Youtube: The Awesome “CAD WEST” Low Flying Jet Site In Wales “Mach Loop”.
Turn up your sound for full effect. I gotsta go.
Later: Pilot’s viewpoint. *Urp.*
Comments:
These are cool, but the plane that totally blew my mind was the Harrier jump-jet. First time I saw one, they were sort of the also-rans at an airshow in NJ. Off in the distance, the curved front silhouette looked like a trio of birds. Then, one of them got in a mock dogfight with an F-16, and did a ‘Falklands maneuvre’ ... letting the F-16 pass by, moving in on it from behind, firing off a mock missile (in audio only, zap, done, gone) over the loudspeakers. The plane seemed unearthly. Then it topped the whole thing off by hovering for a landing.
Totally. Amazing.
Should have said “silhouettes” ... there were three.
Sounds awesome! Weird enough seeing the Ospreys around New Mexico, and they lumber by comparison.
I’m surprised Ospreys survived. Noisy damned things. Slow. OBVIOUS. I should think they’d be sitting ducks for shoulder-launched missiles.
I say that, and just at that moment a double rotor troop carrier with a refueling nozzle sticking out the front rumbles directly over my house ...
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This tickles me on many levels: having once lived in Wales and walked through many a landscape like this one; having once witnessed a pilot doing similar laps a few hundred feet over a plain near the Trinity Site in New Mexico; having once stood half a mile behind one of these planes as it readied its engines for takeoff and having been able to feel the heat from them even that far away; and having loved fighter planes since I was a kid.
I wonder if we can really appreciate, even seeing something like this, what we’re really capable of.
Thanks!