F-22 Demo Team coming to Atlanta:

Jim, I’ll be at the show in Rome.

 

Should be a heck of a show. With those 2-D nozzles and T/W out the kazoo, they can do a great show in a very small piece of airspace. Loud, too.

 

I'd sure love to see a scheduled public demonstration, but will probably have to just make do with the memories of a pair of F22s doing strafing runs & acrobatics over Death Valley some dozen or more years back. Think my ex and I were the only ones in that particular area at the time - sure didn't see anyone else on the road. Our white Toyota Camry Solara apparently made a really good target against that scorching hot blacktop.

 

I've seen the F-22 demo team a couple of times. They do put on a great show. The capabilities of that plane are awesome.

 

No sense putting smoke generators on a CC coded fighter. Unless you mounted one where the external tanks are fitted.

 

Montgomery is Saturday. Practice day is tomorrow. Both F-22s are parked 90 degrees left of this pic of our T-28s...I didn't want the Raptors in the pic because they were doing maintenance on the weapons bays at the time. Should be a great weekend.
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I saw the same in Melbourne, FL. Absolutely beautiful demonstration and, at times, appears to defy gravity.

A gotta see for those who haven't. And a must see again as well.

 

F-22 at Montgomery today...

Our T-28s parked between two of the coolest planes in history!
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Very cool.

Red tails in the Raptor?

 

No smoke generators but if the humidity is right...

I pics I took were very similar to these.


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Those pics are all great, thanks! I've seen the Raptor demo 3 times now and it never gets old. Twice at JSOH @ Andrews and once at the Tuscaloosa Air show. The demo team had 2 Raptors at Andrews with only 1 used throughout the weekend. However, Tuscaloosa never had the Raptor on the ground. It flew in from wherever, did its performance, and flew off in the distance. Any ideas why? I'm guessing security issue as I'm not aware of a national guard setup on the airport like Birmingham and Montgomery have. I'm typing this with the sound of AZ ANG F16s flying over my place here heading to Tucson. I never get tired of the sound of freedom.

 

Some skin-tight cloth covers to make it fit in with the red-tailed Vipers of the Bama Air Guard.

 

Awesome! Thanks for posting this. I was debating going to the Pensacola show this year. I live right on the flight line for the base and have watched the Blue Angels practice every year right overhead for the past 39 years but I have never seen the F22 in person! We had a F35 demo at the annual show but it was just a few passes and that was it. I've been spoiled living this close to the base and see all kinds of planes but this has got me pumped up. The Raptor is my favorite jet and I can't wait!

 

What is the price tag for each F22? I heard a number today on the news that put it at $425M a copy. That seems high but even at $300 million a copy that is a lot of money for a single plane. Don't get me wrong I love the aircraft but I never gave much thought to the price tag.

 

The cost per plane is artificially high due to the fact that so few were made... so not apples and oranges compared to other planes.

 

I don't know if I'd describe it as "artificially high." Taking the program cost ($67b?) and dividing it by the number of planes is actually accurate considering you can't build a plane without that specific R&D and tooling. Excluding those sunk costs to only look at flyaway cost is probably more artificial and making it lower than it really is. Sure there is some overlap with transferring research onto future planes, but the same applies in what was learned from prior gens that helped develop the F22. $150 million flyaway cost was a good price and they messed up by cutting production short.