Hey fellow forum members, here are a couple of pics I took after my day of work at the AFA on Thursday. I do avionics maintenance on the Katanas at the airfield on the South end, but this time I came out at the North Gate, so here are some pics of 083 "Diamond Lil".

That BUFF is a lot more impressive up close... I remember going out there when I used to live in Colorado.

Still looking good, I see!

A true fortress of the skies! Except, on the ground...

Nice pictures!

So this is one of those wich got a mig kill heh?

Hey Iguana,

Sorry I didn't post about this earlier, I was too tired the first time I saw them then got sidetracked.

Those are pretty cool shots, and that's a very interesting display. I've seen fighters up on posts at base gates, but never something the size of B-52.

Pretty interesting plane, too, with the MiG kill and the S-load of missions.

I see that you used a Nikon 8800 for that - nice camera! Also that you used a low ISO, which is probably best for a cloudy day like that. Mine shows a lot of "noise" at higher ISO on cloudy days (see ISO Noise for an example - it's a fairly big pic). I shot that at 400, to help give me faster shutter speeds in the lower light. It did that, but added a lot of noise, which fortunately gets harder to see when you reduce their size for the web.

On a tangentially related topic, that being old bombers, I recently went up on a B-24J, which was a cool experience. Pictures don't really convey what it was like to ride on such a historic plane, but here are some, nonetheless:

http://www.techflyer.net/b-24.html

It was there for an air show, and the weather was lousy. They did have a lot of cool planes, though, and here are some pics:

Wings Over Gillespie

Hehehe...no problem, Arth. You know, one thing I was noticing on the plaques in that display is that they are very matter-of-fact in how they are worded. The displays I saw in Russia were a bit more, shall we say, "dramatic" in the story they told.

Thanks for the compliment on my 8800. I LOVE that camera, it pretty much takes all the guess work out of it. I guess the digital world can't compensate for the high ISO problem, where your photos get noisier and noisier the higher you go. I actually take very few aviation photos with it...its mostly reptile photos I take. I have a nile monitor photo somewhere that I took a couple years ago with a different camera that would have been a prize winner if I could just find it. It was an adult female, and she actually let me get within just a foot or two of her...friggin' amazing and unheard of.

Those are some awesome pics you have at those links. We got a chuckle out of the B-24 cockpit photo. "Wow...that was some top-secret stuff there. We barely had radar figured out, and we actually used GPS to navigate." That's what my boss said when he saw it. Heh...that's just how us avionics geeks operate, the first thing we see is the radios in the panel. Both the B-17 and B-24 are coming here next month, and they'll be giving rides. Last year, I was photographing the Twin Otters of the Antarctic Expedition, one of the crew saw me out there and invited me to go have a look at the inside. Those guys were so cool.

That's great that you have the photos of the F4U1 in flight. I have heard that there is only one that actually flies, so that is a rare treat. Was that Skyraider from the 69th Batallion? It looks very familiar since they used to be based here. They had a Skyraider, an A-37, and an OV-1...and I got to work on every one of them. Just so you know, that Skyraider was originally painted in the USAF camouflage scheme...they changed it to that Navy scheme a few years ago.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by IguanaKing:
Hey fellow forum members, here are a couple of pics I took after my day of work at the AFA on Thursday. I do avionics maintenance on the Katanas at the airfield on the South end, but this time I came out at the North Gate, so here are some pics of 083 "Diamond Lil".
[QUOTE]

You can't quite tell in the picture, but they had to cut ten feet off of the wingspan of that B-52 because it would try to break free of its mounts when the wind picked up.

They've also got the A-10 that shot down 2 helicopters with its gun during desert storm down by the airfield.

quote:

Originally posted by Tycho_lives:

They've also got the A-10 that shot down 2 helicopters with its gun during desert storm down by the airfield.

Yup...I've got lots of pics of the Chopper Popper too. I was out on the flight-line one day pulling a GTX330 from one of the Katanas and looked to the west. "Oh cool!!! An A-10!!! I'm definitely checking that out before I drive back to Denver tonight!" There was a T-38 in Thunderbirds livery there as well. I posted pics of them somewhere on this forum.

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/94610606/m/916...161070363#9161070363

Thanks for the info though, Tycho!

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:
Yup...I've got lots of pics of the Chopper Popper too. I was out on the flight-line one day pulling a GTX330 from one of the Katanas and looked to the west. "Oh cool!!! An A-10!!! I'm definitely checking that out before I drive back to Denver tonight!" There was a T-38 in Thunderbirds livery there as well. I posted pics of them somewhere on this forum.

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/94610606/m/916...161070363#9161070363

Thanks for the info though, Tycho!

No problem really... They make the 4 degrees (freshmen) memorize the information for all of the static displays on the academy. At one point I could have told you who was flying the A-10 when it made the kills, but I've let most of that slip...

So, are you still at the Academy, or did you commission already?

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:
So, are you still at the Academy, or did you commission already?

I'm still at the Academy. I'm going into my three degree (sophomore) year this august. I'm at home on leave right now though (we're not supposed to forum surf on usafanet).