Thread: An unexpected aviation treat!

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Got quite a pleasant surprise yesterday. I was in my driveway when I heard a plane or several planes actually. Now I live in a heavy agriculture area and am used to crop dusters flying close. They all have turbo prop engines now and make a whistling kind of sound. This other sound was definitely some kind of piston engine. To my immense surprise and delight, there were four WW2 warbirds flying in close formation almost right over my house! Appeared to be a F4U Corsair, 2 P51 Mustangs and a P47 Jug flying in a tight diamond formation. What a glorious sight and sound!

There is a hot air balloon meet going on in Natchez on the other side of the river and they were, no doubt, here for that. The planes made orbits of the town all morning.

Later, I got a bonus when 3 P51's flew over my shop. Felt like I was getting a private air show! Hearing 36 cylinders flying in formation was a great sound.

Here's a crappy picture



And a few balloons





Wish ya'll could have been here to hear and see it.

There's nothing like the sound of a big radial! Harley's of the Sky! I learned to work on R1820's, single row 9 cylinders as a Navy Aviation Machinists Mate, ADR Rate (back when they had ADR's and ADJ's fpr jets). Amazing engines!

lots of different things fly over me in north bama i guess due to the proximity of Redstone Arsenal and i usually run outside to look when i hear something big .. a few days ago i hear what i figured to be a big twin rotor helicopter and i rush out and see this wonder of flight going by ,, not this very one but a similar one .. i had never seen one before ..

Mike, that's awesome! I love war birds. I need to take the kids to Oshkosh for the EAA some day. My grandparents lived in Fon Du Lac when I was a kid. When I was around 8 or so my grandfather arranged for me to get a ride in a P-51. 2 of his friends were pilots in WW2. Both were able to buy their planes back at some point and time. Bill's B-25 was only around because it had an engine failure before a mission and he got a spare for Doolittle raid. That plane never made it back. At any rate, I was able to ride in each one that year and those sounds stuck with me for ever. All those men are long gone now. It's very sad.

Originally Posted by HOSS429

lots of different things fly over me in north bama i guess due to the proximity of Redstone Arsenal and i usually run outside to look when i hear something big .. a few days ago i hear what i figured to be a big twin rotor helicopter and i rush out and see this wonder of flight going by ,, not this very one but a similar one .. i had never seen one before ..

Hoss, those are Ospreys. We had 6 of them setting at our ramp a few weeks back. That is the first time I had ever seen them. We did a little research on them and there were only around 400 made and they had a lot of failures early on. One of them was broke here and required parts to be sent in so they could get it out of here. I'll post some pics later.