Eagles in the air!

The F-15 Eagle has been the extreme power of the skies since its release in the 70's.  It was designed for BVR or beyond visual range kills.  It has a massive radar that can reach out miles out of visual range.  It was outfitted with radar Sparrow missiles and infared (heat seaking missiles) called Sidewinders.  These two missiles were new, unlike the F-4 Phantom's missiles that would fail to lock or if you pull to many G's they would not work.  But the F-15's are a new generation of missiles,  they are called all aspect missiles, which means you can pull 10 G's and the missiles will still fire.  But if the missiles fail this time the jet has a 20 MM cannon.  The cool thing is that we supply Israel with jets and weapons, but the F-15 was a huge success there, they actually scored the first kills for the F-15 they had one I.R (heatseaking) kill, one radar kill, and one gun kill.  In Israel they have the most amazing pilots for their jets they have a rule in training where you have to keep the piper (aiming tool) on target for 2-4 seconds because thats how long it takes for the bullets to impact and shoot down the enemy.  So when the first kills where reported the guy who got the first gun kill got more attention than the other guys.

The F-86 Sabre

This beautiful aircraft you're looking at is the F-86 Sabre. This beauty served in the Korean war. It was designed to achieve air superiority or air dominance, which was the same mission as the P-51 and is still the mission of the F-15 Eagle and teh F-22. It had six .50 caliber machine guns (same as on the P-51). During the Korean war America had jets but they all had straight wings, where they just stick out like a rusty canon on a sunken ship, but the F-86 was a new design, that we had learned from the Germans. Germany had learned that jets worked better with a swept wing, Russia and America took the idea and used it well. When the Korean war started North Korea had lots of man power and tanks but they had a very primitive air force, we took control of the skies after just a few weeks of air combat and we pounded the North Koreans from above, but soon a new Russian built fighter stated attacking, this was the Mig 15, it was a swept wing fighter that had two 23 milimeter cannons and a 37 milimeter cannon, which is roughly the size of a coke can. The Mig 15 was designed to shoot down B-29 SuperFortress bombers, thats why it had such big guns. The Mig was light weight and could climb and turn better than the F-86 but we had one advantage that pretty much won the war, we had better pilots. The North Koreans had young untrained pilots, while we put our pilots through rigorous training.  Russia was using North Korea as a training ground for new pilots, this was against the "laws" of war but soon they started putting instructors instead of students and that's when our pilots actually started having problems with the Migs

Crazy Sean

Personally I think Sean Tucker is one of the best aviators to ever have lived. He pulls some of the coolest maneuvers ever. He does the harrier which is an STOVL air craft which means Short Take Off or Vertical Landing. He goes straight up and goes full throttle and just sits there like a harrier but it looks like a helicopter. He also does a pass where he uses his rudder to tilt the air craft so he is facing diagonally up but is heading straight down the runway he then gets patched through to the speakers they have set up and as he flies by he says hi to certain people that he sees like hey you in the red shirt yeh you wave. Sean flies a one of a kind air plane called Oracle Challenger. Sean wanted an aircraft that could do everything he wanted like pull 7-8 maybe even 9 positive G's I don't remember, and 5-6 or 7 negative G's. G's by the way is the amount of gravity like say some thing weighs 10 lbs if it pulls 2 G's it will weigh 20 lbs so G's just multiplies the force of gravity to your mass so you weigh more if you pull positive G's if you pull negative G's it's the same concept but instead of getting pushed into your seat you get pulled out. All of our pilots wear G suits which is a little contraption that fits around the pilots thighs and when he/she pulls positive G's air goes into the harness and squeezes the thighs so it pushes blood back into the pilot's brain if the pilot pulls to many G's they can black out because lack of blood flow to the brain or get a grey out which is they can still see, hear, fell and talk but you can't see and if you pull to many negative G's they can get a red out which is to much blood to the brain and some times your eyes start to bug out a little. I think it took about a year or two to design and build the Challenger and every year after the air show season is over the mechanic crew disassembles the air craft to check for worn parts or to put new avionics or new safety measures.

A-10 Thunderbolt II

The A-10 was named the thunderbolt II after the P-47 thunderbolt which was the toughest aircraft to fly in World War II it could lose a cylinder and still fly and it had 8 50. caliber machine guns.Although the A-10's real name is the Thunderbolt II it's pilots call it the warthog because it's ugly, but the pilots still love it.  The A-10 was named after the P-47 because of it's ruggedness, it could lose half of a wing and an engine and still fly and land easily.  The A-10 was being designed during the Vietnam War.  It has two turbofan engines that were taken from an airliner because they give off less heat to reduce the heat profile that heat seeking missiles see.  It has a lot of hard points or places to put bombs and missiles, because of the long wings and the ruggedness of the design.  It also has a 37 millimeter gatling gun the bullet caseing is about as big as a soda can and the cannon has six rotating barrels so it won't overheat and the gun has so much power that a couple rounds will destroy a tank because the bullet has a depleted uranium tip.  If the pilot holds the trigger down to long the recoil from the gun could actually stop the aircraft.

Heavy Hercules

This is the C-130 Hercules. It has plenty of variants a few are transports for troops, vehicles, or supplies. Another is the AC-130 Hercules which is ground attack. It uses a howitzer cannon and a larger caliber gatling gun. There was one variant that had rockets to give it a fast take off like JATO (jet assisted take off). It was designed to land in a soccer stadium to rescue prisoners. it was used only in tests and it crashed, no one was killed.  The Hercules has served for a very long time and I'm sure it will serve much longer.

Thunder Birds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (if you want to see some good sample footage go to kaizenvideopro.com)

The Thunderbirds were created to show the people of the U.S. the capabilities of the Air Force's aircraft. This year the Thunderbirds have received brand new block 52 F-16s. One fact about the Thunderbird's aircraft are they don't have a gun, they have been removed to make room for the environmentally friendly smoke system.