F22 Raptor

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CBus660R

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Got to see a few fly over my house today. I live in the flight path of Rickenbacker Airport, a dual use facility with cargo, very limited commercial, and an Air National Guard KC-135 air refueling wing. I guess the F-22s are from Langley and are gonna spend a few days here waiting out Hurricane Matthew. The sound they make is awesome. Definitely louder than anything else that flies there on a regular basis. I was sitting on my couch when I heard the noise and ran out to see those magnificent beasts flying by. I'll post a few quick vids in a bit once I get them uploaded to Photobucket. They're not great vids by any means, but still cool to see such a rare plane, especially when it's the baddest **** in the world!

I got some more videos today and put 'em all in this Photobucket album, F22s In Groveport by Colin Klier | Photobucket
 
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Onomea said:
There are some extremely cool F-22 videos on YouTube.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I've watched a lot. I'm a bit of an aviation buff. My dream as a kid was to be a pilot and even though I had the grades, 20/400 vision and a history of asthma ruled that out.
 
The Air Force often does fly-overs at a 4th of July celebration in Provo, Utah with F-16's from Hill AFB about 100 miles north of there. I live right in between. A few years ago, I was outside doing yard work that afternoon when 2 F-16's went over, fairly low, followed a few seconds later by a pair of F-22's. First airborne Raptors I'd seen. Yes, about twice of loud as the F-16's.

The Air Force wanted 700-800 F-22's to replace the F-15's in the air superiority role. That got whacked down to less than 200 and production was shut down. Now, with Russian and Chinese stealth development and increased aggressive moves by them, and the slow development of the F-35, coupled with the huge unanticipated wear and tear on the F-15 fleet from Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria, we are finding ourselves to be in a bad way if things get hotter and the Air Force and Congress are talking about reopening F-22 production. Probably a good idea in that the development and tooling costs are already spent, so total per-unit cost would be less and much faster to procure than another new design being developed. F-15 production is soon going to be terminated and as good an air-to-air design as it is, the design is almost 40 years old now.
 
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I've been reading about how they're considering re-starting F22 production. To start the line back up isn't gonna be that expensive, but the per unit cost is still gonna be really high. The end units of the original production were about $180 million apiece and the expected cost of a 2nd batch will be in the $220 million per unit range. Also, it's over $60,000 per hour to operate. As much of a boondoggle that the F-35 has been, it's still cheaper so it's doubtful that the F22 will start back up.
 
They fly over our place in the mountains every now and again.

I love hearing them approach so I can go outside and check them out if it's daylight. The dog, not so much.
 
Mm did the Navy send the ships at Norfolk to sea? That's how I tell if the hurricane threat to Virginia is serious. Fleet goes out if landfall's expected.
 
As a Manufacturing Engineer, I spent the last 14 years of my 32 yrear run with Boeing on the F-22 program & as such, i have had my hands on each & every shipset we produced (wings & aft-body sections). I also participated in the tear-down of both production lines and preparation of all government tools for storage. They all went into conex boxes, (some 300+) and were shipped to north Nevada for long-term storage. All the tooling was pretty well worn out, and the large computer-controlled 5-axis drilling machines were cut up for scrap. I expect Lockheed's tooling was in the same shape. A restart of the line would entail a completely new tooling suite, not to mention creating a whole new vendor supply stream for the proprietary designs we used. Believe it or not, the center fuselage is made up of large castings that are welded together to form a sort of unibody construction for the fuel sections of the wings. Boeing invested heavily in the initial design, first trying machining, then forging & finally casting using a hipping process that consolidated the grain structure of the titanium in both density and strength. Ti is very hard to machine as it changes shape due to internal stress whenever it is cut & bending sheet Ti requires temperatures above 1,000 degrees to keep it from springing back to original shape. New technology might serve the tooling package, but it will take a congress of greybeards who worked the program to provide the expertise to the next generation of craftsmen who might be lucky enough to restart the F-22 production again!
 
I lived in the flight line......

I lived in the flight line close to the Charleston air base I frequently was in my front yard and there was often something exciting, or terrifying to see. That was before F-22 but two Delta Darts scrambling are pretty exciting , doing touch and goes and doing some aerobatics thrown in. But when the air show came to town. It looked like a museum up there. Planes I've never seen before or since.

I don't mind the noise of fighters too much because you hear them coming and then they are going, quick. Because it was a SAC base Starlifters trained ALL THE TIME, NIGHT AND DAY. They hovered over your house and tried to blow the shingles off your roof. Then 5 minutes later here comes another one.
I didn't like that part.:(

I just looked on Google Earth and we were 2.5 miles from the runway.
 
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I love to see the enthusiasm. We have a few F-22s here at Edwards. I see them fly quite often. They are truly an amazing aircraft.
 
rwsmith said:
I lived in the flight line close to the Charleston air base I frequently was in my front yard and there was often something exciting, or terrifying to see. That was before F-22 but two Delta Darts scrambling are pretty exciting , doing touch and goes and doing some aerobatics thrown in. But when the air show came to town. It looked like a museum up there. Planes I've never seen before or since.

I don't mind the noise of fighters too much because you hear them coming and then they are going, quick. Because it was a SAC base Starlifters trained ALL THE TIME, NIGHT AND DAY. They hovered over your house and tried to blow the shingles off your roof. Then 5 minutes later here comes another one.
I didn't like that part.:(

I just looked on Google Earth and we were 2.5 miles from the runway.
Click to expand...

Rickenbacker has an Air National Guard unit that flies the KC-135. They're up and down doing touch and goes several times a day and occasionally at night too, but I'm used to it. The facility also is a commercial airport, mostly freight but some passenger stuff, but those planes are pretty quiet compared to the military stuff. At this point I know the sounds of the normal planes, so when I hear something different, I run out to see what it is. That's what got me geeked about the F22s, they're loud and unique sounding. I was sitting on my couch and I jumped off the couch when I heard them! Hahahaha
 
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