The Blue Angels and Thunder Birds and other teams are aerial acrobatics teams. They don’t actually cause death (well, other than crashes). So ideally, one would have all fighter jets relegated to performing at air shows, right?
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Just saw Dunkirk. That.
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Ideally yes, that and the proverbial swapping of public funds to where it’s the military instead of schools that needs to hold a bake sale in order to buy supplies.
These jets and their pilots may be merely for putting on shows, but let’s not overlook the whole affair’s primary function - - propaganda - - And perhaps secondarily, recruitment.
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Flight controls on the Blue Angels’ F/A-18’s have been modified to make formation and inverted flight easier. The flight control stick between the pilots’ legs uses a spring to exert 40-pounds of forward bias force meaning the pilot constantly exerts slight rearward pressure compared to a normal Hornet to maintain level flight.
I can’t carry 40 pounds 40 feet without crying. I can’t believe that they are basically doing a 40 pound curl for a good deal of their flight.
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I could be wrong, but I don’t think you have to exert that pressure constantly. Its a spring, so wouldn’t it be 40lb to pull it all the way back, maybe, but pulling it a little back would be much less.
Like in trigger springs if something has a 5lb pull, that is the highest poundage as you pull before the break, it is lighter in the beginning.
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Ah that makes more sense to me.
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I didn’t know what a blue angel was and thus didn’t know what to expect. I nearly shat myself.
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When I went to UCSD about 20 years ago Top Gun was literally just down the street. Fighter jets flying by were a common occurence, and classes often would have to pause due to the noise.
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You heard the nickname the techs and pilots have for hornets? It comes from what they look like when they suddenly lose thrust:
“Lawndarts.”
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I loved that group reaction; It was like everyone was tucking their heads in like turtles. I wonder why people do that? We don’t have shells.
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I dimly remember the time when the cheapest way to obtain a F-104G was to buy a plot of land near an AFB and just wait.
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And also the ones that made sure Paris needed liberating in the first place.
Responsibility for that is very much shared.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Support_Hitler_US.html
Those brains that didn’t protect the neck against sudden and as-yet-unseen threats tended to not reproduce as frequently as those that did.
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