out".

That was a huge thrill as the Gulf War had seen a lot of action for the Tornado and not many civilians had seen one up close. We got quite the show in the way of several fly-pasts at low level.

Another highlight for me was an RAF Vulcan Bomber...... when that took off, everyone stopped and watched. Thundering down the runway like a screaming Banshee....then the growl/howl as it launched at about 45 degrees upwards.

Flying past with the bomb-bay doors open was cool....but the noise was honestly outstanding. Just about every car in the car had its alarm triggered s it roared past. Very memorable day indeed.

Video of a Vulcan.... primarily designed to carry nuclear bombs to drop on Moscow and return home for tea & medals..... from England. :lol:



 
kiwigtx said:
When I was a kid, we lived on a farm around 10 miles from the Ohakea Air Force base in the lower North Island. We often had the RNZAF Strikemaster aircraft fly low over our farm....it was always a good show.

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Years later while living in London, we had a flat in Richmond...right on the flight path to Heathrow. Concorde was my alarm clock when on night shift.
A video I shot one afternoon captured the 5:00pm landing and then we drove the few miles to Heathrow and caught the 6:00pm landing.



I used to see Concorde take-offs and landing all the time at work because I worked a couple of miles from Heathrow at Stockley Park - home to a very nice Nick Faldo golf course - we played a bit of golf also. Often we would play golf in the surrounding area, and everyone stopped when a Concorde was taking off and passing overhead. It was so loud - even at sub-sonic speeds.

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Very cool video, Roger!

In the summer of '84, I was driving my '70 GTX down US Hwy 41 past Oshkosh, WI when I heard a roar. I looked to my left and saw a Concorde parallel to the highway at tree top height coming in for a landing at the EAA grounds for the annual fly-in. It was an impressive sight.
 
64BEL said:
Very cool video, Roger!

In the summer of '84, I was driving my '70 GTX down US Hwy 41 past Oshkosh, WI when I heard a roar. I looked to my left and saw a Concorde parallel to the highway at tree top height coming in for a landing at the EAA grounds for the annual fly-in. It was an impressive sight.
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Thanks Dave. Concorde was a marvel in many ways. Just like the Channel Tunnel, it was a collaboration between the French and the British - unheard of stuff back in the day.
Slide-rules and pencils. I always enjoyed watching Concorde take off or land. :thumbsup: I climbed onto the roof at work the day of a major fly-past for the Queen back in 1995 - Concorde and the Red Arrows were performing. Sometimes I would drive home via Terminal 5 - where Concorde and the Australian passenger jets parked up. Always a thrill to have the gate shut so the planes could be towed across the road in front of me.

Not my picture below - but I have one similar in storage.....

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Concorde with the Red Arrows - again not my picture.....

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kiwigtx said:
Thanks Dave. Concorde was a marvel in many ways. Just like the Channel Tunnel, it was a collaboration between the French and the British - unheard of stuff back in the day.
Slide-rules and pencils. I always enjoyed watching Concorde take off or land. :thumbsup: I climbed onto the roof at work the day of a major fly-past for the Queen back in 1995 - Concorde and the Red Arrows were performing. Sometimes I would drive home via Terminal 5 - where Concorde and the Australian passenger jets parked up. Always a thrill to have the gate shut so the planes could be towed across the road in front of me.

Not my picture below - but I have one similar in storage.....

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Concorde with the Red Arrows - again not my picture.....

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Awesome, Roger! My daughter bought me the Concorde Lego kit when I was laid up with my broken leg (she knew I'd had my eye on it). But, she soon realized that I was too immobilized to work on it, so she held onto it and gave it to me for Fathers Day. I haven't started it yet, but I'm hoping to this week as I have some time off of work.
 
64BEL said:
Awesome, Roger! My daughter bought me the Concorde Lego kit when I was laid up with my broken leg (she knew I'd had my eye on it). But, she soon realized that I was too immobilized to work on it, so she held onto it and gave it to me for Fathers Day. I haven't started it yet, but I'm hoping to this week as I have some time off of work.
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Excellent. :thumbsup:

Our families think alike - I was given that LEGO model for my 60th birthday last year..... as well as a flight on a Tiger Moth - something I have dreamed of since I was a young boy.

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kiwigtx said:
Flying past with the bomb-bay doors open was cool....but the noise was honestly outstanding. Just about every car in the car had its alarm triggered s it roared past. Very memorable day indeed.

Video of a Vulcan.... primarily designed to carry nuclear bombs to drop on Moscow and return home
Click to expand...

I always said the Vulcan was the greatest device for turning kerosene into noise.
 
I have a piece of a wrecked Vulcan on display with a bunch of other aviation artifacts in my rec room.
It was at the base by my house. It was based there for the Chicago Air and Water show when it crashed in 1978.
I was a teenager but sadly this was before I got into aviation photography so I remember seeing it fly over the house but have no pictures of it.

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Accident Avro Vulcan B Mk 2 XL390, Friday 11 August 1978
 
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My uncle's lived in Alamogordo, NM and worked on Holliman AFB.base. We would see F-117s every day when visiting.

When I lived in Yuma, near MCAS Yuma the Harriers would do landing approaches right above 32nd Street and would rock the car when they were rotating to vertical landing. Same with the F-35s.
 
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