B17 Flyover

azpilot

azpilot

Line Up and Wait
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Jul 27, 2015
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azpilot
I was walking out in my front yard yesterday and a B17 flew right over my house. The commemorative airforce has a B17 they maintain called "Sentimental Journey", I am pretty sure this was it. I pulled out my cell phone real quick and snapped a picture. It doesn't look that close in the cell phone pic, but it looked MUCH closer in person. It had to be pretty close to 1,000 feet AGL. I live right on the edge of the Gateway (KIWA) airspace. It looked like it had departed Gateway and was heading over to Chandler (KCHD), but I am not certain.


Here is the picture I took.
B17.jpg


This is a picture I found with google image search.
Sentimental-Journey-1.jpg
 
Beautiful machine and dedicated heroic crews who flew and manned it, pilots and crew alike. Never get tired of seeing it or reading about it.
 
What's the visitation policy? I could go for a trip to AZ about now.
 
I saw it at Chandler a couple weeks ago, at night about 100 yards from the fuel pump.
 
It came to our local CAF open house a few years ago. I can't find my pictures right now. I did crawl through it, though. Those guys back in the day were much, much smaller than I am.
 
Since I live on the edge of the Gateway delta airspace, I see small GA planes flying overhead everyone once in a while. Whenever I hear one, I always try to look up and find it. The difference in sound was absolutely astonishing with the B-17. I would guess it was about 1,000' AGL, and humming along with all four radial engines burning up the 100LL. I wish I would have hit the 'record' button instead of taking a picture!
 
I had the b17 fly over my house several times last week during sun n fun. Several p51s and the warbirds woke me up every morning practicing over my back yard. All very distinctive sounds. The b17 was giving rides and was flying very slow most times. The p51s not so much.
 
I occasionally see FiFi, she flies over my house heading into KADS. As a general rule, whenever I hear a radial engine everyone needs to get out of the way 'cause I'm heading for the door to see what's flying by. :D
 
Theboys said:
I had the b17 fly over my house several times last week during sun n fun. Several p51s and the warbirds woke me up every morning practicing over my back yard. All very distinctive sounds. The b17 was giving rides and was flying very slow most times. The p51s not so much.
Click to expand...

B-17 at Sun n Fun? That was me in the right seat... CAF Texas Raiders outta Houston. We flew our butts off at Lakeland, 19 hops total including revenue rides, media and airshow flights. During the ride flights, yep, we fly slowwww. Pull the power back and idle along at 130 kts to save fuel. Enroute, we push it all the way up to 145 kts and are burning 200gph, ouch! It's a cool old airplane, a bit of a pig to fly, but then you realize... holy crap, I'm flying a B-17!
 
jbDC9 said:
B-17 at Sun n Fun? That was me in the right seat... CAF Texas Raiders outta Houston. We flew our butts off at Lakeland, 19 hops total including revenue rides, media and airshow flights. During the ride flights, yep, we fly slowwww. Pull the power back and idle along at 130 kts to save fuel. Enroute, we push it all the way up to 145 kts and are burning 200gph, ouch! It's a cool old airplane, a bit of a pig to fly, but then you realize... holy crap, I'm flying a B-17!
Click to expand...

Taking off in that thing must be a rush. Imagine trying to do it fully (over?)loaded from a rough wartime runway.
Pics?
 
My dad and I took a ride aboard Sentimental Journey at the 2002 CAF Airsho at MAF. I happened to be in the bombardier's seat as we overflew Midland. Looking through the Norden's crosshairs, with my fingers on the "bombs away!" switch, I got to "bomb" Midland. :D
 
Watched it take off at sun n fun. Even with no bombs it didn't look like it responded like a sports car. Having been in several original b17s and being they are pretty sparse on avionics it's kinda suprising they found there way back to England. Course not sure designers really figured that part much into design.
 
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