Air Force Thunderbirds

I live about a mile north of FLL, and 3 miles from the main Ft. Lauderdale beach. This weekend is the Air Sea Show at the beach. The flyboys are practicing today, and we have been having the fighter jets going over our house at 1000' AGL. DAYAMM are they loud!! Also saw a neat flight of 6 old time prop fighters real close together. Back yard has a lot of tree cover, so can't see many of them, but they are close. It is also Fleet Week, so there are about 5000 Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard people in town. I feel really safe. Supposed to get a flyover by a B1, too. Hope we get a glimpse of that one. Would be fun to go down to the observation area at the airport to watch them come in and out. They are all there for the show.

Lambert International is real close. We get that a lot. Used to live across the street from Boeing. They would do some testing that I believe they don't want publicized, but it included firing up jet engines to full throttle in a tunnel. They chose to do this at 4 am. Set my alarm off every time.

Then there was the time the hot air balloon hit the tree in my back yard.... Fun times in StL.

I once worked a couple hundred yards from the runway at Dobbins. Air traffic was always heavy and interesting but things got downright exciting in the weeks/days before airshows.

Got to see the Blue Angels when they still flying A4 Skyhawks and the Thunderbirds in F16s. It was just as much fun to (later) watch the reservists practice aerobatics in their F14s when the "big" shows abandoned high-density population areas.

Apparently the area where I live doesn't classify as Populated... So they bust off sonic booms over my house and they also do dogfights. That's REALLY cool about 10pm when you can see the flares they pop to confuse the "missiles".

I've seen the Thunderbirds at least three times when I was in high school. They always put on a great show, but I was more fascinated by the B-52 and C-5 displays. It's amazing how well a plane the size of a building can turn.