Earring Tales: Pensacola Airshow

~ crossovercreativechaos

Have to love the blue and gold.

Pensacola Air Show5

Let me tell you about the Pensacola Beach airshow, AKA Red, White and Blues Week. It rattles the bones.

You have acrobatics. You have biplanes. You have all kinds of crazy glider and paraglider stunts. You have over 245,000 people getting a sunburn as they stare skyward. And then… you have the Blue Angels.

Ooo boy.

I actually am most personally impressed by Fat Albert. It’s one thing to sling an F-18 Hornet through the sky. Putting a C-130 Hercules through some of the same steep climbs and acrobatics? Now, if I were a pilot, that’s the job I’d want!

But most people come for the fast planes. 🙂

The Blue Angels tear through the sky like a giant razor across blue canvas, sneaking up on the crowd, arcing high into the sky, swirling with colored contrails. They streak past each other by inches – quite literally inches, some maneuvers they’re barely 18″ apart. They fly as a stack of planes, all turning as one flashing sapphire of wings. And always, always, there is that bone-jarring shriek of engines, rattling your breastbone until you can barely feel your own heart beat.

It’s as close as I think you could come to the physical impact of anime mecha combat.

So. Blue and golds. 🙂 Now let me see if my bones will stop shaking….

Pensacola Airshow earrings.

18 thoughts on “Earring Tales: Pensacola Airshow”

  1. Pretty.

    And yes, planes are loud in person. I think people underestimate just how loud.

    Saw the Blue Angels at least once in my conscious memory during an air show in New Mexico.

    My mom tells me that when I was little, I used to fall asleep at air shows. This was when we lived in California and Dad was in the Navy so I was under three.

    I imagine you can feel the vibration of the steps of giant mech suits thorough your feet, sometimes well before you can see or hear anything else from them. Or a Cybertonian.

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  2. Anime mecha combat’s physical impact…

    Dust clouds. I think you rarely see persistent clouds of dust in anime. Thrust should kick up a lot.

    If the mecha moves by pushing against the ground with its feet, the forces on the ground match those sending the mecha all over the place. Unlike mecha, the mechanical properties of ground are often known, or known enough. Which is to say that a mech realistically might kick up a lot of debris. (BattleTech has enough figures that these forces might be approximated.) How similar is said debris to what an artillery barrage kicks up?

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    2. Be interesting if one of the wrinkles of mecha suit combat was how much you have to rely on your targeting software because all of the dust kicked up and possibly the smoke from the artillery, you can’t actually see where anything is with your eyes. Fighting in a cloud of dirt and debris.

      Maybe mecha would use smokeless powder truly to avoid adding to the visibility problems? Or just say, screw it, you can’t see anyway, a little smoke isn’t going change that one way or another.

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      3. Tanks traditionally have very little visibility. So they tend to be supported by infantry, who can actually see, and who can deal with the enemy infantry who might otherwise be able to sneak up close with something which can defeat the tank’s armor.

        One wonders if any mecha anime has ever had creative staff with extensive combined arms experience. (Also, where’s the artillery police and highschool girl combat engineer shows?)

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  4. Hehehe 🙂 when i was young i had the blue angels painted on my wall(as well as the red baron, and 14 submarines and 1 aircraft carrier on a lake). I can remember seeing them when i was young. It kinda rocked my world.

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  6. My love for aviation was born in the afterburner roar of an F-18. Not the Blue Angels – they don’t usually visit central europe – but the very first display flight of one of our “own” Hornets in ’97.

    Military service saw me as a mechanic on the F-18, and I treasure the memories of night flights. Two Hornets would line up on the runway, exhaust plumes barely visible.
    All of a sudden, the engine whine turns into a roar, and blades of white flame as long as the jets themselves knife through the night. he control surfaces waggle with one last system test, and off they go.

    “Revvin’ up the engine, listen to her howlin’ roar
    Metal under tenstion, begging you to touch and go…”
    – Danger Zone, Kenny Loggins (Top Gun)

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