Loud Enough To Shake Your Brain Loose

[n2ize]

Must be a Memorial day air show around here somewhere.. A couple of what looked like CH-47's passed over my yard nice and low.twice today. Once heading southeast and a few hours later heading the opposite way. I forget how damned LOUD those things are. You don't just hear them, you FEEL them. I thought they were going to shake the roof off the place. Nice stuff. I wish they'd come by more often.

[N8YX]

There's an ANG post right across the freeway from where I work, and the squadron regularly trains in the Chinook. We see them flying low and slow all the time.

[kb2crk]

We have an ANG post about 8 miles from here. Chinooks happen a couple times a week. every so often we see blackhawks and once I was surprised to see a couple Cobras.

[NQ6U]

Lots of Navy and Marine chopper traffic around these parts, I see some big ol' honkin' heli pretty much every day. The Osprey is beginning to show up now and then as well. Those are rather bizarre craft.

[n2ize]

Around here we don;t get much in the way of interesting air traffic. Mostly just commercial and business air traffic and occasionally police operations.

[N7YA]

Ive not heard a helicopter as loud as the Sky Crane that flew low and directly over my house a number of years ago....i thought the place was going to come down!

[suddenseer]

I live under Wright-Patterson's NE landing vector. I see all kinds of aircraft every day. I don't even pay attention to it any more. I did hear engines i am not familiar with. Went outside, it was 3 B-29's. One does not see that everyday.

[N7YA]

Whoa! No, one does not.

I cant tell you how enamoured i am with the rumble of radial engines. The song of another era right there. Seeing only ONE B-29 would be cool...but 3? Awesome!

[NQ6U]

I cant tell you how enamoured i am with the rumble of radial engines. The song of another era right there.

Yeah! I remember watching a guy in a T-6 Texan doing aerobatics at an airshow once. Compared to the guy in the Pitts Special who preceded him, it was pretty mundane stuff but the sound was fabulous.

[N7YA]

Ill be honest, at air shows, i rarely watch the high performance stuff, i already know what theyre capable of. But ill always perk up and look to the skies when i hear the rumble of round engines. When i was a kid growing up in Alaska, there were plenty of them up there, thats where old planes go to live out their lives working as cargo ships. Slow, noisy, hard to find parts for, but easy to work on, reliable and tough...perfect for the frozen north.

My dad was USAF, but he wanted to make supplemental income so he worked a rental car counter inside the inbound MAC terminal at Elmendorf, as opposed to leaving me home, he would just take me to work with him every day. So i got to hang out right next to the runway (could never do that post 9/11), i would see all sorts of planes coming and going...C-130's and C-141's were the norm. The occasional C-5 was always a treat. I was hanging out there when T-33's and F-4's were based there, and i watched them phase out the Phantoms and replace them with the brand new F-15's. I watched all sorts of things land, DC-8's, 707's...including the Canadian PM's 707, and when they took off, the pilot forgot to take the flag down from above the cockpit, so he flew away with this poor flag hanging on for dear life. Im sure its still sitting out there, all tattered and old, in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness somewhere. Saw a Canberra land there using the tail hook/arresting line they had set up. The very first Argosy was based out of there too. As well as a noisy old DC-2 that would come from a hanger way off to the side...it had to taxi across an active road to get to the airfield.


It was a very influential time for me, i got to know a colonel, he asked me what school i went to, i told him, he asked who my teacher was, i said "Mean, nasty fat Mrs. Brown! Shes a jerk!"...he started chuckling, i said "You heard of her?", he said "Thats my wife"...DOH! Early lesson in holding my toungue despite my emotional desire to speak my mind whenever i damn well felt like it. He used to let me back into the Base Ops (again, a serious no-go post 9/11), i went on FOD runs down the runway with him in the blue station wagon, picking up anything we found. I used to hang with visiting pilots, got to go up in the tower..all sorts of cool shit just wouldnt happen today.

Im glad i got to experience that stuff. Now, when i hear a radial engine, i know right away, no matter where im at. I always rush to a window, or outside...catch these while you can!

[K7SGJ]

And a Merlin has a voice of it's own.

[N7YA]

Anything Rutan-built does.

[suddenseer]

Whoa! No, one does not.

I cant tell you how enamoured i am with the rumble of radial engines. The song of another era right there. Seeing only ONE B-29 would be cool...but 3? Awesome!There is a fly-in of B-29's every year at The Air Force Museum. They had one cut open that people can walk through. If you ever come to Dayton, you MUST allow at least 2 days. Admission is free!
I was in the crowd when the SR-71 Blackbird landed. They have several Air Force 1 crafts that you can walk through. Unfortunately, they lost the bid for a space shuttle.

They do have an example of about every aircraft ever made. Go to the website. Take the virtual tour. One could spend a month on their website.

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/index.asp

[N7YA]

Ok, thats just plain fucking cool! Hamvention AND a killer air museum...ive heard plenty about both, but never maded the trip. Must remedy this.

[n2ize]

When i was a kid living in Brooklyn I remember hearing the Constellations rumbling overhead on their way to and from Idlewild Airport. The sound of those engines was unforgettable.

BTW "Idlewild" airport is now what we call "Kennedy" airport. But in those days it was still Idlewild.

[N8YX]

Nothing like the sound of an old TU-22 Backfire. The USAF didn't need state-of-the-art radar to locate that plane; you could hear one approaching. :lol: