It is time for the beginning of the air show season.  The first one in Los Angeles is held at Fox Field in Lancaster, CA.  It is located in the Mojave Desert just north of  Los Angeles.  This year the featured performer was the USAF Thunderbird team.

The team consists of six F16 fighter jets performing a variety of aerobatic maneuvers.  Two of the six planes perform solo maneuvers alone and with each other.  The other four always perform their maneuvers as a group.  And, as you will see, all six get together for some of the most interesting stunts.

In the first shot, the group of four are taking off using the same relatively narrow runway at the same time.  The aircraft  in  the lower right hand corner of the image is an F18 Super Hornet used by the Navy.

The maneuver being performed in the second image is called the "Calypso".  The two solo ships fly by about 100 feet above the  runway (that's not very much) with with one flying inverted.  Photographically, the trick is to catch the two ships so that they look like they are glued together:

Here's one of the  "easy" four ship formations.  BTW, the smoke comes from special smoke generators installed specially for the air show work.

One of my favorite maneuvers is shown in the next two images. It is one of the six ship formations where the group flies directly at the crowd and at the appropriate moment breaks apart into six separate flight paths.  The first image includes some of the background hills.  The second image shows the same view as they got closer.

Another cool maneuvers involves four of the ships flying at each other from the four points of the  compass at 300 plus MPH!  They time the intersection to be directly over the runway.  It is difficult to photograph ... you need a camera that takes many frames per second, and quick reflexes.  This is my best effort:

Less than a second later ... what just happened?  

Another favorite is this "Star Burst" using five of the six planes.  I converted it to black and white to emphasize the symmetry of the white smoke trails.  Look closely ... you can just see the fifth plane going through the intersection in a vertical climb!

My favorite shot of the afternoon: 

Well, that is it for this post.

As always, thanks for taking the time and effort to look at the images.

Adam

P.S.  Remember to click on an image to see it in a larger size!