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2002 Wings Over Wine Country Airshow
August 24 & 25, 2002
Santa Rosa, CA
by
Bernardo
Malfitano
Air
Performances
Then... the
Strikemaster demo. The Strikemaster is one of a long series of
fine British fighter-like jet trainers like the Gnat and the
Hawk. It's much, much faster than it looks. I've seen L-39s and
Brazilian trainers fly, and expected about the same performance,
but this guy is very fast and very, very cool (and louder than
you'd guess, looking at the little room the engine has, the
small jet nozzle, and the long, straight wings).
All right, that's not a very flattering view…
Looks like The Brain…
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Then Eddie
Andreini gave a great show in a highly modified Stearman. The
landing gear is form a Cessna, the 400hp engine is over twice as
powerful as the engines in normal Stearmans (Stearmen?), the
wings are beefed up, and the canopy is of his own design. The
great aerobatics were narrated by none other than Steve
Stavrikakis.
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Then this P-51
took off…
And "Smoke
and Thunder", a jet car, taxied to the head of the runway,
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And they raced!
During the second
it took my camera to save that image, the race was over, and I
could not see who won, but by the commentator's comments, I
think it was the car.
So that was over,
we had a little break, and out of nowhere, an F-16 roared into
the scene from behind the crowd, low and fast and very loud. The
F-16 was meant to be the antithesis of the F-4 - small, simple,
light, and extremely agile. The lesson learned in Vietnam is
that those big Mach-2 fighters from the 50's were good against
bombers, but put them in a dogfight against a MiG and they're
dead. As was true in World War 2, a fighter has to be light,
turn tight, climb fast, and be able to get behind another
fighter when fancy radar-guided missiles were not the answer.
(The only reason F-4s were not slaughtered by MiGs over Vietnam
was that they had powerful engines and could run or climb away
from a dogfight easily, and restricted themselves to
longer-distance missile engagements, their specialty). The
Lockheed F-16 Falcon was built with that in mind - tiny, light,
unstable, and with a very powerful engine. And little else at
first. Its weapons systems were originally not at all advanced,
but of course the new versions can now deliver most bombs and
air-to-air missiles in the USAF inventory. A great fighter. And
a great, great Airshow performer.
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To keep the air
from stalling over the wings at high angles of attack and high
loads (like during tight turns), the wings have
leading-edge-root extensions that generate huge vortices over
the wing roots, so the air stays attached (kinda like the
sharkfin vortex generators on airliners' turbofan cowlings...
check out my aerodynamic research page). These vortices have at
their center some very fast low-pressure air, which also
condensates sometimes, creating what looks like a white 'boa'
around the Falcon:
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