NAS Oceana Airshow 2004

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

Hey all. First off I had NO camera. Sadly. Being an illustration major=EXPENSIVE SUPPLIES=NO money for camer..@least..YET

So first off my apologies for not being able to show stuff from there. Although my friend's did take pics and I can ask later. No promises though.

I got there around 12. After the long wait for the bus me and my lil bro and godbro walked the tarmac in search of cool stuff. The merchandise was expensive as hell as always. I was looking for some dragon warbirds but only saw some corgi's and static gear franklin mints. Nice but eh.......i want me some REMOVABLE or retrtactable gear!! Food was expensive as always, but however...

I DID score a ERTl Force One F-14!!! Dated 1993!!low viz wolfpack tampo prints and GLOSS paint job!! Only 10$ Definitely aged since box was faded and warped but still a GOOD awesome mint toy!! They had a bunch of those suckers. Too bad no mig29's or F-22's or other planes. Either way to find a F-14 Force one toy by ertl MOC(Mint On Card) after what 11 years? is f****n awesome. YES I opened it. Brings back memories. Oh how I crave a phantom. Makes me wonder why they stoppeed making these.

Anyhoo. We saw an F-14D painted with 2 types of squadron decals. VF-154 black knights on one side. While I believe swordsmen VF-32 on other side. WEird since black knights never for the D. Awesome scheme though. Lantirn, A2A supplement and mk 84 iron bombs on phoenix pallette.

Next up we saw a VF-11 red rippers F-14B. with bomb load. BTW the super tomcat was chained down and noone could go up to touch it. Since it was so awesome. LOL.

We proceeded and saw some hornets. a CAG bird F/A-18C. the wildcats CAG i believe. then we saw...SUPER hornets!! From VFA-106. Damn this thing is a lot bigger than i thought. Looked sleek and to me it is a beautiful plane...but you all know where I stand on its merits of replacing my most favorite god like plane of all time!! Anyways it was cool and I personally think it looks cool. So much I want the VFA-2 bounty hunters shornet F/A-18F from dragon when it comes out. I saw an E and an F model.

We saw a lone F-5F. NO F-16!!!! Some A-10 in low viz, and an F-15(I THInk!! i forgot lol). So we made our way down., and then we saw...the JSF!!!!!! It was in navy colors but I believe we either saw the A or C version. I couldn't tell. No tailhook. The X-35C proto i saw earlier was in pax river museum and that was on permanent display i believe, so I really couldnt tell if this one was a C or not. Not to mention it was ibn different decals. But it DID have the new laser!!! Its a gold looking triangular structure under the nose. It had AMRAAMs in internal pallettes...but it was expolsed!! so it looked cool. So while In though "hmm little pudgy"...

I also thougt...'damn this thing is HUGE!!" SAdly no JSF demo.

so then we made our way all the way to the side., perpendicular to the run way. We were RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PLANES BEING PREPPED AND READIED TO TAKE OFF!! right where they were parkec!! a mere 30-40ft away!! We saw pilots conversing then 20 minutes later entering the cockpit and starting up!! Let me tell you, it was an AWESOME sight and feeling!!! F-15 and Shjornet were fast in startup but the shortnet was faster. (prepping and readying). Hearing them engines roar is amazing. BTW the shortnet was an F model in VFA-103 markings. YEs that ugly ass low viz skull decal. with the skull smaller than usual. Still it looked okay and the shornet aint a bad looking bird.

WE saw the F-15C pilot readying and startting the plane up then going on the runway. BUT. it took long as hell before he could take off. SEE while he was getting ready, some prop plane took off abnd then snodgrass and his F-86 took off(holy crap this guy is GOOD!! AWESOME flight display!!)

and then finally the eagle ROARED off the runway!!. Very nice display.

So then the super hornet crew(who we thought was just standing there watching for the day) started putting flight gear on which only took like 5-10 minutes. then teh aviation techs came out and started doing the hand signals to tell the crew to turn the bird on and start engines. MAn it was LOUD. No wonder people back home are pissed this thing is moving in!!(hell i like the noise but then again i love planes). it started up and got ready FAST. But it had to wait its turn to fly right after the eagle and airforce legacy flyby with a P-51, A-10, F-15 and F-85. Meanwhile a legacy hornet CAG did a demo.

Sometime later the Super hornet FINALLY lifted off!! I was crackingup...it was SOOOOOO LOUD(louder than the eagle i think nad most other planes I saw there) and yet it was accelerating slow!!! It lifted off with a high pitch rate at an angle of about 70+ degrees. pretty breathtaking considering its take off seemed slow. Now while I watched this flight and was impressed, I couldnt help but think(man those test pilots in the magazines were right...this thing IS SLOWERR than the legacyt hornet!!) and it was. The legacy CAG before it was accelerating a lot faster than this plane. Anyhoo. It continued with the demo. Doing some high alpha turns. Which I thought was cool. And the usual touch and go landing. However it also demonstrated transitioon to mach 1. Now this thing was not only unreal to see but PHENOMENAL. The plane accelerated in a straight line. then you see the vapor form an arrow in teh plane as it seems. And then you hear a loud ass boom. simply BREATHTAKING nad awesome. I shall never forget this.

Afterwards it did a what can only be described as a very very slow HIGH ALPHA low speed barrol roll with so much vapor streaming from the LERX's. VERY VERY AWESOME. But it also told me..."holy crap this thing ISSS slow~!!" Nonetheless a good performance. Im sure the attack guys will love it but not so sure about the fighter or strike fighter jocks. Sure they will miss that acceleration and POWER!!(david your right man this thing is a drag whore man holy crap while it was cool to watch i still think it is slow and drag definitely works against it)

So then we saw a low viz tomcat getting prepped up. We noticed the crew's family was near them.

I guess tey got priveledges to see it upclose.

It FINALLY took off. very LOW to the ground just like snodgrass' F-86 take off. but man this was awesome. It did a BUNCH of bat turns. And seeing those GE-F110's juice out all that molten thrust from the burner pipe's...drool. It was a beast. and truly something i shall miss since its retirement is being accelerated. BTW this was a D model Super Tomcat flying. It had SO MUCH POWER. Doing so many vertical manuevers, and damn this thing was fast as hel. By the time the announcer said "here he comes doing the flyby" he was already OVER the crowd!!! My godbro barely even caught it on camera. Then the main high speed mach b reaker was when it flew by on it's side and the sonic booms(2 i believe) triggered the dummy explosives on teh runway. god it was awesome. evewryone was cheerin them on when they landed and passed by to park again.*note to EVERYONE. stay perpendicular to runway in FRONT of parked planes!! truly an experience!!)

Sop anyways after that it did a formation flight with a legacy hornet and corsair. Pretty nice. SOunded like funeral music though. guess since the tomcat was retiring soon tey played it? Nonetheless it was nice.

So al in all a very AWESOME airshow.red bull mig 15 was bright reed as hell. very nice too. Seeing the super tomcat, super hornet, and JSF up close and ESPECIALLY standing in front of parked performers was very nice as well.

[David Hingtgen]

Tell me more about the Wildcat's CAG plane. Saw another report saying it had blue tails. If that's it, describe it as closely as you can--it was only a few months ago they painted in into red-tail scheme. I haven't built my 1/32 Hornet yet, but it IS going to be Wildcat CAG--if they'd ever pick a scheme and stick with it!

Glad you saw a Super Tomcat fly, the raw power is incredible, and the fact that such a big plane can really MOVE when it needs to. And when it wants to, it can TURN.

Did the Super Hornet have its Super Short demo? Yes, it can do high-alpha moves like nothing else, but also seems like it takes 30 secs of full burner to get OUT of them. I presume you saw the super-slow low-speed pass? How long did it take to get out of it? IMHO the most impressive thing it does is the very first 2 secs of flight after takeoff, kind of a quasi-cobra. The infamous "mega-vortex-compression" turn at the end I missed, it was simply too far away when I saw it this summer. (Despite being literally at the fence)

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

David, i barely passed by the legacy wildcat CAG since I was amazed at the double seater shornet. From what I remember I do believe it was bluetail but it DID have some red on it as well.

Super hornet demo was actually long. But its acceleration to mach 1 was not too fast at all. As a matter of fact. It was trackable to the naked eye....unlike the tomcat who was harder to catch and literaly blitzed by(as noted above my godbro barely got a shot of it coming at us supersonically).

I couldnt see that far up so im not sure if the shornet needed burner to pull out of its AOA moves. I know it needed to burn to get out of some but not sure if it was all. I just remember that thing being real real real slow. It did the quasi cobra which was cool but...kind of surprising being that even though the engines were loud as hell it wasnt even lifting off that fasst...take off distance was impressive though. But like i said before im sure all the A-7 and A-6 pilots who eventually fly this will be happy but not so sure about the former tomcat crews. To attackers this thing is fast....to interceptor fighters? ehhhhhh......The super slow low speed pass is the one with the nose up right? that took long as hell man it was boring...only low point of demo other than realizing how mucvh of a dragwhore this plane really is.

I do remember it taking a while to get out of the low speed manuevers. he legacy was much faster this thing when the CAG legacy went up before it.

The tomcat was super fast. Holy crap. I think it was even better than the eagle demo. The tomcat would come out of nowhere so fast just like maverick buzzing the tower in topgun.....only seeing it in real life.

It was awesome seeing a super tomcat do the demo since last time in oceana(98-99) it was an F-14A doing the demo. Those burners on the super lit up like ccrazy like molten lava in midair...so fdreaking awesome and those batturns ruled.

[David Hingtgen]

The Navy photographs everything, lots of pics:

http://news.navy.mil/search/photolist.asp?...rt_row=1&page=1

Warning: when they say "High Res" they MEAN high-res. If you click on that one, it'll be like a 4,000x3,000 5-meg monster of a photo.

Edited September 27, 2004 by David Hingtgen

[Opus]

Aw poop, I wish I had know about this. I would have gone.

[David Hingtgen]

Checking more sites for pics/info:

The F-14D with VF-154 markings was Vandy-1, already lost its black paint.

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

LOL it was half blackknight, half swordsman. Man thats sad. If it was painted in its vandy 1 colors it would have been a showstopper