Blue Angels

August 19th, 2014. Pensacola, FL.

You are about to see lots of blue, a bit of black and white, and just a touch of yellow.

I didn't get any really close shots, but I came away with several photos that I'm happy with.

One of the Blue Angels' practice runs happened to coincide with my family's visit to Florida, so we skipped the beach one day and took a two-hour drive over to the National Naval Aviation Museum (go ahead and say that out loud). The viewing area was packed, but not having front-row seats wasn't a huge deal since...you know...they were flying above us most of the time. I did manage to get a couple of shots of them on the runway:

So many people. Oooooohhhh, a plane!

There were 6 planes in the air, but usually only the first four flew in a group while the other two did solo stunts and distracted the crowd. The "practice" was awesome. I thought they would fly around for about 20 minutes, do a fancy loop thing and then call it a day, but they were in the air for around 45 minutes and kept everyone guessing the whole time. 

One of their "fancy loop things."

Yes, two of them are upside down.

The Angels are known for their tight flying formation (something like a foot and half between the wingtip of one plane and the cockpit of another), but the best part of the day was when one of the solo planes passed in front of the crowd, and the other solo plane shot over us while our attention was elsewhere. That was the only time a plane flew directly overhead and he scared the crap out of everyone. It was very loud, and it was very, very cool.

One of my favorites. Such a cool day!

One of the few times they all flew together.

We spent a couple of hours in the museum after the show, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen more planes in one place before. It's definitely one of the best free things to do in Pensacola!

These planes were used by the Angels in the late 70's and early 80's before they switched to their current model.

They're suspended from the ceiling inside the museum, and there's a raised walkway that lets you get eye level with them.