Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Thunder Over Louisville 2009

This airshow was April 18th and was, so far, the best I've seen. While there was no USN Blue Angels or USAF Thunderbirds, it did have the F-22 Raptor. This was my second time seeing the F-22. My first was in Dayton last year. It is truly an amazing aircraft. It can do things other planes cannot and it has stealth technology. The most impressive thing about it is they don't have a dedicated plane. Every F-22 used in a demo is a full-combat ready plane. They take one from the nearest base that houses them. Unfortunately, this plane is nearly on the chopping block. I'm not going to get into politics here, so I'll leave it at that.

We left at 4am and arrived in Louisville at 12pm. I had already been up for 24hrs straight (my work schedule didn't allow me to sleep before we left). We went straight to the river to watch practice. It started with 4 Apache's and 2 Chinooks. The pilot of the Apache with the tiger mouth decided to show a little for us since we were the only ones there. He kept moving toward us until he was so close, the rotor wash was blowing water on us. It was pretty awesome.

This was our first time here and it has now become a must go to every year show.

Here is the list of performers:

Kentucky Air National Guard Special Tactical Parachute Team

 

Lima Lima Flight Team

 

L-39 Albatross

 

Red Bull BO-105

 

Mike Wiskus & the Lucas Oil Pitts

 

F-15 Eagle Four Ship Fly-by

 

F-16 Viper

 

F-18 Hornet

 

C-130 Hercules

 

B-52 Stratofortress

 

B-1 Lancer

 

A-10 Warthog

 

F-22 Raptor

 

USAF Heritage Flight: P-51, F-22, F-16, F-4

 

P-51 Mustang

 

F-4 Phantom II

 

Miss Geico Racing Team

 

CH-46 Sea Knight

 

AH-64D Apache Longbow

 

CH-47 Chinook

 

KC-10 Extender

 

T-38 Talon

 

German Luftwaffe Tornado

 

AC-130 Spectre

 

MV-22 Osprey

 

I had almost forgot about adding the random photo that is completely unrelated to the airshow.

A Mallard duck in the river.

 

All the photo's from the airshow can be found here.

Thunder Over Louisville 2009

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