Planes

One of the things I love about living on the Kadena Air Base (KAB) is being able to drive to the airfield and watch the military planes take-off and land. I went over to the high school to have lunch with Chad today. As I was leaving I could hear the planes taking off, so I drove over to the field to watch. As I got closer to the flightine I could see four C-135’s (transporters) that were in various stages of landing and heading down the runway towards the hangars. After pulling into the parking lot which overseas the runway I saw two F-15’s lined up, waiting to get in position for take-off. I parked and continued watching. To my delight, as those two rolled forward and got into position, two more F-15’s came around the corner and rolled into position as well. Then, bam, they all took off, one right after another. It is always an amazing sight for me to see. The F-15’s are so fast, and so powerful. It takes my breath away (not to mention shatters my eardrums if I happen to be standing outside) to watch them take-off. It’s especially cool to see them at night because the afterburners just glow. Jessica and I were at the Tee House one afternoon (a restaurant the sits on a hill at the end of the runway overlooking the ocean and the runway), and watched some of the planes do touch and go’s the whole time we were there. Very fun!!

The F-15’s have been flying a lot lately because they were grounded, Air Force wide, for about two months. There were some mechanical failures and several F-15’s crashed stateside. Before they could fly again, every plane had to be thoroughly checked. They found problems with some of them (not surprising when you realize most of the F-15’s are at least 50 years old), but most of them were allowed to start flying again about the middle of January. The pilots have been flying like crazy to get all of their flight hours in for the month.

The plane Chad is flying is not quite as fast as the F-15’s, but he did have fun getting to fly all over Okinawa.