The show starts at 11:30, the gates to the field are opened at 10:30 and water and food are available by the volunteer organization. No bags or backpacks are allowed in, everything is inspected plus you need a picture ID. Once through security, you had a long walk over tarmac to the viewing location. Available are bleachers, rent chairs(not many), bring chairs or stand. You are in full sun the entire time. We roasted on the tarmac but it was worth it. This is probably the closest we will ever be to the Blue Angels since there is a limited crowd.
Things we learned:
The Blue Angels use old planes that are no longer aircraft carrier worthy. Boeing refurbs them before being turned over to the Blue Angels. Boeing update/sdeletes software, refurb the planes to make the air worthy again. The normal program in the F16s has all sorts of safeties built in the need to be removed for the Blue Angels, the speaker wasn't too specific as to what is removed.
The people selected for the Blue Angels(there are 3 new ones each year) for a total of 6 are selected by the flyers themselves. Pilots who want to be Blue Angels are invited to tag along with them for a while so that the Blue Angel pilots can get to know them. The Captain is the only person selected by the upper echelons of the military.
Each pilot needs a minimum of 1250 hours of tactical flying, about 6-7 years worth of flying before applying to a postion with the Blue Angels.
The smoke that is used from the planes is mostly paraffin and supposedly safe.
There are 6 Blue Angels and they will fly with 4, 5 or 6. The only time they will not fly is if the Captain is ill. He calls all the formations and does all the coordination when they fly.
60 support staff go with them for each show and a show is performed 3 days in a row each week during the season.
The show performed depends on the cloud cover. 1500', 4000' and 10000'. We saw a mix today since the clouds dispersed during the show.
Since we were at a practice session several formations were done twice as the Captain was not satisfied with the performance.
We had a low level flyover at 700mph(725mph breaks the sound barrier), very noisy. The speaker admited the plane could go up to 1450mph, we wonder how fast it could really go.
The entire performance is noisy. We were surprised kids weren't crying from the noise.
All in all we had a great, hot, very tiring day.
On Thursday we are leaving for Livingston, TX to get work done on our motor home and other odds and ends. We will be there for 1-2 weeks and then on to Oklahoma, New Mexico and Northern Arizona, unless there is snow.........
The Blog will start again once we start traveling.
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