500 Traffic

 

The weekend of the Daytona 500 has come and gone.  Now we are in the midst of wonderful bike week.  When tens of thousands of people who think that riding a Harley is cool arrive in Daytona to clog up our traffic and create the most obnoxious noise pollution.  Can you tell I don't really appreciate them.  To keep my mind off them lets check out some highlights from the 500 weekend traffic.

 A  pretty nice look at a very nice Challenger business jet.  It shares the same fuselage as the CRJ line of aircraft, but has increased range due to its smaller size.  These are truly stand up cabins and seem to be great aircraft.  Bombardier CL-600 Challenger 604.

 This big boy is a Gulfstream G-550.  Massive and expensive business jet that can just about take you to any place you'd want to go in one hop.  Personally I'm a Falcon guy so this didn't interest me that much, but I know quite a few people who have interned at Gulfstream and absolutely love it.

 A regular Citation?  Nope, look a little closer and you'll find some military markings on it making it a Cessna UC-35.  I fiddled with Gimp for a little while trying to make it look cool, this is what I came up with.

 F/A-18B or D model Hornets you say?  Not quite these are from our neighbors from the north.  McDonnell Douglas CF-188 Hornets from way up at CFB Cold Lake, Alberta.  I was happy to see them because of my Canadian heritage and the fact that they are essentially US Navy aircraft.

 The Canadians departing.  One of my friends from school mentioned that there was a TV documentary made about the training of Canadian fighter pilots made for the Canadian Discovery Channel called, "Jetstream".  I haven't been able to find a stream for it yet, but the clips that are on youtube look amazing.

 The other Canadian Hornet departing.  I like the paint because they share it with their other British Commonwealth nation, Australia, who also operate the Hornet, and now the Super Hornet.

 Trying to make an Airbus product look cool.  Here a US Airways A319 is on short final for Runway 25R at KDAB.  This kind of traffic is somewhat unusual for Daytona and is received for times when there is a high volume of traffic, the races, spring break...

 Another cool set.  The first of what I call the real warbirds.  I think the guys that fly the T-34s around should not be considered in the warbird class.  They are simply Bonanzas with a different cockpit and tail.  These North American T-28 Trojans are absolutely awesome.  If I could choose any of the old training type aircraft to own and fly, this would be it for sure. 

 Finally some real Hornets.  They're McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornets from VFA-83 the "Rampagers."  On the aft portion of the fuselage where it might typically say Navy it instead says, "Ram On".  These guys did the loudest takeoff that I have ever had the privilege of witnessing.  They were so loud that you couldn't here yourself shouting over the engine noise. 

 This was a pretty boring shot of the Thunderbirds before I did some heavy editing.  I have probably 3,000 pictures of the Thunderbirds already and they are all very similar so I wanted to try something new.  Lockheed Martin F-16 Falcons.

This a completely unedited shot.  Not one of my best into the sun shots, but I still like it.  I also like the aircraft that is on final!  A Dassault 50 Falcon one of the locals.

I have some more shots from the weekend including some form New Smyrna where we saw some awesome WWII aircraft, but those will have to wait until my next post.