Last weekend for Memorial Day, my family and I had the opportunity to attend the Patuxent (Pax) River Air Expo. My parents, oldest sister and her two boys came down from Annapolis and we eagerly drove to the base to enjoy all of the air planes. My husband and Dad are both engineers and my ten year old nephew, I’m sure, will grow up to be an engineer, so they were so excited to talk about the different capabilities of all the different kinds of planes and helicopters…
After a few hours, we grabbed a cheeseburger right off the grill (what’s more American than that?!) and watched the air show. I was in complete amazement (and photography heaven!) when things started whirling around in the sky above. During those few hours, I think the entire soundtrack of Top Gun played in my head. If nothing else that weekend helped me remember those who have fought for our country, watching amazing feats of speed and engineering did. The loud roar of the jets echoed in my chest and filled me up with pride for my country. When you ask any member of the military what that resounding noise from the planes is, they will tell you that it’s the sound of freedom. Oh-RAH!
Thankfully, I had my big lens with me, so I was able to catch a lot of the action up close. I took a ton of pictures, but this is just a sampling. Hope you enjoy!
My nephew… I tried to convince him to be a pilot one day. He wouldn’t buy it.
The Blue Angels!!
Seriously, I’ve grown up watching them and their shows never get old. I was growing rather nostalgic of Annapolis though.
INVERTED! So cool.
I love this series. The two planes were practicing an air craft carrier landing. So, the one plane on the bottom was inverted, while the top plane tried to get his landing gear in between the inverted planes landing gear. The announcer said that they were just inches apart! This was one of my favorite tricks… can’t believe I caught this on camera!
Fat Albert!!! No, not like the character on that TV show. This is the Blue Angels’ maintenance plane. It flies with them everywhere and carries spare parts and a team of maintenance workers. It was about the size of a small, commercial air plane and a little scary to see it doing nose dives and stuff.
Have you ever seen a jet powered school bus?? Well, I have. And it’s top speed was 300 MPH! That’s faster than some planes. After this stunt, my nephews turned around to us and asked where you had to go to school to ride on one of those. Talk about a short commute…
This is my FAVORITE picture from the day. It’s a WWII plane that was used to bomb Japan. This plane did “fly bys” to show the crowd how the plane would have dropped its bombs. It was way cool… I treated the picture to be “vintage” to fit the style of the air plane. Love, love love this one.
Parachutes! This was the opening act… each one had colored “smoke” so the crowd could tell where they were. They happened to drop out right in front of the sun, so the entire crowd was blind once they landed.
I swear I did NOT steal this picture from the opening scene of Top Gun. I love this picture… sing with me now, “Highway to the…danger zone.”
All the planes had something different painted on the side. I just liked this one… kind of like a plane tattoo.
This plane was ginormous. My nephew could stand under the belly of the plane without squatting. This picture does not do the wingspan justice. It was huge, I tell you!
Fat Albert again, flying the friendly skies.
This one looked like it was going to crash… it didn’t, but made me think of the movie “Hell’s Angels.”
Ooo, pilots! My nephews are Toothless and Stripey up front there.
This was was SO loud. I could barely hear after it’s stunt. Blind and deaf… I think they were trying to kill us all.
Here it is again…Love the wind trailing behind.
Notice the planes flying behind my nephews head…
That’s all, folks!! Hope you enjoyed the ride! I’m glad you aren’t deaf and blind, either. Don’t worry, I took one for the team so you wouldn’t have to 🙂