F-15

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle at Luke AFB

Luke Air Force Base is on the west side of Phoenix, Arizona.

F-15

Why The F-15 Terrified The Soviets
Mustard

Good video about the F-15, it's so good you want to see the next one, but you have to subscribe to something to see it. The last minute or so of the video is an ad.

F-15 Eagle 50th Anniversary

NASA F-15 Eagle

The F-15 was originally built by McDonnell-Douglas, but that company has now been absorbed by Boeing.  1200 of these planes have been built. Top speed is Mach 2.5.

The picture comes from a post on Defence Blog which included this line:

The F-15’s manufacturing process has also evolved over the years to include digital design and automation and tooling, including revolutionary full-size determinant assembly advanced manufacturing processes.

"full-size determinant assembly advanced manufacturing processes"? What the heck is that? Boeing explains:

Determinant assembly is a process that allows for quicker assembly by using features of the parts, such as drilled holes, to quickly align components without the use of additional tooling to aid with alignment. Lego toys or an Erector set are simple examples of determinant assembly.

It's kind of obvious to anyone who has ever built anything. I suspect Boeing is so hide-bound that it required an internal civil war to implement even the most obvious improvements, and since it was such an ordeal to get people to start using it, they had to dress it up with some fancy language.

Some American Fighter Aircraft

From top to bottom: F-15 Eagle, T-33 Shooting Star and P-51 Mustang
flying by Mt. Hood

Looking at this picture I immediately identified the P-51 and the F-15. I saw the one in the middle and said 'Starfire', but that's not quite right. The F-94 Starfire was developed from the T-33, but can be distinguished by the longer nose.

F-94 Starfire

The F-15 Eagle and the F-14 Tomcat are similar aircraft. Both carry two people, have two engines and twin vertical tales. The F-14 has variable swept wings. You can't really see them in this picture, so I don't know how I know it's an F-15. Maybe I've just seen enough of them that I can instinctively tell.

F-14 Tomcat

Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers visit Grand Forks AFB

Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers visit Grand Forks AFB
jaygdav

This happened 30 years ago. The Flankers don't show up until the four minute mark.

B1 Bombers at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota

The video starts with trip down the flight line where a bunch of B1 Bombers are parked. Geez, there are a bunch of them. No B1s are stationed at Grand Forks anymore. The Air Force Times tells us that some are stationed at Ellsworth AFB, and Google Maps delivers.

Moscow to Langley
8,300 Miles

I plotted the stops mentioned in a Daily Press story about the visit. Somehow I don't think the Russians flew directly from Moscow to Anchorage, a distance of of 4,400 miles. I suspect they made a couple of hops across Russia, maybe to Vladivostok, before flying over the Aleutian Islands to Anchorage.

Su-27UB and F-15 side by side at Langley Air Force Base (August 1992)

The Su-27 has appeared here before.

Pic of the Day

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle with full afterburner during Vigilant Shield in 2016 - Shane Heard

Another picture of a jet fighter blasting off into the air. What makes this one special is that it was taken in Goose Bay, one of those really obscure airports in the land of ice and snow, where nobody goes unless they have to.

UFO

Posthip Scott sent me a webpage about a UFO encounter. It mentions that some F-15's were scrambled out of PDX last October. Hey, wait a minute, didn't I see some F-15's taking off from PDX? I did, and when was it? It was the same date!

While we were waiting at the traffic light at the corner of 82nd and Air Cargo Road, four F-15's took off, one after another in quick succession. That was pretty cool. I've seen them parked at the airport before, but I've never seen them in motion. While we are marveling at seeing these aircraft take off, four F-16's take off in quick succession. That's the most jet fighters I have seen flying all at one time.

So that's what was happening. Cool. A visit to YouTube turns up video of the fighters taking off:


Four "US Air National Guard" F-15's takeoff from Portland International Airport PDX

Four F-16A Fighting Falcons Take Off From KPDX On Runway 10R
I am not a big fan of UFO's. They make for some good entertainment, but nothing you can really hang your hat on. But sometimes I wonder if there isn't some kind of quantum neurological mass hypnosis phenomena going on. Like everyone is projecting very faint brainwaves, but occasionally enough of them sync up and reinforce each other and then they start causing observable effects, like inducing hallucinations or possibly even physical manifestations, like changing the refractive index of a ball of air so it looks like something.

This is one of the things some of the old time philosophers were going on about, how the world is an illusion and what we see and experience is only a shadow of the real world. The philosophers were talking about it ancient Greece, and Ibn Sina was talking about it more recently (about a thousand years ago). I don't buy it, mostly on account of the Arab world falling down into a rathole of philisophical debate which ignored much of what was going on in the 'real' world.

But we really don't know how the universe works. We have a much better idea now than we did in Ibn Cenna's time, but mostly what we've learned is that the world is infinitely more complicated that we ever imagined. So I am willing to allow that quantum neurological mass hypnosis phenomena might actually be a real thing. I am not going to try and hang my hat on it though.

Update February 25, 2018. My current theory is that is was a business jet being flown by a drunk pilot who just didn't give a shit about rules and regulations. Or it could have been a smuggler who was counting on being just one of the flock, or a Russian, seeing how far they could stick their nose in without getting caught. Australian news site news.com.au has the story. So does Popular Mechanics.

Update July 2019 replaced 2nd video with similar one from 2013. Why was the one from 2017 taken down? Enquiring Minds want to know.

Driving

Over the hills, along the river and over the bridge to the airport we shall go

I drove younger son to the airport yesterday. Since 26 has taken to being clogged going into downtown, I now take Cornelius Pass Road north over the hills to Highway 30, southeast to the St. Johns Bridge and then Lombard across town. It takes a few minutes longer than taking the freeway used to take when it was free flowing, but it doesn't come to a complete stop for hours at a time, so it's more reliable.

I came up behind three cars being driven by slowpokes. I don't know whether they were old, stupid, incompetent, lazy, lost or stoned, but they were definitely doing the grand-person shuffle. And no, I didn't pull up to within a couple of inches of their rear bumper, blow my horn and flash my lights. I followed along like a good sheeple, maintaining my two-second distance.

Gratuitous Puppy Picture

Coming through St. Johns there was a man standing on a corner waiting to cross the street. It's 25 MPH through here, with a traffic light every couple of blocks, so you need to be in slow mode for this section of the trip, and I was, so I stopped to let him cross, just as if I was a good citizen driver. He had a puppy on a leash, and the puppy wasn't sure about following the man, but once he got started he tripped right along.

F-15 at PDX

While we were waiting at the traffic light at the corner of 82nd and Air Cargo Road, four F-15's took off, one after another in quick succession. That was pretty cool. I've seen them parked at the airport before, but I've never seen them in motion. While we are marveling at seeing these aircraft take off, four F-16's take off in quick succession. That's the most jet fighters I have seen flying all at one time.

Driving back there was some kind of kerfluffle involving the police and an ambulance. It looked like someone had run into a light pole alongside the road. It's 35 MPH through here so they would have had to work at it, or something went wrong.

Police Cars

That evening my wife calls me from her car in the Washington Square (fancy shopping center) parking lot to tell me that she is surrounded by the cops but she is going to try and make a break for it. Seems that just as she was getting ready to leave when four cop cars showed up to bust some shoplifters who were parked nearby. Eventually one of the cop cars moved and she was able to escape.

Stylin' with the Japanese Defense Force

Japanese F-15 with Mt. Tsukuba & Mt. Fuji painted on the wings

Pyrocumulus Cloud

Beaver Creek complex fire. There is an F-15 jet fighter aircraft in the mid-lower center of the picture.

Click to embiggenate.

It's fire season and this one is a pretty big. It's down on the Oregon-California border and it's been burning for the last week  Big fires can sometimes generate big clouds - pyrocumulus clouds - which can sometimes get big enough to become thunderstorms. NASA has more photos. Via Posthip Scott.

Duelality by Lenny Wilson - 2007

Dual in the desert between an Su-27 Flanker and an F-15 Eagle.

Pic of the Day

A U.S. Air Force F-15 Eagle flies over Yosemite National Park and the granite rock formation named Half Dome. The aircraft is assigned to the 144th Fighter Wing, California Air National Guard, Fresno, California. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Roy Santana

Chinook Helicopter, Part 2

Chinook Helicopter airlifting an F-15 Jet Fighter

This picture is from the Wikipedia article. I saw it yesterday and it stuck with me. It is just such an odd thing. One $30 million dollar aircraft carrying another. (Chinook unit cost was $35 million in 2008, F-15 unit cost was $28 million in 1998).

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.