One of my very favorite segments of the airshow was watching the F/A 18 Super Hornet go through its routine.  I do not watch much television unless it’s the Discovery Channel or the Military Channel.  I’ve always been fascinated by military aircraft and the F/A 18 Super Hornet is one of my favorites.

The Military Channel had a series on the evolution of the F/A 18 Super Hornet.  Its predecessor the F/A 18 proved to be such a worthy aircraft the Navy decided to beef up the plane and what came out was the Super Hornet.  Better, bigger, faster, more lethal.

The image above shows the Super Hornet in a full power (after burners) turn.  The F/A Super Hornet replaces at least 3 different aircraft in the Navy’s fleet.

It is also the only aircraft that carries both the F (fighter) designation and the A (attack) designation because it is equally at home delivering ordnance in a strike configuration or as an air superiority fighter.

Above the Hornet flies by at 700 plus miles per hour, just under the sound barrier.  Obviously in a metropolitan area he couldn’t break the sound barrier.  He covered a lot of ground in a very short time.  Imagine that he can double that speed and still have power left.  Amazing!

The F/A 18 Super Hornet flies by in a landing configuration with the tail hook down.  Navy pilots are called aviators because of their extraordinary ability to land on a carrier at sea.  The neat thing about the Hornet is that it can be set up to make that landing by itself.

The Hornet can also level itself out of a spin if the pilot blacks out.  If there are no inputs from the pilot the plane will correct for a spin.  I watched this on the Military Channel and it was amazing.  The test pilot would put the plane in a flat spin and then just held on, (simulating blackout) after an undisclosed amount of time the plane would correct its flight path and level out.

Tomorrow I’ll finish up the airshow with some images of the Thunderbirds  (even though I have hundreds of additional images.)  I received an e-mail from my Mother-in-law yesterday.  She loves the barns and wants more pictures of Josh.  Got to please my audience.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your Thursday and look forward to Friday.  Be careful.