rarest plane/helicopter you've ever seen in the sky (not at any air show)

[Keef]

I think the legend is just that. Something to scare kids and all that, but it sure had me wondering when I was younger. Anyway, I see you live close (enough) to the base. I'm from West Carrollton, south of Dayton, and those C-5s fly over out house almost every day. I think it's awesome watching those big things fly at all, but their sound sometimes startles me, like when I', mowing. They sound so different from the old C-141s; really high pitched, like an electric leaf blower. Weird.

 

[FastEddie12]

I'm no expert, but when did Concorde come into service? They used to fly over my school in 1975/6 which I believe was before they went in service. Final test flights and suchlike.

Also I saw a Vulcan Bomber back in '86 at Brands Hatch. I think that was the year; it was when Laffite crashed, ending his career. I remember that, because I went with a French mate that time.

Dates are a little hazy nowadays...

 

[3-Wheel Drive]

But back to flyovers and stuff, I've seen B1s (thunderous with the 'burners going)...

Though it was at an airshow, seeing (and feeling) a B1 taking off from 100 yard away with full afterburner is quite an awesome sight/sensation. Your whole body seems to rattle.

Outside the shows though, I've seen Air Force One a couple of times, lots of F-15s, 16s, and 18s, (I live within miles of an airfield used by the Air Force), and couple months ago a C-17 on landing approach flew so low over my house I could actually read som of the tail numbers!

 

[socomplayer2]

when me and my dad were out side at the outer banks (north carolina) we saw some military jets fly by and it was too far to see what it was but it let out a ear shattering sonci boom!

and i was at a military funeral for a fellow i knew that died in the iraq war a jet ot 2 flew right over the funeral

 

[a6m5]

Concorde was another plane you can walk thru at the aviation museum in Seattle. It was so tiny inside. I would've been very, very scared to fly in that thing, not to mention a super sonic flight.

 

[Lamboracer]

I went on my first plane last weekend. But i did see two f-16s do and arial battle,or at least that what it looked liek, probably practice. I t appeared they were shooting flares at each other. And odily enough it wsa up in the white mountains while i was ontop of mount washington with a hiking group, no major air bases around there.

 

[backspace]

I don't think their rare (I don't know much about helicopters) but I saw three chinook helicopters fly right over my house once. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen/heard
These kind:
http://www.zap16.com/images/kb04 DAF Chinook D-664 static 2.jpg

 

[Jay]

What do you expect living in Australia

Well I have done a lot of traveling, surely they could have given me a SR71 fly over while I was on my journeys.

 

[Gil]

I used to "live" a few hundred feet from an SH-2 Sea Sprite helicopter.
The hanger was nearly all the way aft, and my berthing space was nearly all the way forward.
That bird brought all our mail, it helped us in the prosecution of underwater targets, and was capable of dropping torpedoes if the targets were farther out than we could reach with our torpedo tubes, an ASRoc's.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Well I have done a lot of traveling, surely they could have given me a SR71 fly over while I was on my journeys.

You haven't been as luck as me then!

I went to Stonehenge for a day trip with family not realising it was in the middle of military test ranges and near an American airbase.

Saw 2 F15s dog fighting and an Apache that day

Doesn't Australia have F18 and F111? I suppose F111 are pretty rare now

 

[Duke]

I live about 45 minutes from Dover AFB, which is the major C5 base, and a major US supply depot for deployment of equipment, so I see C5s all the time, including the one that recently crashed (it's still on the ground outside the base, though they are preparing to move it inside the fence).

Dover is getting a wing of C17s and they are thinking about moving the C5s up to the New Castle ANG wing. They've been doing approach practice (it's a smaller runway) so C5s have been doing patterns directly over my office all summer. Those things are big up close when the final leg takes them right over your head!

 

[Jim Prower]

Air Force 1, on 9-11

 

[GM]

I've also saeen military planes with bombs on the bottom

 

[Ev0]

I've seen some nice planes in my time, although most of my sightings are because of the annual airshow here.

Once I was golfing with my dad, and the USAF Thunderbirds flew overhead in their F-16s in formation.

I also saw an F-14 flying around Pearson International the day before the airshow two years ago. I'll never forget seeing it at the airshow though; that plane was LOUD.

I've also seen the Canadian Armed Forces demonstration team, The Snowbirds fly in formation outside of the airshow on numerous occasions, and I've seen an F-15 flying towards the airshow twice.

But non-airshow related spotting for me hasn't been too bad either. I've seen a Piaggio Avanti once (a civil aircraft using a pusher prop), and I did see the Concorde a few times when I was younger (I would have seen it the last time it came to Toronto, but my mom didn't let me skip school that day to see it fly for the last time....).

 

[///M-Spec]

A few years ago, a Boeing 747 made a few low level passes of my town for some publicity shots.

Which would be nothing exceptional or rare except for the fact that it was one of NASA's and was piggybacking the space shuttle Discovery at the time, on it's way back to Cape Canaveral.

Very cool sight.


M

 

[Dave A]

Erm, Concord . I honestly don't know my planes or hellicopters so I wouldn't know a rare one if it was right infront of me.

 

[a6m5]

A few years ago, a Boeing 747 made a few low level passes of my town for some publicity shots.

Which would be nothing exceptional or rare except for the fact that it was one of NASA's and was piggybacking the space shuttle Discovery at the time, on it's way back to Cape Canaveral.

Very cool sight.


M

Damn. I've always wondered how they do that. I would imagine Space Shuttles weight quite a bit. NASA 747 is cutomized for the job, I realize, but I still don't understand how a 747 could takeoff and fly with a Shuttle on top of it. Quite amazing.

 

[ExigeEvan]

I also saw an F-14 flying around Pearson International the day before the airshow two years ago. I'll never forget seeing it at the airshow though; that plane was LOUD.

In the build up to teh Iraq war there were alot of Miliatary craft flying over my area (It's the flightpath from a few airbases towards the Brecon or Snowdon ranges.) and they were by far the loudest planes. The harriers and sound like nothing in comparrison.

 

[Keef]

Somebody mentioned a sonic boom earlier. In the afternoon of 9/11 my dad and I--well, everyone for 50 or so miles--heard a giant boom. I actually wasn't paying attention and thought my dad had slammed the front door. I heard everything on my shelves rattling around, but the door would do that. My dad freaked though, and he's not the kind of guy to get worked up over a "scary" noise. We ran outside and the whole neighborhood was out watching these two F-16 doing big S-turns in the sky. Turned out they were two planes scrammbled to intercept Air Force One and escort it somewhere. That was a neat experience.

 

[Jay]

Damn. I've always wondered how they do that. I would imagine Space Shuttles weight quite a bit. NASA 747 is cutomized for the job, I realize, but I still don't understand how a 747 could takeoff and fly with a Shuttle on top of it. Quite amazing.

747's are designed to carry a lot of weight, then with minus all the seats, passengers, cargo and I think from memory the shuttle carrying 747 is a shorter lighter version and with the shorter trips the 747's fuel load would be a lot less so with all those factors (and most likely many more) the 747 probably doesn't have any trouble carrying the shuttle.

 

[TwinTurboJay]

I seen a lancaster, and I don't think there were any air shows going on at the time...but I can't imagine taking out one of those monsters for a leisurely cruise...

 

[Slick6]

Today, and pretty much all of it, I watched B-52's doing touch and go's. I wasn't more than 1/2 a mile away either.

 

[sirlosealot]

Age 13, on exchange visit to Toulouse, France, we used to watch Concord on approach to the factory runway - this was during flight tests before it was in service. Twenty years later I occasionally saw it flying into JFK while I was commuting to Queens.

A year later while sailing on my Dad's boat in the Bristol channel (an adventure in itself) we were buzzed by the Red Arrows. Two days later we had a Victor RAF tanker circling around us with the pilot waving from the cockpit!

There's a private collection of WWII aircraft at an airport about 5 miles away from where I'm typing this. An Avenger TBM, a B-25 and an F4U Corsair plus some AT-6s. I've seen them all in the air at some point.

Last year driving to Heathrow on the M4 with the wife and kids I saw a C-130 executing touch-and-goes at RAF Lyneham. I told the kids to look out and see if they could spot him coming around again. Sure enough a couple of minutes later I can see a spot in the sky ahead. But as we get closer I realize its a C-17, not the C-130 from earlier, and he's banking so hard his wings are VERTICAL.

I seen a lancaster, and I don't think there were any air shows going on at the time...but I can't imagine taking out one of those monsters for a leisurely cruise...

No. No pleasure flights for the BoB memorial Lancaster. But it could have been a flight test. Was it a weekend? Then it was probably on it's way to/from a show. I saw a B-24 once in Connecticut. It was performing at a show. I wasn't AT the show. Does that count?