It never fails to put a lump in my throat.
But do yourself a favor: Go to the YouTube page here and watch it in full-screen mode.
Those are some beautiful airplanes. I'll probably never get to fly a P-51. I've flown a J-3, though, and it was just marvelous.
I make no claim to be any kind of super-duper pilot. I am an amateur, a weekend pilot. Yet my eyes are always drawn to the sky, whether it is clear blue or slate gray. When I see an airplane fly over, it is almost automatic to identify its type estimate its course, speed and altitude. I'll watch the Cessnas and Pipers flying 2,000' overhead the same way I'll note an airliner leaving a contrail against a blue sky, the sunlight glinting from its skin as twilight settles across the ground. and if the sight is accompanied by the sound of old radial engines, the thrill goes right to my bones.
One day, many years ago, I was in a large public park at an open-air festival, when a Grumman Tigercat flew by overhead.
The Tigercat was probably going from one distant airshow to another and I was thrilled to see it fly by. But I noticed that almost everyone around me didn't take note of that airplane, they didn't appreciate the fine lines of the airplane or the music of its two engines. I didn't feel superior to them, I didn't feel better for them. I felt sad for them, that their souls could not appreciate what had been offered.
Airplanes are music to my soul.
4 comments:
One of the cool things about going to remote California desert valleys (Panamint and Saline valleys) is that these are also places where pilots train for low level operations over Iraq and Afghanistan. You get to see all manner of current military aircraft up close and personal. Even a Stealth Bomber once! (Followed by a transport aircraft with a big radome that was busily testing its coatings to see how well they were holding up).
Some folks don't like having their desert solitude interrupted by the roar of a jet fighter coming in low and fast. Me, I just enjoy watching them pull off maneuvers that would make birds envious. Those lucky bastards have the best goddamned job on the planet, in my opinion. Well, except for the having to kill people part. That kinda sucks. But other than that... I can only imagine what it's like based on flying my motorcycles low and fast. OMG that's a big friggin' smile. And that ain't *nothin'* compared to what those lucky flyboys in the F-18's get to do...
- Badtux the Flightless Penguin
I'm old enough to have heard over a hundred radials in flight, overhead, at once.
Having an F-18 go by on the deck is, well, moderately cool...
Deadstick, let's see you say that when you're bumbling along in the desert in your Jeep, and suddenly *BOOM* and your Jeep shakes and you say OMG what happened did all my tires just go flat at once and then the F-18 points his exhaust pipes right at you so you see the flames and you realize that you just got used as target practice for a fighter pilot practicing "killing" enemy vehicles crossing the desert and the boom was the jet's sound catching up with him -- and with you, since the jet was going faster than his sound. It gets a penguin's heart a'thumpin', I'll tell ya that much!
I've heard big radials whining at altitude, but that is NOT as impressive as a jet flying faster than the speed of sound seemingly appearing out of nowhere 50 feet above your head! Sorry!
- Badtux the Sometimes-strafed Penguin
Sorry Tux, you're out of line.
100 radials will leave every organ in your body shivering. It's apples and oranges - jets are wonderous, and all, but it's a different thing. A skyfull of radials will change you as a person, in a different way that a single pair of afterburning turbofans will. But it will change you. I've had the privilege of a few radials over and around, and there's a quality to 'em.
Get overflown by a Bone in full burn, and that's an experience, but it's blasters to lightsabres, friend - a more elegant weapon, from a gentler age.
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