Nirmal Jayasinghe

(photo via wikipedia)

This photo of central park simply is great. It’s on my work desktop, and thought i’d adorn here with it ;)

This Sunday morning was plain boring, so I decided it called a familiarization sortie from Luke AFB to prime up. I expected to go up on 28R as part of a familiar four-ship F-16 formation (of which I’ve waxed lyrical before) but then I met those two sexy and powerful F-15s lined up for takeoff. It was plain intuition to thrust the throttles to military from taxi and rotate in formation in their trail. The following is a brief photo-documentary:

It’s pure sky and thunder as we race down 28R with lungs seizing from acceleration, and then mutter ‘jeez’ as the base angles at a rushed 20-degree-plus rotation to trail the F-15 into the wild blue yonder.

To keep formation, climb is at max. reheat, and as they level, roll right over your back and level behind them. They’ve already gained good ground. The guys at McDonnell knew their business…

Once I catch up, still the power at (my) military, things look like this:

As always, it’s a bit outta place to keep up with an Eagle in a Falcon: you almost always need nearly 100% outta your P&W. The Eagle is built for speed and power and is ultimate air superiority, something beyond the politics that started out on ‘multirole versatility’ which basically in other words is being unable to buy Eagles in required numbers. USAF officers were reputed to ask “Why VWs when you’ve Cadillacs?” but that was what ultimately happened. The F-16s a fine airplane, but to me never exuded the same supremacy as the ‘15.

I looked kinda like this, all rushed up and in full burner after losing ground in an unexpected turn with the ’15s, and was hurrying to catch up. Perhaps hugging the shame to look down on my APG-68 multi-mode to locate them as well..

While doing that, I noticed some unfamiliar buildings on desert floor which I guess I’ve seen about once before, and turned to take a look. This was shot as I pulled up in quite a haste after a high-speed dive. They seem to be some curious storage buildings set up there in the middle of nowhere by the developers. Later I STRAFEd some…

Finally, I hear that unmistakable ‘bingo’ in my headset, and it’s time to turn to go home with the throttle really low. I’m starving by now, and look forward to sampling mom’s excellent chicken biriyani for lunch of which the irresistible smell is already wafting around the flightdeck.