I was just sitting at home listening to some mp3's and I kept hearing jets flying over so I went out to see what it was and it was the Red Arrows flying directly over my house!! Man it was so cool this one flew over upside down, directly above my head only about 50ft high!! My day has been made
50 feet seems a 'little' low to me Impressive none-the-less There's an air base a stones throw from my house (RAF Cosford) and ever summer I can watch most of the air display from here /me is looking forward to RIAT at RAF Fairford
I shall never forget the fly past from a B52 at Fairford at about 300ft, that was amazing. Cast a shadow right over the area where I was standing...
I used to take flying complaints when I was in NI, the farmers would say: "he was so low, he hit my chimney and knocked a few bricks off" Rubbish, If any aircraft hit anything the pilot would certainly not just fly on nonchalantly. They can often seem a lot lower simply because of the noise level they generate, but they are allowed only to fly to 250ft MSD (minimum separation distance). There are some exceptions, for example when approaching an airfield or within certian areas of scotland, wales or central england (where they may go down to 100ft MSD) but these arearas are for Tactical Low Flying Training, not for demo teams.
They fly lower than that in Farnborough - We got the international airshow coming up this month, and when they land they are a lot lower then 250ft coming over our house!!
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fly. so many questions. though i bet you already know me, GCHQ prolly has all my phone calls listed and web sites i goto. sooooooooo, who really killed JFK, and is the millenium Dome really just a weird POS in london or is it a transceiver for Et's?
Bah Norfolk is the place to be for jets last year I went on holiday there and was about 2 miles from the end of the runway at Lakenheath where the USAF has Strike Eagles based. Every morning at 8, without fail, a pair of jets would go screaming over the cottage after taking off, at really low altitude. The windows would shake, and the angle of the planes approach meant they appeared as tiny dots on the horizon then would just go roaring over the cottage. They were low enough you could see the numbers on the tailplane! And there was also Coltishall and Marham within 60 miles.......and the north sea range meant that when the weather was clear you could see F-15s dogfighting and dropping flairs. Rather impressive especially as over sea going away from land they can go supersonic and you can hear the boom from miles away Also had a few surprises in the welsh mountains.......half way up Tryffan you dont expect to see two jets go past below where your standing
ooooh as fly said they must be allowed to go lower in some parts of scotland... because we've had some LOW flyovers... comes from being on a nice low end of a penisular type thing on a scottish island i suppose... /me also saw planes below me when i was climbing on the knifeedge on snowdon horseshoe... dodgy stuff
I went flying in a hawk about 4 years ago and did what is knows as the "A5 run". It was brilliant...480kts at 250 ft...wow!!!!
the reason they are only allowed to fly so low is because if they went any lower they would beginto shatter windowsa nd break dishes. I used to work at my cities airport, just a stones throw away from one of only two working and flying lancaster bombers. May you can never froget what they sound like. They fly it every year arouf june 13th here. as well as Nov. 11
I went to College at Farnborough Tech and I remember having to dive for cover when a pilot mistook the lighting in the atriums for the runway!!! plus the school I used to goto had an outbound center in Tirabad (a small Welsh hamlet) which was purched halfway up the side of the valley, and we used to sit outside in the late afternoon and watch the Tornados flyby below us on there way up to the Senybridge ranges. Quite good fun naming the aircraft as they fly past you at 300 knots!
One of the main reasons that they can't fly too low is because of the noise affecting animals. A few years ago an RAF jet upset a horse that had a rider on it. It threw the rider, who later died. Also farm animals tend to panic when a £20M, jet powered, killing machine comes towards them out of the blue... cattle have been known to die of heart attacks or jump off cliffs to get away from the noise. Not good PR, I can tell you!!!
