The Blue Angels

So, that thing I said I'd post about that was fun instead of political but I needed to go through all the pictures first? Yep. Here it is!

I've blogged before about the excellent air show put on annually in Rexburg, one of the few worthwhile things to see there.

This year they skipped the air show, because the Blue Angels came to Idaho Falls, and no matter how good your show is (Rexburg puts on one of the best), you can't compete with that. So several of the planes that regularly show off in Rexburg were in Idaho Falls, instead. And this time, I had a great camera to capture it all!

I'm going to try doing this a bit differently. Instead of embedding dozens of high-resolution photos in this post, and making the page take forever to load, I'm just embedding a few of my very favorites. The rest I've sorted and posted to my gallery at deviantART, and I recommend you check them out there. You can download the full resolution images to use as desktop backgrounds or whatever. I'm thinking of ordering one or two as prints, and if I'm satisfied with the quality for the price charged by dA, I'll make them available there as prints, too.

Any of you who know me or read my previous air show post know that the best plane ever is the P-51 Mustang. Also, this is my favorite plane. (That it's the best is a fact; that it's my favorite is just my opinion.) A particularly cool thing at this airshow was a flyby of a Mustang with the more modern F-16 Fighting Falcon, which served a similar role to the Mustang:

There wasn't as much emphasis on the Mustang at this show as there is in Rexburg, but at least it was there, and had its chance to show off. Greg Poe was there to do his aerobatic routine, which is always fun to watch:

A popular act at the air show each year is an aerobatic routine in a Beechcraft Model 18, popularly known as the "Twin Beech". The reason this routine is so unique is that it is a plane not at all suited to aerobatics (it was designed for such uses as cargo carrying and aerial firefighting). Flying this plane like they do at the show is like drift racing an eighteen-wheeler.

Kyle Franklin was there to fly his Twin Beech, and did not disappoint:

And, with a hint of what's to come in this post:

Are you getting excited? No? Look at that picture again. How about now? Good!

Kyle Franklin wasn't done, though. He followed this up with another routine, in which his wife Amanda stands on the wing of his "Mystery Ship", and performs a "pirate" show. This was tons of fun:

I have a new goal in life: Stand on top of an airplane while the pilot performs an aerobatic routine.

There was more, too, but those were the best highlights except for the final, main act: The Blue Angels. Ooooooh, yes. I have wanted to see these guys for forever. You'd think that having expectations set so high for so long can only lead to disappointment, but you'd be thinking of things not as cool as the Blue Angels, 'cause they lived up to the hype and then some. My brother and I managed to get pretty much as close as was possible to the show without being in the special VIP area for friends and family of the performers. We were just a couple hundred feet, if that, from "center point" of all the maneuvers.

These guys are amazing. Angels 1 through 4 perform fly-bys in formation, and while they circle around 5 and 6 play chicken, performing "knife-edge" passes. Except for a couple slow "dirty" passes, all the maneuvers are at 400 to 600 mph, and at that speed they fly at a "minimum separation" of 18 inches apart. That's close enough that if they could open their canopies, they could reach out and grab their wingman's wingtip. And when they fly by a mere couple hundred feet away at 600 mph, the thunder makes every bone in your body shake. It is a truly awesome experience, and if you ever have the opportunity to see them perform, take it.

In fact, I predict that a man can find himself at the final Judgment after he dies and hear these words: "Well, you've lived a perfect life, except for one thing: You had the chance to see the Blue Angels, and you decided to feed homeless people and take a stray sick puppy to the vet instead, and also you ended war forever. What are you, stupid? We can't let you in to Heaven, sorry."

That last picture reminds me about how I forgot to take sunscreen, and I got super, super sunburned, and didn't even care because it was totally worth it.

I took quite a few photos, and these are the best of the best, but the rest of the best are here in my Airplanes folder at my deviantART gallery. Please take a look!