Quad City Air Show, Part 2

Finally getting around to posting some more photos from the air show. The past couple weeks have been super busy, but here we go...

The Flash Fire Jet Truck. It's a truck built around a jet afterburner and it tops out at 375 mph!

A P-51 Mustang and a P4U Corsair sitting on the tarmac before the show...

And the Corsair in flight.

The University of Iowa Engineering jets in flight. These are reconditioned Cold War-era jet trainers that carry an impressive array of equipment. These jets are not very fast, but they are LOUD.

The Lucas Oil pilot pulled off some crazy aerobatics including deliberately stalling the plane and causing it to tumble out of the sky in free fall before regaining control and pulling up just above the ground. He also cut through a ribbon that was about 10 or 12 feet off the ground. You can see the yellow ribbon trailing from the wing in the photo below.

Next was a small plane that did some of the same stunts as the Lucas Oil pilot, but she also raced against the Flash Fire truck.

The Aeroshell Aerobatic team flies WWII T-6 Texans and they fly in tight formation for most of their performance. Their flying was very precise and it was fun to watch. Their planes were so close together for much of the time that they appeared to be only inches apart.

A P-51 Mustang and a Japanese Zero flew a mock dogfight and even fired blanks from the machine guns for realism. This Zero was also in the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora."

The Flash Fire truck raced against Otto the helicopter. This part was kinda meh, but it was mostly geared towards the kids.

The headliner of the show was the F-22 Raptor which is that U.S. Air Force's newest fighter jet. It could do some really bizarre maneuvers like doing a backflip in the air to pivot 180º and return to target. The F-22 is partly stealth, so it carries all of its missiles internally. The pilot opened the missile doors as it flew over at one point in the demonstration.

The air show concluded with the F-22 flying in formation with the WWII era P-51. That was cool to see the contrast between old and new.

Usually getting out of the air show is an ordeal because when thousands of cars try to leave all at once it creates an instant traffic jam that can last for an hour or more. Luckily the state fair was going on at the same time as the air show this year (which seems like really poor planning), so there weren't quite as many people and we got out without killing anybody.

It's been a while since I've been to an air show and it was a blast!

Amazing Grace!

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch; like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed!

The Lord hath promised good to me,

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we first begun.

Quad City Air Show, Part 1

The Quad City Air Show was a blast this year and my dad and brother Dave joined me. We got there early enough to get seats right up at the fence closest to the runway and then we walked around and looked at the static displays. Some of the larger aircraft were open and we walked through them. I was surprised at how much space there is inside a twin-rotor Chinook.

Dave struck a ridiculous pose in front of the toothy grin of a Vietnam-era fighter jet so that I could take his picture so he could send it to his fiancee. I'd like to post that series of photos, but I took them with his camera and I don't think he's going to send them to me, ha.

I talked to some of the pilots as we walked near the runway entrance and ran across a guy who goes to our church! Did not know he was a pilot. It's weird to run across someone you know in a place you don't expect.

Dave is surprisingly adept at avoiding getting his picture taken, but I am surprisingly adept at taking people's pictures...

We took a lot of photos during the air show and Dave used his new Samsung Galaxy to take pictures. After 3.5 hours of taking pictures, he decided to review his shots and discovered that he had taken selfies the whole time! He had a gazillion priceless shots of himself squinting at the sky and some great close-ups of his sunburnt nose. Apparently he had the wrong camera selected and it was so bright out that he could not see the display, so he just kept shooting and hoped for the best.

More photos in the next post...

Geocache

Geocaching! Tonight we downloaded geocache apps onto our phones and set out into the wild CR looking for... whatever a geocache might be. The first one was a bust, but then on the next one we struck gold:

A mini cache! Emily was not impressed, but she's not impressed by most things. Sign the log and set out for the next one...

Against a Painted Sky

While we were staying at the cabin, low clouds rolled in and the sky looked very weird. The weather stayed calm and it made for some cool night pictures. It was completely dark out, but I used a long exposure (15 sec.) to lighten it up a lot.

I recently discovered that my portrait lens takes the sharpest pictures with an F-stop of 4. Any less or much higher and I have to chase the focus a little bit, but 4 is dead on every time. Weird, huh?

Flying II

The yellow RTF Champ met an untimely death when it went out of transmitter range and plummeted at full speed into a parking lot, smashing into a million pieces against the pavement. All the king's horses and all the king's men... there was no fixing that mess. That was a bad day.

It's been replaced with a V-tail twin-engine plane that I carefully keep within range, heh. This plane actually flies better and is more maneuverable. After only a few flights I had figured out how to fly loops, figure 8s, and how to give Emily a haircut! Oops.

Yup, flying straight up.

Ok, that's all for now, but I'll post more boring airplane pictures when I get a chance.

The River

On Saturday we went to the White Star downtown and then we went to our favorite pier along the river and watched a storm come in.

Ominous! Boiling, angry-looking clouds blew in while we watched and the wind picked up as the air cooled off quickly. I under exposed this shot a little to darken the clouds and give 'em some definition.

Put the hammer down! They barely got off the river fast enough.

As soon as it started raining, we went and met up with some friends at the Irish Democrat to celebrate a birthday, but we came back to the river a couple hours later and I took some long exposures across from Quaker Oats. Or Quaker "Oars" as Emily calls it because the "t" looks a lot like an "r." She's got a point; look closely and you can see for yourself.