Above Kaneohe at Night

 On my way home from the Kaneohe Air Show I stopped at the Pali look out for a few night shots.

This is the city of Kaneohe.

Here's a picture I took that shows what it looks like by day. 

A little closer to show the main street through town. 

Now a little closer to show the sports field.

This picture shows the highway to the Kaneohe military base. 

By Day.

This is the Pali Highway that goes underneath where I was standing.

I was really hoping to get a good shot of the bright moon but the clouds did not want to move out of the way the whole time I was there.  

The Blue Angels

Here are the Blue Angels Flying at the Kaneohe Bay Airshow!
For Some musical accompaniment I suggest opening this in the background.

Here is the line up before they take flight. The pilot in plane 2, John Hiltz, is from Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky!

Here's Faaaaaaaatttt Alllllllllbert!

Fat Albert carries all the equipment that the blue angels use as the travel the country doing shows.

Four of six blue angels take off in a close diamond pattern all at once.

The fifth takes off at a very sharp angle right away.

The Sixth starts a barrow roll as soon and he gets off the ground. 

These pilots will fly with only 18 inches between them during the Diamond 360 maneuver.

Other times they will fligh directly at each other, turning sideways right before the would collide. 

I don't have much to say with these pictures so I just give you a few Blue Angels facts. 

The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, ordered the establishment of the team on April 24, 1946.

The name, "Blue Angels", was picked by the original team when they were planning a show in New York in 1946. One of them came across the name of the city's famous Blue Angel nightclub in the New Yorker Magazine.

The mission of the Blue Angels is to enhance Navy recruiting, and credibly represent Navy and Marine Corps aviation to the United States and its Armed Forces to America and other countries as international ambassadors of good will.

Each Blue Angel demonstration pilot must be career-oriented, carrier-qualified, active-duty Navy or Marine Corps tactical jet pilot with a minimum of 1,250 flight hours.

All of the Blue Angels' jets are carrier-capable and can be made combat ready in about 72 hours. The demonstration pilots fly the jets to each show site.

The lowest and highest maneuver heights performed during an air show varies due to weather conditions. The highest is the vertical rolls performed by the Opposing Solo (up to 15,000 feet) and the lowest is the Sneak Pass (50 feet) performed by the Lead Solo.

The fastest speed flown during an air show is about 700 mph (just under Mach 1; Sneak Pass) and the slowest speed is about 120 mph (indicated speed; Section High Alpha), both flown by the solo pilots during the show.

The blue angles signature star bust maneuver

The air condensing over the wings is cool.

I like seeing the flames out of the jet engines.

They don't land as close together as they took off but it is one right after another. Three are in this picture all coming in for a landing.

Kaneohe Bay Airshow

Every year there is a big air show at Kaneohoe Bay Marine Corps base. It includes many stunt planes, military aircraft, and the Blue Angels. 

Along with planes they had some army equipment on display. This, I'm guessing is the modern army "Jeep". 

This truck is quite intimidating in person. It's the MRAP All Terrain Vehicle. It's about 20 feet long, just over 8 feet wide, and almost 9 feet tall. It's curb weight is 25,000 lbs. I don't know what it's gas mileage is but I'm sure it would not make a good daily driver. 

This is a plane, and this is it's nose...

...Open it up and here's all the people. 

From the massive to the super light.

To start the show off right this guy went up and did some fun tricks.

Next there was a military fly by with these helicopters.

Some para-shutters came down while...

...the Marine Corps marching band played.

The announcer described what was going on as they did a demonstration of securing an area and sending in ground troops.

The demonstration included filling the ground with bullets from these choppers before they landed and the ground troops went in. 

After the area was scouted and everyone was back in the air a bomber came through and did this. It happened very quickly and unexpectedly. I could feel the heat wave blow by.

This was one of my favorite plane acts. It was a comedy routine The pilot bounced/flew around for a while on the ground like in this picture making quick turns and all kinds of crazy things. 

Next up the first jet.

It did some aerobatics for us as well.

Here's a little video of a few of the planes.

 The Red Bull plane showing off a little. It was actually flying sideways like this and staying parallel to the ground.

 

The Air National Guard rocket truck.

The whole show they had been talking about a race between a plane and a rocket propelled truck. Here it looks like the plane obviously has the win but the truck started from a stand still and caught up by the end.

It took a few attempts but the pilot was able to land the plane on top of this moving truck.

F-22 Raptor

The houses on the base were all pretty cookie cutter.

Here's a picture of one of the lines just to get on a bus and be shuttled back to your car someplace else on base. Then their was the traffic of getting hundreds of people off the base that only has two roads out. 

Military bases here have a more mainland feel than the rest of the island. This is the only outside mini golf course I've seen in Hawaii.

If you're wonder about the Blue Angels I said were in the show... I gave them their own post. It's up next.