Blue Angles #7 sightting ... Howd they do that !!

[Bill Marsh]

While at the UAL / sfo maint. base yesterday... (its fleet week here in the san ran bay area)

saw the number 7 f18 taxi out to the runway 27? and infront of god and alot of employees (who got the word), saw the f18 do a maximum departure verticle exit with full ab until it disappeared way up top!!!!

#1 the crowd(s) of employees 100s or even a 1000 absolute blew s**t

#2 this is ni the middle of the atc? whatever you call it ...during a buisy wednesday... howd they do that

talk about emptying the shops ramps and airport offices......

best orgasmic 15 second air show ive seen

BM

[beachboss]

Re: Blue Angles #7 sightting ... Howd they do that !!

What you saw was #7 taking up one of three 'Media' rides. (one tv,one radio, one print, usually). The team is based out of SFO since United closed their maint. base in Oakland. The Red Bull racers and Sean D. Tucker arre based at Oakland North Field (KaiserAir ramp) Mike

[Propellerhead]

Re: Blue Angles #7 sightting ... Howd they do that !!

Hopefully, the Blues will be practicing during the "World Can't Wait Rally" today here in The City. That'll make those g*dd*mn hippies wet their pants...

Everytime the Blues come for Fleet Week, San Franciscans get a case of the vapors. The "city under siege" letters should be appearing in the Chronicle any day now. Poor dears...

[Ron101502]

Re: Blue Angles #7 sightting ... Howd they do that !!

At STL (Saint Louis) airport where the old McDonnel factory is they still make all F-15s and F/A-18s. They still do the production test flights out of there, and they have what ATC calls the "Viking Departure" which requires the airplane to stay on runway heading and cross the departure end of the runway (usually Runway 24) at or above 10,000 feet MSL (the field elevation as I recall is around 600 feet). When I used to fly in there I would tune the radio to tower frequency (the clearance as I recall was given by tower, not ground or clearance delivery) and when I heard that clearance I would go out on the jetway steps and watch the airshow which was always impressive as the airplanes were always clean and light weight. The reason for the departure is to gain altitude for an ejection if something bad happens, remember, this is the very first flight for these aircaft. In the USAF a similar procedure is used for FCFs(functional check flights) and it is done for safety reasons but must be a lot of fun. Haven't been to STL in at least 12 years so this info is probably dated.

Somewhere there is a video of an F-4 crashing (the ejections were successful) taking off on either an initial flight or delivery flight on runway 24 at STL, some sort of flight control problem pulled the airplane to the vertical which of course "Double Ugly" can't sustain with only 34000-35800 lbs of thrust (depending on model) in a 44000lb (clean with full internal fuel) airplane. Even the English airplanes with 40,000 lbs of thrust wouldn't sustain a vertical climb. (remeber it isn't just thrust vs. weight, it's thrust vs. weight plus drag). I think the airplane in the video was a Navy airplane, not sure if it was a B or J model.

Ron Henning