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To: Thermalseeker

We had a big old cement bunker up on "Rocket Ridge" which overlooks the flightline and the dry lake bed. They used to test roickets engines up there.
When the planes would break mach 1, the walls of the bunker would visably flex. The first dozen times that it happened, it scared the bejezzes out of me. After that, I never even noticed it.


19 posted on 02/15/2007 7:41:50 AM PST by Holicheese (Beerfest could be the greatest movie ever made!)
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To: Holicheese
When the planes would break mach 1, the walls of the bunker would visably flex.

We're under a supersonic corridor here in SE Tennessee. For several years they were testing the YF-22 up here. There for a while we were getting sonic booms every day, sometimes from both the chase plane and the YF-22. I'd never have known it was the YF-22 had it not been for the local news reports. They fly so high that you can't even make them out in binoculars.

One day I was standing at the back door of my hangar with the man door partly open. We suddenly got a sonic boom much bigger than the YF-22 I had become accustomed to. The shock wave knocked stuff off the walls and slammed the door in my face. I just happened to have my binoc's by the back door. I looked up and could plainly make out a white B-1 (NASA?), being chased by what appeared to be a white T-38.

About a month later I was up flying my sailplane on the ridge here. I experienced a sonic boom that must have been amplified by the hollow tail boom of my glider. My first thought was a bird strike and I fully expected to look out and see part of the plane missing. I almost reached for the canopy release knobs, then I looked up and saw the telltale contrails coming up from the south (Dobbins AFB) and realized it was just the F-22 again. That one scared the bejesus out of me.

32 posted on 02/15/2007 7:52:36 AM PST by Thermalseeker (Just the facts, ma'am)
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