{"id":7184,"date":"2022-06-18T13:03:29","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T18:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=7184"},"modified":"2022-11-02T06:40:30","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T11:40:30","slug":"for-once-i-spent-more-time-watching-than-photographing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=7184","title":{"rendered":"For once, I spent more time watching than photographing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We had a behind the scenes meet-and-greet with the US Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration squadron Friday in advance of the Northern Thunder air and space expo at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, and it was a fantastic way to spend a Friday! The pilots and crew were gracious hosts, answering all our questions and clearly enjoying themselves when talking about their jobs and their aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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That’s not to say that I didn’t snap some photos during practice, though! I have a new camera for 2022, and some of the lenses I always dreamed about, so of course I want to wield them for stuff like this.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Naturally I had a few questions about the F-16, with some particularly technical questions about how it compares to the F-18, F-22, and F-35. The Thunderbirds pilots are rated on a number of aircraft, including my beloved A-10, so it’s a blast getting their impressions of the various equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Due to my line of work I have to protect my hearing, so I have custom molded ear plugs which I’ve worn religiously while racing, working around noisy equipment, or attending airshows. I do, however, remove them for a bit whenever fighters are nearby. What can I say, I love the sound of freedom!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Those with an eye for detail will notice that Kyle’s number 5 is upside-down on his flight suit. It’s actually upside-down on his aircraft, too – what started out as a joke is actually pretty practical. He spends so much time inverted during the program that this allows his number to be upright in all the photos!<\/p>\n\n\n

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This isn’t Kyle, by the way. But the number on the intake is the one I’m referring to. In shots where aircraft number 5 is inverted aside another Thunderbird, both aircraft have numbers properly oriented for the photographers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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I didn’t spend that much time photographing the practice, really! This is it. It’s funny how many times I took the camera in and out of the bag, though. I didn’t bring any lenses longer than 200mm, so it wasn’t really an ideal photography circumstance anyway. When I’ve shot the Thunderbirds in other states I’ve rented really long glass so I can get the shots I want. 400-600mm is ideal, with image stabilization of course, and it takes a lot of practice. At that kind of focal length it’s like looking through a straw, and following the action is a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t make it back up to Grand Forks AFB Saturday to just be a spectator, but I’m looking forward to the next time I get to see a fighter demo squadron in action! As far as how much time I spend looking through a viewfinder instead of just enjoying the show…we’ll, we’ll have to play that one by ear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a behind the scenes meet-and-greet with the US Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration squadron Friday in advance of the Northern Thunder air and space expo at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, and it was a fantastic way to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military","category-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7505,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7184\/revisions\/7505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}