Living in the D.C. area, we’ve greatly enjoyed the local Joint Base Andrews Air Show over the years. We’ve attended the past three previous shows in 2012, 2015, and 2017 until the inevitable finally occurred this year — we got rained out for 2019!

Related Photo Blogs:
JOINT BASE ANDREWS AIR SHOW 2015 | ANDREWS AIR SHOW 2017

The Saturday at Andrews in 2019 wasn’t great and they just barely got some of the aerial demonstrations up, but we had a schedule conflict that day and couldn’t go, and then Sunday when we could was rained out completely and the whole show was cancelled. This was truly awful for us avgeeks in the D.C. area, because we only get the Andrews air show every other year. So….. to Dover, DE we went about 2 hours away to get our air show fix this year! :)

This is the first time we’ve ever attended the Thunder Over Dover Air Show, and I think a lot of people in the D.C. area might have had the same idea as us, because we saw a lot of MD and VA plated vehicles parked in the parking lot. It was great to be able to drive right on base and park there, but we arrived a tad later than intended, and it ended up taking an hour and a half to get through the security checkpoint. Once inside though, it was a great show. The weather was couldn’t have been more perfect. It was nice out and not too hot, and the mix of clouds allowed the performers to run their high shows, made for great photography, and also helped to keep the temperatures down on the tarmac.

C-5M Super Galaxy

I’ll start with William’s favorite of the show, which was getting to see the C-5 Galaxy takeoff and land. Dover AFB serves as the home to the Air Mobility Command, so plenty of these aircraft are stationed here. This is the US Air Force’s largest transport aircraft, and one of the largest cargo aircraft in the world. To see such a huge aircraft takeoff and land in such short distances was impressive, although in reality they’ll gobble up every last bit of 10,000 foot runways carrying heavy loads to and from all parts of the world.

Photos best viewed on a desktop.

The C-5M “Super Galaxy” aircraft now in service all have upgraded GE CF6-80C2 engines that are derated to about 50,000 lbs of thrust each, because of structural limitations of the aircraft. The 43,000 lb thrust TF39 engines that originally powered the C-5 Galaxy were revolutionary in the 1960’s, and were the first high-powered high-bypass turbofan engine ever developed. Considering that the smokey and inefficient turbojet and earlier low-bypass turbofan engines that were powering many airliners at the time typically had a maximum thrust of under 20,000 lbs, and sometimes required water injection systems for takeoff, you can see how an engine cranking out over double the thrust was quite revolutionary indeed, and enabled such a huge aerial lift capability. The TF39 was developed into the civilian CF6 engine, which has found its way into many of the commercial airliners in service today, and which is now used on the C-5M Galaxy itself.

The much more modern GE CF6-80C2 that powers the C-5M Galaxy today. So modern, powerful, quiet, and efficient. In other words, booooooring! :)

The only thing that’s not so modern about the TF39 today is that it’s LOUD, and sounds like it’s ripping the sky to shreds. It’s quite a thing to hear! Pretty much all turbojet and turbofan back then were like this, leading to the far quieter jet engines we have today because of FAA noise regulations.

The modern CF6 engine is much more powerful and efficient, and so much quieter that you can’t even hear the aircraft in the pattern any more. It was a regular sound over Dover for years to hear TF39 powered Galaxies that sounded like they were tearing the sky in half. So the Galaxy is far more impressive than it ever was before, but doesn’t sound like it’s ripping the sky to shreds like it used to, so feels like a part of it is missing in a way! Lol!

No worries. There’s YouTube (headphone user warning!)

YouTube: Lockheed C-5 Galaxy - The Screaming Giant

The Jet Waco

By far the most impressive aerial demonstration was the “Jet Waco”, which is a 1929 replica bi-plane, dual-powered by both a Pratt & Whitney R-985 radial piston engine delivering about 1500lbs of thrust, and then a GE J85 turbojet engine with about 3000 lbs of thrust!! The aircraft and everything it can do is such an assault on your senses and expectations. You see and hear a little bi-plane zipping around, and the next thing you know you hear the roaring of its turbojet engine being firewalled, and the aircraft accelerating into a straight vertical climb! It’s truly incredible to both see and hear, and really boggles the mind!

YouTube: Jack Links jet WACO "Screamin' Sasquatch" - Oshkosh 2017 - Thursday

MiG-17F

We’d also never seen a MiG-17 fly before either, which was another truly impressive flight demonstration. This was the first generation of fighter aircraft to have an afterburner, which always makes for a great air display! Despite what you might think with its swept wing design and its afterburning engine, the MiG-17 was not yet a supersonic aircraft, but merely transsonic, as the “all flying tail” needed for supersonic flight wasn’t implemented until the fully supersonic MiG-19. So the MiG-17 could approach Mach 1, but couldn’t exceed it because the aerodynamics to allow this hadn’t yet been fully sorted. But the afterburning engine definitely allowed it to accelerate and climb much more quickly, which is what made it a menace to its adversaries.

The MiG-17 proved to be effective against Vietnam era U.S. fighters such as the F-105 Thunderchief, and the F-4 Phantom II, and it’s easy to see why. American fighters may have been Mach -2 class and faster, but dogfights never happen at those speeds. The MiG-17 was far more maneuverable at the subsonic speeds where they do, and was able to down more than a few U.S. aircraft and pilots.

The MiG-17 delivered some great high speed passes, along with tight turns and steep climbs, which was amazing to see of an aircraft that’s around 60 years old!

We got to meet Loco!

Another great highlight of the Dover Air Show was actually getting to meet and shake hands with “Loco”. Maybe we just always missed them, but I never recall the demo pilots walking by the flight line to say hello to people at the Andrews Air Shows. I recognized Major Paul “Loco” Lopez immediately when he came by as the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team pilot, and made sure to get a photo of him with William.

YouTube: U.S. Air Force: Maj Paul Lopez II, F-22 Pilot

There’s a truly amazing avgeek community on Instagram, and these guys are all on there. Follow Loco at @f22demoteam on Instagram.

By the time “Loco” was in the air with the Raptor, William had tired out after walking and standing around all day and wanted to head back to our car, so we made the long trek back down the runway where our car was parked. I got a nice takeoff roll shot of Loco and the Raptor, but was far away from show center, but still managed to get some nice photos. At one point Loco banked the Raptor into a hard left turn over all of the parked cars, probably in full military power, and set off a zillion car alarms! Lol!

Heritage Flight

As you might have guessed, I’m a bit of an avgeek. Although not a pilot myself, as an engineer I have a very deep appreciation for the engineering that goes into aircraft both old and new, love reading all about them, and having a little flight sim fun when I have time, which is not often these days. So of course I love the Heritage Flight, featuring the North American P-51 Mustang with its glorious Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12 engine, and the Lockheed F-22 Raptor. The most elite of both old and new. It actually takes a lot of training to be able to fly such dissimilar aircraft in close formation like this. Everything is an art in aviation, which is another thing I love about it all.

Without further adieu, here’s a few snaps of the Thunder Over Dover Heritage Flight.

We Loved Thunder Over Dover!

All in all, Thunder Over Dover was a great show, and I think we’ll definitely be back next year, especially since our closer to home Andrews Air Show is only every other year and the next won’t be until 2021. That’s much too long for us!

Here’s some additional random cool photos.

The business end of the Eagle’s Pratt & Whitney F100 engines.

The C-17A Globemaster III, another of which performed an aerial display.

William’s favorite, the A-10C Warthog, for all of the “freedom” it can deliver!

The F-16 Viper, the aircraft that most resembles William. Small, lightweight, super fast and agile, but very little fuel tank!

Speaking of old school engines, the B-52 still languishes today with ancient 1950’s technology Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofan engines. There’s been several failed attempts to upgrade the B-52’s engines to something a bit more modern, but haven’t … — Speaking of old school engines, the B-52 still languishes today with ancient 1950’s technology Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofan engines. There’s been several failed attempts to upgrade the B-52’s engines to something a bit more modern, but haven’t worked out due to flawed studies or schemes.

Another C-5M Super Galaxy with cargo doors open.

We got a flyby of two Hawgs, but no demo. There is actually an A-10 Demonstration Team and a certified pilot, but we haven’t managed to see it yet.

Matt Younkin Beech 18 Aerobatics was very impressive!

Brent Handy and Todd Farrell 2-ship Pitts Aerobatics was amazing too!

C-17A demonstration lining up for takeoff.

The C-17 demonstrating a tactical departure, climbing as quickly as possible to escape small-arms fire.

The C-17 did a figure-8 around the field, demonstrated a missed approach and go-around, and then came in for a landing.

As the F-22 and P-51 Heritage Flight was winding down, we beat the rush out and got on the road, and made it down to Rehoboth Beach, DE 45 mintues away just in time to grab the next to last table at our all time favorite, Henlopen City Oyster House, followed by a little outlet shopping.

Photography Gear Chat

Okay, so no photography blog would be complete without at least a little gear chat, so here we go.

I brought my full-frame Canon EOS RP mirrorless camera, just because. I’d never shot it at an airshow before, so had no idea how well it would do and wanted to try. For lenses, the obvious, I brought my Canon 100-400mm L II lens for the telephoto zoom (my wrist was finally feeling up for it), and then the Canon 17-40mm f/4L ultra-wide lens. I also brought my Fuji X100F as a secondary camera, which came in handy!

Fuji X100F, Canon 17-40L ultra-wide, and the Canon 100-400mm L II lens attached to the tiny EOS RP!

If you’re shooting the popular Canon 100-400mm lenses in either variant, full-frame is definitely the correct choice for air shows. The reason is because the 1.6x multiplication factor of crop frame cameras, like my excellent Canon 7D Mark II, makes the 160mm equivalent view too long at the widest end of the lens. 160-640mm equivalent on a crop frame sounds awesome, except 640mm is total overkill much of the time, and you’ll commonly need wider than 160mm. 100-400mm works more naturally, and you can always crop from 400mm if something was a bit further away.

I’ll give the EOS RP a mixed review for air shows.

It got the job done, but…. The biggest issue I had with the RP wasn’t insufficient reach with the 100-400L II or inaccurate autofocus, but rather the very slight delay in bringing the electronic viewfinder picture back up as you’re bursting photos as aircraft are zipping by. It definitely made smooth tracking of aircraft difficult, which is especially important when tracking propeller driven aircraft, and using a slower shutter speed to get enough prop blur. Tracking is much easier with a DSLR and its ground glass viewfinder, because as soon as the shutter re-opens you have an instant real-time look at whatever you’re tracking right through the lens, without any electronics getting in the way.

So between a DSLR and a mirrorless camera, I’d definitely prefer a DSLR for tracking aircraft at an airshow, or my dog zipping around where I’ve had the same issues. But for an airshow with the 100-400L lens where you already have plenty of reach, I’d prefer full-frame over a crop-body where I won’t have issues with 160mm equivalent at the widest on a crop frame camera being an issue when aircraft are closer. As long as you have 20-30MP resolution or more on a full-frame, you can always crop as needed to recover the “reach” that you don’t have with a full-frame vs. a 1.6x crop frame, but you can’t back up or go wider when you’re too close.

Thus, the best camera for airshows is one that I don’t have - the Canon 5D Mark IV full-frame DSLR. Between my full-frame RP mirrorless and my crop-frame 7D Mark II DSLR, it’s a tough call, but I guess I prefer the RP very slightly. The RP’s 5 fps frame rate was more than enough, and I actually took a manageable number of photos this year — only around 1700! Yeah, you can turn it down, but with the 7D Mark II it’s all too tempting to machine gun away at the full 10 fps frame rate, and I’ve ended up with over 3000 photos to go through, which I don’t have time to do!

One pro-tip on the RP for air shows. Don’t bother with the 1.6x crop mode in camera for the long shots. Just shoot at full-frame and 400mm or whatever your longest is, and crop in post when needed. What will happen is that you’ll switch to 1.6x crop mode for a longer photo, but in the blink of an eye aircraft will be coming right back before you have a chance to switch back to full-frame, and you’ll end up at 120mm in 1.6x crop mode and getting only a 10MP photo, whereas if you were in full-frame mode you could have shot at around 200mm and gotten the full 26MP on the RP. So I wouldn’t bother with the crop mode on the RP for things like this.

One thing I wondered about the EOS RP is how the tiny little battery would do driving the much bigger AF motors in the 100-400L II lens, and it did fine. I shot for most of the day and went through one full battery, and then only about one-third of another, so no worries. My 7D Mark II chews through much larger batteries much faster at airshows, but clearly that’s more because of machine-gunning at 10 fps and having double the number of pixels to process, the crazy autofocus system in that camera, and less because of the power demands of the lens. At the 2017 Andrews Air Show, I had gone through two full EN-EL6 batteries and was onto my third, but had also shot double the number of photos because of the ridiculous frame rate of the camera. Another pro-tip. 10 fps is total overkill for air shows. You can turn it down to 5-7 fps and you’ll be just fine and won’t miss anything, unless you’re trying to get that absolutely perfect “crossing” shot, in which case yes, keep it cranked up all the way. Otherwise anything around 5-7 fps is more than enough for us mere mortals.