On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:05:23 -0400, Graywolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Treat it as a joke. I remember back when I was in the AF seeing a pair of > F-104's make a straffing run on a building. They hit it with rockets. Then with > the guns. Then passed over it at 50 feet going about 1.3. The rockets and guns > did about the damage you would imagine. The shockwaves simply flattened the > building. Whoomp! Nothing left. > > The supersonic shockwave from a jet at 25 thousand feet produces a boom that is > painfully annoying and sometimes breaks windows. Up close it is something else > entirely. >
Starfighters are the coolest looking airplane ~ever~!! Okay, the coolest looking jet ever (hard to beat a Spitfire, I guess). Back when I lived near the Canadair (now Bombardier Aerospace) factory in Montreal they built CF 104 Starfighters for the RCAF. Every so often we'd hear or see one flying over our house. The sound of the afterburners was quite impressive. And, when they came in to land, the engine sound changed tone in a very distinctive manner, just before they hit the runway. Too bad they earned the nickname Widowmaker. Apparently they weren't that hard to fly, but ya had to land 'em the right way. If you tried to flare them out, they liked to stall, and plummet towards the earth. Of course, that's just what I heard - I've never flown a plane (always wanted to learn, though). cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
