The T-6 aerobatic team, up from Louisiana and Alabama. What a cool sound these planes had. One of the pilots (~42 years old) had 20,000 hours as a pilot. Thats 10 full work years in airplanes.
A fuller view of the B-25 with the T-6 Team in the background.
This was a neat Demo. Those F-86s are privately owned. Both pilots are interesting. One is a retired navy pilot, a whiz with the F-14 and a former navy pilot of the year. The other is a retired executive with the moxie to learn how to do this stuff in his 40s. One of the planes used to belong to Frank Borman, the Apollo astronaut.
(S)He kept the nose up and ran down the runway for quite a bit. Nothing to it.
I coulda done all this stuff, see, I was an astronaut back in the 70s, I went on a lot of secret missions, see. They let me be an astronaut because I had the right stuff and flew jet aircraft all the time, yeah, thats the ticket. I was an astronaut…
More chicken. 4 going one way, 1 going the other. One of the planes might be a female pilot. One of the 6 that were up is a woman. She’s the first female Thunderbird in 52 years of the team. I had no idea women were allowed in combat aircraft. Thats a discussion for another day.
Colors and shapes.
Ok, they do this bomb burst maneuver where 4 planes go straight up with smoke, then split and go 4 seperate directions and a 5th plane shoots up the middle. Cool enough. To cap it off, the 4 that split do a big loop and meet at the center of the runway, about 200 feet off the ground or so. Thats 3 of the 4 going on their merry way after having crossed right in front of the crowd. I missed the 4th that would have been coming towards us and opposite of the middle plane. I could do that, cuz I was an astronaut.
