Quoted:
Updated again.

F-15 aka Mach
A-10 / F-16 aka Bull F16
F-4 / F-117 aka ScottS
F-4 aka Rodent
U-2 not sure screen name
F-18 aka Vallerhu
F-16 aka Powerstroke1999
EF-111 aka Sparkvark
AH-1 aka Snake Driver
OH-58D / CH-47 aka CFII
AH-64 can't remember his screen name
UH-60 can't remember his screen name
CH-46 aha H46Driver

Quoted:
Didn't CMJohnson fly F-16s?

Quoted:
F-117A?

Never heard of it.

http://i46.tinypic.com/hw9wrd.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/986k4h.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/2cne1z6.jpg

Quoted:
F-117A?

Never heard of it.

http://i46.tinypic.com/hw9wrd.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/986k4h.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/2cne1z6.jpg

Quoted:
No idea why it was given a Fighter designation. Anyone?

Quoted:
My BIL was a coating tech for the 117.

He said they were maintenance nightmares. Things like after every flight, the forward antennas had to be adjusted perfectly and any coating damage had to be replaced with specific panels and certain adjacent panels depending on where they were damaged. I don't remember all the details.

Evidently that was part of the huge operating cost.

Quoted:Anyone who flew the Stink bug usually started out in some other fighter and usually came from a base that was closed down from either Vipers, Eagles, Vaarks or Hogs.  So ScottS should have flown something before the bug.

Quoted:
It's a badass jet. I was young during the first Gulf War but I remember thinking how cool it was we actually had stealth planes.

Quoted:
then there was the fasteners left off one of the wings at the Paris Air Show?... it fell off.

https://youtu.be/X2wYvr20nAg

eta :  in Maryland I mean..

Quoted:

The loudest aircraft I ever heard was a B52 at a Boston airshow.  It was so loud there were car alarms going off in the parking lot as it flew over.

Quoted:


Ok, ScottS. Anything else I need to add?



Updated again.



F-15 aka Mach

A-10 / F-16 aka Bull F16

F-4 / F-117 / F-15 aka ScottS

F-4 aka Rodent

U-2 not sure screen name

F-18 aka Vallerhu

F-16 aka Powerstroke1999

EF-111 aka Sparkvark

AH-1 aka Snake Driver

OH-58D / CH-47 aka CFII

AH-64 can't remember his screen name

UH-60 can't remember his screen name

CH-46 aka H46Driver

Quoted:
Ok, ScottS. Anything else I need to add?

Updated again.

F-15 aka Mach
A-10 / F-16 aka Bull F16
F-4 / F-117 / F-15 aka ScottS
F-4 aka Rodent
U-2 not sure screen name
F-18 aka Vallerhu
F-16 aka Powerstroke1999
EF-111 aka Sparkvark
AH-1 aka Snake Driver
OH-58D / CH-47 aka CFII
AH-64 can't remember his screen name
UH-60 can't remember his screen name
CH-46 aka H46Driver

Quoted:

I worked on the F117s at the Tonopah Test Range back in 1989.  Fun times!  At night, on a moonless night, that was the darkest place in the world.

Quoted:
then there was the fasteners left off one of the wings at the Paris Air Show?... it fell off.

https://youtu.be/X2wYvr20nAg

eta :  in Maryland I mean..

Quoted:
Probably had more to do with how AF secret project/airplanes deceloped and/or flown at Area 51 were numbered.  It looks like most have had YF-1xx numbers and sometimes a letter suffix.
I hope we get to find out what some of the missing or unknown numbers are, in my lifetime.

Quoted:
Back in the 80's I was a kid in Hawthorne, NV. Place is surrounded by a huge early cold-war-era weapons depot (Navy then Army), tons of military land and facilities. The town is just a mile square of little houses in a hot, dusty place. People either work on the Base, at nearby mines, local community services, or collect a check in some....other fashion. I was an aircraft buff from day one like any other American kid, and did enough traveling around the state with my pops to see a lot of military stuff in action.

Some time around, oh, maybe '83-'85 window, a small USAF contingent showed up in town and had a small compound in Babbitt (enlisted/worker town, no longer extant) that consisted of a few white trailers and antenna arrays. The Base always had various "odd" military members using various bits of the facilities, so this wasn't a big deal. The personnel were radar techies and the like, and became members of the local community for a few years. One of them, "Mr. B", came to our church and even helped out with the little private school there. He brought a few of us through the radar trailers on a school field trip, totally awesome green tubed gear. Just a regular guy.

I paid attention to anything that flew - in that kind of isolated town you had to have interests or else risk running amok with your life. Around '85 or so, I started seeing a single aircraft fly over town at night east-west at a mid-elevation (probably ~5000-7000 AGL thinking back). Nothing obviously out of the ordinary, clearly military but not a super-fast mover like the guys out of Fallon. A couple of wingtip lights and a center red strobe IIRC. I slept outside a lot, so I'd see it frequently. In 1988 this thing started flying over town in the daytime, with a white T-38 chase in fairly close formation. Looked like an arrowhead, and was obviously a bit larger than the T-38. It was really exciting, and I can remember sketching it after I saw it the first time. Well, within a couple weeks it was making regular appearances and I started keeping track. I had a local sectional chart (to go with the hanging plastic models, balsa flyers, posters, and constant begging the local CAP guys to let me join as a cadet early), and it was easy work with a watch and compass to get times and flight paths plotted. Within a couple more weeks I had a daily schedule worked up with the flight path variations within visual range. It got to the point where I could say when and where the thing would appear, and where it would exit visual.

Some time (months, maybe) went by, but I distinctly remember running into "Mr. B" one morning while I was out delivering my papers and he was jogging around the town perimeter.
"He's USAF," I thought. "He'll be just as excited about this strange aircraft as I am!"
When I proceeded to lay it all out to Mr. B, and show him my little folded up schedule in my pocket, he seemed amused but not particularly engaged on the topic. I just could not understand why he wasn't all jazzed about it. I mean, this was an epic adventure for an 11 year old kid stuck in a desert town 2.5 hours away from the nearest shopping mall. Mr. B never brought it up again, and we ended up moving away a little over two years later. It wasn't long after that, however, that the T-38 started getting dropped from the flights, and the pattern become completely random. After a year or so of this, I stopped seeing it, and pretty soon the Testor's 1:32 scale model was hanging in my room along with every scrap of info I could get on Groom Lake. The USAF group ended up leaving soon as well, but I don't remember the timing exactly on that. Pretty sure at this point that their sole purpose was a test node for the program.

Now there is just sand and desert shrubs where the compound and white trailers were, and hopefully some other kid is running my paper route and dreaming of a larger world.