Life is a Curious Quest

Miramar Air Show

Today one of the guys from my suite and I went to the Miramar Air Show at the Marine base near UCSD. It was awesome. We had to park a ways out to avoid the traffic, so it was a pretty good walk in, but it was definitely worth it.

The huge open area around the runway was full of older military aircraft and ground vehicles, so we checked those out first while the show went on over our heads. There was some pretty cool stuff out there, like a humvee with some kind of rocket launcher attachment on the back. There was also some kind of assault buggy on display that had two large machine guns, one in the back and one for the passenger. Pretty intense. On the back of one of the machine gun-equipped humvees they had a sign that said "Stay back 100 feet or you will be shot" in English on the top and in some kind of Arabic on the bottom.

We went and stood in the free blanket seating once I heard the announcement that the next plane to come out was the Harrier. Needless to say, it was pretty amazing. To start, the jet shot by the bleachers real quick, then came back by slowly until it came to a hovering stop. It hovered for a second, then started going backwards in midair. I must say, that is quite a sight. The demonstration finished up with a vertical landing, then another takeoff going straight up. He hovered upward at first, then started pointing the plane skyward and shot straight up like a rocket. Very impressive.

The last show was the Thunderbirds, a group of six F-16s that are equivalent to the Blue Angels for the Air Force. By far my favorite part of the show, it mostly consisted of amazing formation flying by four of the planes and crazy stunts by the other two. Four of the jets would fly in a diamond formation so tight that they seemed like a single unit. They did all kinds of things while staying in formation, like a complete barrel roll and switching to different formations. The other two did the classic "chicken" manuever where they flew straight at each other and then turned to their sides and out of the way, made super high-speed passes, and flew upside-down, side-ways, and any other way you could imagine. Occasionally one of these pilots would pop out from behind you extremely fast and loud while your attention was on the other four, with great effect. At the end of the show, all the pilots came together into a six-plane formation and did some cool flybys. The thing that struck me most about the show was the smoothness and steadiness of the flying. All of the movements seemed so perfect and sure, making it just that much more impressive.

Amazing for a free show, I had a great time.