This may be a repost, but even if it is, well worth watching again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4vrV-pbJ8g Art
If you want to see low flying, high speed military action book a flight to Wales and go to the "Mach Loop" most of the A/C are flying below you and you are quite close to the action. http://www.vimeo.com/1433828
Thats a pretty cool vid. I liked the a-10 flyover, that was really cool. The guys skimming their gear on water?!?!?!?! how do their balls fit in the cockpit?? And ROFL at the guy at the end "F-ck ME......."
By leaving their brains on the ground? Russian Roulette doesn't discriminate between talent and luck.
Are these low enough? (Yeah, I know the first one's fake, but I don't think that any of the others is!) Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Then, of course, there's the "normal" approach to St. Maarten. But I think this one's even lower than usual for that: Image Unavailable, Please Login
What is it Bob Hoover says: "It's not how close you can get to the ground, it's how precise can you fly the airplane. If you feel so careless with your life that you want to be the world's lowest-flying aviator, you might do it for a while. But there are a lot of friends of mine who aren't with us anymore because they cut their margins too close."
St. Maarten is well know for its low approaches, here is perhaps the lowest one recorded of a KLM 747 landing there. If you go there today you can still see the end results of this landing. There is a square patch on the chevrons where the MLG took out a chunk then it touched down hard. http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=5970788
The "Human Fly" made a few appearances back in 1976. I believe this photo is from the Reno Air Races. On one of the flights they encountered rain. He was seriously injured and required hospitalization.
which one is art maybe next time I'm on the chairlift at squaw valley I can take one. faa might want to see that! just kidding, never happened y'know ...
It is always easier to fly low when you have a height reference like a building, range tower, trees, boat/ship etc. Most difficult over water with not many whitecaps and low visibility, like typical European weather of 1500'/3 nm. 75'-100' OK, lower very dangerous. Below 100' gets you a foul on British sea ranges and your bomb score does not count or counts as a huge number, ruining your qualifying CEP. Safer at 200' on TFR, where the horizon is still only 22.8 nm away due to Earth curvature. Taz Terry Phillips
I've flown "nap of the earth" missions in a Kiowa chopper with 444 squadron in Europe during NATO Reforger exercises back in the late 70's when I was posted as a recce observer for our tank unit. Pretty freaky stuff even for a 19 year old and hard to get used to because you are scared s_ _ _ less most of the time. You are also hanging out the door over the skid and strapped into the chopper so you don't fallout. The pilot usually was no more than 20' above the nearest obstacle and doing 75 knots. Here's my favorite low level video........German F-4 set to AC/DC....... http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qqz3_german-f4-phantom-ii-crazy-low-leve_tech Terry...... Read a book about early UK based Thud pilots in the 60's and it said they did a lot of their low level training over water at about 100' and mach 1.1......guys said they used to set the elevator trim tabs (as a safety feature) so that if they didn't maintain some forward pressure on the stick to stay level, they would climb if it was released.
The Thunderbirds and Blue Angels use the same technique. Trimmed up so you have more feel for what you are doing in very close formation. Neutral trim would give much less feel for the very minute corrections in flight controls and throttles. Throttle friction was also set very stiff for the same reason. Incidentally, Thud pilots exaggerate, just like the rest of us. A J-75 (F-105/106) turbojet engined fighter had less than 10 minutes of fuel at mach 1.1 low level in afterburner, so you better do it close to your home base or you were screwed. An F-111 burned 120,000 lbs per hour in max AB, and the single J-75 was way worse than our two TF-30s turbofans and we carried 34,000 lbs of internal fuel, way more than they did. 100' is a manageable altitude by a competent pilot. Lower than that takes too much concentration for a real mission. One thing to hit 100' passing over a ridge top or through a pass, another to fly there for an extended period of time and still be capable of killing something when you reach your target area. Incidentally, the only reason to fly low level except for having fun is to avoid threats. In Desert Storm, we flew low level only for four days out of forty, after which all our attacks were done from 12,000' or higher, 12,000' being the max effective altitude of 57 mm AAA. Taz Terry Phillips
I just read an article that pilot morale is going up in Afghanistan - since they can't just bomb the shi* out of anything with a Taliban in it, they have to do low level high speed passes to scare them into submission. Apparently that is more fun than dropping a bomb from 10-20k feet and flying in a straight line
Alex- We gave the Afghans a bunch of Stingers when they were fighting the Russians. Here is hoping the Taliban does not have any stashed. Could ruin your whole day. Even a 14.5 mm MG could cause some serious damage, as could a golden BB AK-47 round. Taz Terry Phillips
Terry...... I imagined the burn rate at low altitude was pretty fast.........from what I remember in the book the guy said they did the supersonic stuff over water solely to keep the Brit population appeased.
Kds- Nearly all the ranges in the UK were overwater or very close to the coast so overwater approaches were possible. Supersonic overwater was possible, but even obeying the 3 nm limit made too much noise along the coast and would get you noise complaints. Plus the whole coast was crawling with ships and going supersonic too near one could cause serious damage due to overpressure (blowing out portholes, bursting eardrums, and damaging instruments). In the old days of the 1980s, it was actually possible to fly low level almost completely around the UK if you knew what you were doing. Many more restrictions now and not possible as the old line to noise complaints of "Did they have red stars? No. Please contact us again when they do." does not work anymore. Plus much more restricted or controlled airspace now. All over Europe, the maximum airspeed for low levels has been lowered considerably from the early 80s. Times change. No threat equals no tolerance from civilians. Taz Terry Phillips
I miss the days when we were kids and sonic booms were a regular occurrence. Back then the fighter pilots had to actually try to do it.
