Edwards AFB Weekend show for the troops

Beautiful vehicle and that color is amazing

 

Love that F-104

 

It's in front of the Test Pilot School.... If memory serves its an NF-104 but it's been maybe 4 years since I have been out there

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_NF-104A

That A-10 in the other pics is also special... It's in front of the AFFTC (Air Force Flight Test Center) museum which is basically the first thing you get to driving in from the main gait from Rosamond. It's one of two 2 seat A-10s, one was made from the factory and the other was rebuilt from a damaged airframe if memory serves.

Overall Edwards has a lot of cool stuff on display if you have the opportunity to drive around. Balls 8 (B-52 0008) which was used for a ton of drop tests is on display at the back gate as of a few years ago. There is a small display of unique aircraft outside the front gat including a F-106 (maybe it was a 102?) with a special side by side seating arraignment. The base museum has some other cool stuff like B-58 escape pods. While you are in the area the Blackbird airport outside Plant 42 in Palmdale has some neat Blackbird airframes and other unique stuff.

 

Here's my contribution from the weekend.
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First photo with the Lamborghini looks like it is in front of the only two seat A-10. Theory was to fit LANTIRN pods on her with a WSO in the back. Trouble was, no way for the nav pod TFR to hook up to the flight controls, which are pretty basic, so it would have been manual flying using TFR commands. Never went anywhere and improved NVGs pretty much filled the need for night navigation, at any rate, and a targeting pod only took care of employing PGMs.

 

I don't know for sure, but most respected plane nut sites write off the second two-holer A-10 to urban legend. 664 is suposedly the one and only. Strangely, while smacks at the Academy, we had to remember that there were two, as part of our general knowledge.

 

Great stuff!

As noted in the other thread, the SR-71 is just *stunning!*

Thanks for sharing,
Cheers,
Ian

 

Probably one of those things where the AF was gonna build a second one and that became part of the accepted corporate dogma and then they never got around to building it.

 

Looking forward to them moving the museum outside of the security gate. Many more things will be put on display.

No pics of the B52, so awesome?

My son is based on base as it were......We have been lucky to see these several times, go early and watch/hear the cowboy flight support team disappear straight up.......What a job they have....