Thunderbirds and Blue Angels

[George K]

One of my partners has two sons in the Navy. He and his wife are huge Navy fans. I sent him this a couple of days ago. Oh, and yeah, great shots indeed!

[89th]

George ha! But to be fair, they are all wearing masks!

[Copper]

Northern Virginia got the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds.

Southern Virginia, the Navy sent over a student pilot in a helicopter.

[89th]

Yeah but you can play golf and buy clippers at Target!

[George K]

Yeah - go full fucking screen!

Link to video

[Copper]

That is a nice view of the relative movement of the planes. They are just an inadvertent twitch away from disaster.

One of the instructors I worked with used to command the Thunderbirds, flying the #1. He told me he had to fire a guy for looking at the ground. You just can't take your eye off the guy in front of you.

[George K]

@Copper watching these videos always makes me wonder about the tolerance standards that are beyond the pilot's control. You can see them bouncing up and down, getting closer and farther from the guy next to them.

A gust of wind can make it all get "interesting."

[Rainman]

It's just plain cool, that's it.
Thanks for posting the video!!

[Doctor Phibes]

These things give me the heebie jeebies. I was at an airshow, watching them and thinking 'it looks so dangerous, but it must actually be safe', and then one of the jets crashed. The poor guy died. I'd just said goodbye to wife and son, who were driving home near where the plane went down, so I had a rather stressful couple of hours waiting to hear from them.

[89th]

@George-K my last photo is the 3:10 mark of that video, for context. Cool!

[taiwan_girl]

Very cool video!! Amazing the pilot skills they have!

[Jeffrey]

Nice!

[Copper]

A drone - way too close in Detroit

Really way too close at 0:55

Link to video

[89th]

Wow thanks for sharing! Yeah no joke about the ending...... I actually told my friends I might "fly my drone up to them" but obviously was kidding. Kinda cool to see what it would've looked like.

[George K]

They did a flyby over Chicago a couple of days ago. Sadly, our home was not under any of the flight paths, and I could see them only when they flew about 3 miles north of my home. It lasted 15 seconds or so.

By the way, it costs about $20,000 per hour (fuel and maintenance) to fly an F18, or $120K per hour for this flight.

That's a lot of masks.

[Copper]

Part of the military pilot's standard practice is to rehearse flying over a target at a precise time, altitude and speed.

This is one of the ways they justify fly-overs, a standard practice flight.

[89th]

I don’t think the funding to make masks is an issue. I enjoyed the sight and thought it was a nice patriotic display of honor for the frontline workers.