Air Show

Last weekend was the Miramar Air Show, the biggest air show in the country. Nick and I look forward to the show every year. UCSD is right in the flight path for jets taking off from Miramar (they usually have to turn right over campus to avoid "noisily" flying over richie-rich La Jolla) and we get blasted with engine noise routinely. Eventually, you get used to pausing conversations while jets assault your eardrums. I call it the "sounds of freedom." And then, once a year in early October, we are rewarded for eleven months and 27 days of inconvenient, tremor-inducing jet noise when the air show comes to Miramar. Yes, this does mean MORE noise over the four-day period (Thursday practices, Friday-Sun performances). But. Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's the nostalgia of seeing the Blue Angels practice on base in Pensacola every week, and maybe it's just the fact that seeing those beautiful blue-and-gold jets streak overhead makes me unconditionally proud of our military and our country, but when the lab is outside taking a coffee break in the afternoon and the numbers 5 & 6 jets scream over us at low altitude, I couldn't be a happier or more excited little kid.

This year, Nick and I played the weather game in choosing which day to trek out to the show. Believe it or not, the air show weekend is often cursed with low clouds, marine layer intrusion, or rain (in October! Bizarre!). Last weekend, Friday was absolutely gorgeous - sunny and warm but not hot - and was clearly the ideal day for the show. Except for that whole "work" thing. Damn. Saturday was supposed to be nice until mid-to-late afternoon, at which point light rain was expected and the rain was to continue through Sunday morning, eventually giving way to clear skies. And if the "cool" air show acts performed in the morning instead of the afternoon, Saturday would have been a logical choice. But we've been burned too many years, friends, by deceptively nice skies in the a.m. turning cloudy and dark just before the Blue Angels come on. It's truly been years since we've seen their high show (they do a modified "low show" for cloudy days). The low show is good; the high show is spectacular. So we took the rain gamble and decided to go for Sunday. Good thing, too: Saturday it started drizzling around 3:30pm, and the Blues come on around 3:45. The rain went through the night and by Sunday morning, it was clearing up nicely. In fact, it was so beautiful on Sunday and it was so clear that we both got burned despite our multiple sunscreen applications. My shoulders actually browned THROUGH my shirt! Ouch. But man - those Blue Angels! =)






We also had our first experience seeing the F-22 Raptor fly ... wow, that is one sexy jet. The most stunning maneuver is a so-called "J turn" where the plane seems to hover in the sky and pivot to change direction. It's been a long time since we've seen something new at an air show, and the Raptor made us feel like excited kids at our first one.




There was also an acrobatic bi-plane called the Oracle Challenger, piloted by one of the most incredible athletes, Sean Tucker. I call him an athlete because he would be giving commentary from the cockpit while pulling 6, 7, 8 positive Gs and multiple negative Gs. I kept looking at Nick and asking "how is he still TALKING?!"



And the Air Force heritage flight was great, too - the Raptor, the F-16, and a P-51 Mustang.





The first performer that we saw in the morning, though, was an AT-6 Wardog, a WWII-era aircraft once used as a trainer. There were still some high clouds that early in the morning, which made for a beautiful performance.





And then, of course, there was also the Army Golden Knights parachute team who dropped in a spectacular fashion. They drop in formation and then split just prior to opening their chutes.






One of the most exciting part of the show and the thing that makes the MCAS Miramar Air Show different from so many others is the Marine Air Ground Task Force demonstration, which uses air and ground forces to demonstrate the Marine force and readiness. Helicopters drop Marines, tanks roll in, Marines climb into ditches and call in air strikes, and then "bombs" are dropped. It's pretty intense. Here are some shots (we had too many people in front of us to get any shots of the Marines or the "wall of fire"):







So it was another year and another great air show. We had the realization that this is going to be our last Miramar Air Show ... but the nice part about living with the Navy is that there are air shows wherever you live!

And if you just can't get enough air show shots, I have several more on FLICKR (click here).