What made this show interesting was the opening of the hill behind the taxiway. Although further removed from the flightline, this elevation allowed the lowest maneuvers to be landlocked within our frames, and provided excellent backgrounds to pan against or capture shockwaves…
New York air show
Prose: Nicholas Pascarella
Photography: Nicholas Pascarella, Richard Souza, Ryan Kelly, Ryan Tykosh, James Woodard
Full Disc Aviation was able to attend three whole days of New York Airshow action from a plethora of vantage points and against a number of cloudscapes a few months ago. This airshow included the prerequisite warbirds such as a B-25 and P-51, L-39 and the like, and included stunt flyer mainstays such as Mike Whiskus and Kent Pietsch in their incredible routines respectively. The RAF Red Arrows (not the "Red Devils" as we heard some people explaining to their friends) performed as well, but those images deserve their own gallery; stay tuned for that.
What made this show interesting was the opening of the hill behind the taxiway. Although further removed from the flightline, this elevation allowed the lowest maneuvers to be landlocked within our frames, and provided excellent backgrounds to pan against or capture shockwaves…
...which brings me to the F-35 Demonstration Team. We got three distinct cloudscapes, dew points and humidity levels each of the three days, one of which provided enough humidity for the (now world-famous) vapor cone the F-35 likes to pull out of the air. But on the drier days, the varied clouds provided wonderful contrast for the shockwaves the jet drags around at high speed.
Dojo, the pilot for the F-35 Demonstration team, was blown away at how defined the shockwaves were. It's not the incredible vapor cone the jet was popping in Texas or Cleveland, but the defined lines of the shockwaves are something that I haven't captured in this volume ever before. The elevated viewpoint of the hill also gave us the opportunity to catch the Blue Angels sneak pass against the tree background, and that Hornet is also covered in visible shockwaves.
I spent the final day at the bar at the end of the runway, and watching Dojo's high speed dedication pass coming at us from across the field was truly breathtaking. I was in the thick of a crowd and I could feel them collectively gasp; I heard a few exclaim 'oh my god!' and children screaming with excitement. And as the volume level of the crowd swelled, it was all at once eclipsed and smothered by the thunderous roar from the Pratt and Whitney F135 afterburning turbofan as Dojo blasted past us at close to the speed of sound.
When he disappeared behind the bar to reposition, I found my (non-avgeek) friends (that I had dragged along) sipping beers in the crowd, caught their attention and they returned my smirk with the raised eyebrows of gawking surprise. One had spilled beer on his shirt. For the rest of Dojo's flight, wherever my camera was aimed, their eyes were straining the same direction.
