Once again, here I am in my basement sanding styrene when I hear an unusual moan coming from Nashville International Airport. I dive out of the door just in time to see something HUGE going over at about 1,000’ agl. Not sure what it was, but it had four wing-mounted turbofans (different sound from turbojets), sort of short and wide (well, actually long and WIDE!), and a flattened area on the bottom where the gear boggies would be. It could have been a C-5 or a C-141 but it was white and had a green band around the fuselage. Not a DC-8, 9, or 10. Not a 707, 727, 737, 747, 767. Too short and wide and most of those have the wrong engine configuration anyway. AN-124 maybe? There have been a couple of those in and out of BNA but I don’t know what they look like from the bottom.
I have (2) 35mm SLR cameras, a 35mm rangefinder camera, an old 120 camera, and a digital camera. Why are the NEVER where I am when I need them?
I know the feeling Scott… I was outside last summer and heard a dual engine plane at a cruising speed… looked up out of curiousity and it was a WWII era Beechcraft SNB-5 just toodling along with an immaculate white with orange rudders and wing tips paint job… just shining in the sun…
::Sigh:: I think it is a curse… like the day the pair of apaches were hovering over the lake, drifting along like nobodies business… all I could do was stare, and think about the 500 ft back to the house and if I would miss it if I went to get the camera…
Unexpected events happen quickly, so unless you have a camera around your neck at all times, they will never get caught on film or pixels. Sad fact of life.
I also find that unexpected events happen unexpectedly. Liike that time I was in Roswell… haha just kidding. An antonov in nashville? That would be cool.
i am finding that it is not so much bad timing with having a camera, but bad timing with where i am. i have seen some fantastic sites. but have not been able to record them. someday i will.
yawl need 3G cellphones with built in cameras and video fuctions. that way, you can recod grainy low res video, and take wonderful blurry snapshots of whatever you saw ! [;)]
This is nothing but downright sad, but I’ve been stuck in this town (except for a brief business trip to Atlanta last month, trapped in the belly of a Delta 767 both ways) so long the last time I saw an interesting aircraft was on 9/11 you-know-when. I had just regained my wits after watching the towers fall one after the other out my bedroom window, then, after what seemed only a half-hour later, I heard the unmistakable thundering of tactical aircraft, and looked up just in time to see a tight two-ship of F-15s, then later, around noon, F-16’s circling Manhattan.
I need to get to an airshow soon, if for no other reason than to help erase that image. And to hear the music of Merlins in the air. I’ll always be a jet fancier, specifically from the age when jets were loud, drank fuel like water through a firehose (which was how a Thud in afterburner pretty much literally drove fuel through that mighty J-75’s rear end), and made a sound like the earth itself was opening up when they flew over.
But for some reason, lately I keep thinking back to visions of Oshkosh, or even Wings Over Houston, and hearing that pair of Spits, or a four-ship of Mustangs, or that flight of two Mossies and two Spits tearing up the field in one formation I’m alway going on about that one year at Oshkosh. What is it with us that what makes others do the sane thing and cover their ears, while we hear music in the same sound?
I’ll bet almost every man-jack one of us, hearing what MC did, would have jumped up, run up out of the basement and outside to see what kind of machine was flying overhead, while every other person on the block would be annoyed at the sound.
Tom
A few years back I was lucky to meet Frank Borman and Elmer Ward who were passing through to Fun In the Sun in Florida and a weather front forced them to spend the night. A buddy had invited me to go fly with him in his Cub, actually an L-4, and there were these two beautiful P-51’s on the ramp. I commented to Elmer who owns Man-O-War that they didn’t pass close to my house or I would have heard those Rolls Royce Merlins and been outside in a flash. He grinned, and said, “You know, I still do the same thing!”.
There were a pair of them here earlier this year. I didn’t see them, just heard about them after they were gone (gonna have to talk to my contacts at the airport about them telling me this stuff when it’s too late to get there). I was told that they were over here to pick up freight to haul to Iraq.
BNA doesn’t get a lot of military traffic, but we get some. I was working on a model back in the summer and heard the unmistakeable moan of something military and got outside just in time to see twin vertical stabs disappearing through the trees. I was trying to get to sleep one night and heard something military blast out of the airport. And then there was the time the F-14 fell out of the air about a mile from my house.
But, Tom, you are right. I cannot help trying to get outside and see what they are before they are gone. And I’m probably one of the few i nthe flight path that thinks it’s music and not noise. They can fly over my house any day, any time.
Yeah. I love that. Whatever I’m doing, watching TV even, I’ll stop and sprint utsode to see what it is. I’m hoping to see a dogfiht. I’m watching the history channel. I hear a loud thundering noise, I run outside and see an F/A-18 engaged in a dog might with a MiG-29 Fulcrum… man that would be cool… assuking neither of the pilots got killed that is.
Once when I was still living at Langley AFB I saw 2 SU-27’s and a AN-74 landing on the runway I was so shocked to see the enemy(I forgot that the cold war was over) landing on a American air base.
About half a month ago I was eating my lunch in a small restaurant here in Brno, when this increadible thumping sound was coming overhead, I finished my lunch and got outside to see a Czech air force Hind gunship come over at no more than 500 feet. It did a couple of flights over that end of town like that and then left. Guess who didn’t have his camera?
When I was leaving Canada to come here back in July, some aircraft from the Indian air force had stopped at the Edmonton IAP enroute to an excercize in Alaska. Two Illyushin Midas Tankers, two Illyushin Candid transports and six Sepecat Jaguars and me with no camera.
I saw some sort of biplane flying over Brno about a month and a half ago, it was fairly large with just one engine so I though it was an Antonov AN-2 Colt, but a second look showed slightly swept wings, so it couldn’t be that. No picture, but I’m still wondering exactly what it was. Maybe some old interwar Aero built type that had been restored or something.
I live about a 1/2 mile to the left of centerline for runway 31 at Scott AFB, in southwest Illinois. Scott is a good intermediate stopover for anything transiting coast to coast and some of the UPT trainers on their cross-country nav legs. Several of the Russian planes and of course Brit and German have visited. I usually have a cheap, range finder type 35mm with me and have snapped a few half way decent shots. If the plane seems really interesting, I drive out to the base and take a few shots from the perimeter road around the runwy and parking apron. The security folks are not too happy about on base photography after 9-11 though.[:(]
Up here we don’t get tons of military stuff. But we do see the Montana ANG with their F-16’s quite a bit. Hill AFB F-16’s travel through here a lot. We do see quite a few old warbirds. The airport here can’t handle the big transports except for C-17 and C-130 since they can do short field stuff. After 9/11 during the no-fly days afterward, Montana’s airspace was used for a lot of the air to air refueling tracks. It was cool to see a KC-135 dragging fighters or bombers. But too high for decent photos.
Hi guys,
I live in a little town(pop 1600± ) with a civvy airport about 5 miles down the road. As I passed by one day, navigating by road was a bright orange civvie CH- 46. Like everyone else, I had no camera in the car, so I sat and watched as it landed, taxied up to the pumps, and did a hot (engines on ) refuel; turned and taxied out to the active, and then took off. Most frustrating and satisfying 15 minutes I ve had in a while.
I know the case, I wish I had the ability to see into the future and have been there with my camera a couple months ago when an AN-124 blew over the 172 that was taxiing too close behind it, they said it stood on it’s nose for about ten seconds before going right over, and I was sitting at school about two minutes away. that would have been a great shot.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Flight school 101 … DON’T follow to closely behind big jets! I’ve been in 172’s and 152’s taxiing behind big stuff, and I promise you can feel the engine vortices trying to twist you around. I’ve never had one try to twist me over though [:0]