Semi close fly by

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
The air show is this weekend and the Blue Angels are practicing this week. Over lunch we got a real good view of them flying overhead, but didn't have my phone out. Did catch another fly by...
blueangels.jpg
 
Nice shot. Those guys blow me away. :thumb: In the mid '80s when I was working as a construction inspector at the Albuquerque airport, the Blue Angels came to town a few days early for a weekend air show. Got to see lots of cool practice runs. Our office was in the old terminal building, and we had access to the roof of the old control tower on top of the building, which was essentially a 10 x 10 room that was the third story of the building. One afternoon we were hanging out on the roof watching the Blue Angels practice, and one of the solo jets flew past us at our level, about 100 feet away. Close enough were able to see the pilot turn his head to look at us as he flew by.

For the actual show that weekend, we took lawn chairs and cooler chests of beer to the roof of the new terminal concourse (which was still under construction and closed to the public). We essentially had front row seats at the flightline. :)
 
Very cool very talented pilots!

I remember as a kid they came to my hometown for the summer Regatta. The day before the parade through downtown, during practice, one of the pilots messed up, he broke the sound barrier just over the downtown area, broke just about every window an 8 block area. The final bill was $250,000, in 1969, estimated to be 1.3 million in 2004 dollars :eek:

The city cleaned up the glass and we had our parade the next day.


In the end the US Navy paid for the damage.

The Blue Angles were invited back the following year.
 
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