Blue Angels at NAS Patuxent River, MD
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We had glorious weather all three days of this Labor Day weekend. On
the first day the family headed south to Patuxent River Naval Air Station
for their annual airshow featuring the Blue Angels. Pax River is the
home of the U.S. Navy's Test Pilot School and Squadron. It's a great
place for an airshow -- a huge open area in which you have clear
visibility in all directions.
An A-10 Warthog and F-86 Sabre were flying around when we arrived. |
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Not a great shot but you get the idea.
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Lynnnette, Maggie and Maggie's friend Blair checking out the jets. |
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This skywriting was performed by the "Geico Skywriters", a formation team
consisting of six T-6s. They fly in a line abreast formation and
turn on their smoke at precise times to make very readable words. |
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| One of the keys to enjoying an
airshow is bring good quality folding chairs! |
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| Another nice thing about this
airshow was that the crowd was allowed to sit fairly close to the main
runway. We could see the Blue Angel pilots and aircrew do their thing
with preflight, startup and taxi. |
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The Geico Skywriters. |
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The Blue Angels. Simply spectacular. The crowd loved them.
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I'm standing in front of a T-2C Buckeye which used to be the Navy's
intermediate jet trainer. It has been replaced by the T-45 Goshawk,
but the test squadron still keeps one around. I had five flights in
the backseat 24 years ago as part of my NFO training syllabus. It
was cool. The T-2 may look chunky but a jet's a jet. |
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I didn't take the remaining pictures on this page. I don't know
who took them, but they are floating around on the internet, and really
capture the impressiveness of the Blue Angels flying. That's
Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in the lower left of this shot.
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| The is the Blue Angels logistic
transport C-130, called Fat Albert, doing a jet assisted takeoff. They
did this at the airshow and it was most impressive. The C-130 also did
a high speed, low pass which was neat. |
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| What can you say? |
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| It's unbelievable how close the
Blue Angels fly in their tight formations. |
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| Wow. |
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