VMFA-112 was in town today (F/A-18 squadron)

I'm sitting here at home today watching the American LeMans race when the house shakes thanks to a noise that can only be one thing: Fighter jets. Weekend visits aren't too uncommon here so I think nothing of it until there's another one almost immediately afterwards and this time distinct sound of afterburners went along with it. The second jet made the first one sound nearly dead silent so I was a little curious as to what was going on. I hopped in my car and headed down to the airport to see what was up. As I got there I noticed the two I heard parked next to two others. Sweet! The pilots were just getting out and strangely enough walked up to me as they were leaving the planes to say hello. I asked why one plane was so silent and one was in such a hurry and he advised that the first was a victim of a bird strike that took out one of the engines. In fact, both planes took bird strikes but only one lost an engine. They were nearing the airport when it happened so they dumped fuel and then made a landing.

The pilots were all EXTREMELY nice and talked to those of us who were there to check them out. They let us check them out up close and in person. All of them said flying their planes never gets old and that they had the best jobs in the world. Can't disagree there. The squadron was the VMFA-112 Cowboys located out of Ft. Worth. They were in town doing a fly-over for a memorial service at Richards Gebaur AFB. All of them spoke of how proud and happy they were to be able to do it for these people and how much pride they took in doing it.

Here's a photo album of some shots I took of the planes while I was there:

http://s401.photobucket.com/albums/pp98/teh_usernamez0r/VMFA-112%20Cowboys/

I'm uploading two videos to Youtube now. One of one of the planes firing up, and one of them taking off (and showing off a little too).

 

Nice pics.......but I really miss the 60's and 70's Navy and Marines color schemes.

 

Videos are up. Sorry about the wind noise, it's really windy here in Kansas today and the microphone on my camera is pretty sensitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzezSs-TihE (Starting up)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJPSWtnV2eA (Taking off)

 

Beautiful machines and beatiful music from the engines. Good job to go down and get a closer look. We had the good fortune to attend the air show at Miramar yesterday and got to see demos from the Harrier, F-16, F-18 and F-22. The Blue Angels flew as well. We stayed for the night show which featured an F-18 making afterburner passes - amazing visual at night to see the stream of flame out the back.

 

very cool..love the shot on the intake with what was left of the bird

 

I didn't see them "show off" on take off. They kept below 450kts on the deck. (Now, they may have been close to 450, but I doubt exceeding it...by much.)

Just gobbling up airspeed prior to climb out...

 

Always fun when unexpected hardware pays a visit to your town. We have a little 1400ft strip down the road from our house- back in April I got a call from my wife asking if I could think of any reason why a large number of black SUVs and motorcycle cops would be parked on the street in front of the airport. Turns out we were paid a visit by the Commander in Chief, on his way to visit a FEMA bunker a couple of towns over...

Gio P
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what a waste of our taxes