I know this is probably in the wrong forum but I figured that most of the people look here first so they might want to know.

Today Thursday May 13th the Air Force is going to be bringing a F/A-22 Raptor to BFI for Boeing employees who are supporting the F/A-22 program to look at.

I am not sure when it is supposed to be here for sure but we are supposed to get a heads up over the intercom about 30minutes before it lands so we can go out and see it. I will try to post again at that time for anyone who wants to try to get pictures of it.

So I just got an email note that says the eta for the F/A-22 with a F-15 as well is 1:00pm Thursday May 13th at BFI.

Thank you!!!!

Do you know if it will park at the Defense Group area to the south, or the civil aviation group to the north?

Yeah I love seeing those F-15's parked next to my citation or BBJ.... I'm gonna go on a limb and say that they will be in the Defense Group.


UA777222

It will be parking at the Military Flight Center (MFC) next to the museum of flight today. It will then be towed across the street tomarrow for F/A-22 employees to take a look at. It will be back at the (MFC) on Saturday and leave about 2pm.

Well it was about 45 minutes late but it finally came. One fly-by and the a landing followed by an Edward's test F-15 in white and optic orange paint.

I hope you guys got some good pictures. I wish I had my camera becuase I was standing outside a hanger on the east side of the field across from the tower. Would have had an excellent shot of it rolling on its main gear before the nose wheel was down.

Gorgeous.



No low altitude pass though.  

This morning we got to go down an wander around the aircraft itself, Raptor 4005. Man is it a sleak looking aircraft. Some of the things that I noticed as I walked around it included lots of the hexagon shaped panels much like the F-117 for stealth. Also the thrust vectoring system is pretty cool looking to. The neatest thing was to see on of the side bays open with a AIM-9 Sidewinder deployed. The Boeing test pilot told us today that the other day he launched a missle 1000ft off the deck at 800kts in a 7g manuver. That is utterly amazing is you ask me. I just thought you guys would think that was neat.

Josh -
I was amazed by the aircraft's angles. In the shot above, you can see the geometric symmetry. All the angles are consistent.

Stealth technology amazes me. And I swear my autofocus had trouble with this aircraft's paint. The gray seemed to confuse it. Or maybe I was just shaking with excitement when it flew in!

I have other shots I haven't uploaded here. E-mail me (see profile) and I'll send ya some.

I have a call out right now to get a good vantage point for the departure.  

william

ExitRow,

Funny you should mention that, a stealth ship and sub were designed because one of the Skunk Works Engineers mentioned to Ben Rich that he couldn't get a clear picture of it's younger brother Have blue's model (or was it the hopeless diamond).

Ben Rich realized that the Polaroid camera that the engineer was using used a sonar like system to do auto focus, and started the idea of a stealth sub and ship (neither of which the Navy ordered because of politics). Though that wouldn't be an issue with your camera, since they are almost all optically focused these days. Just mentioning it because I am bored.

Interesting story PPGMD.

I am sure my problem was lack of contrast for the AF to fix on. Which, by definition, is a form of stealth. Though, it couldn've happened with any gray military bird.

I love the vectored thrust on this a/c though. Very cool to see the heat distortion being "steered."

Anyone else make it to the departure today?

The weather sucked, but I managed a few frames anyway...




(I higher-res version of this is in the queue.)

That vectored thrust is pretty damn impressive. Both the F-22 and F-15B rotated, leveled off, then pulled into unrestricted climbed directly in front of the Museum of Flight. Unfortunately, the ceiling was low so we only got a few seconds of them before they disappeared into the Wild White Yonder.

You could hear them for some time though.  

william