Echelon Left

I set up for recording airplanes today, and I double-checked my microphone levels, but the wind decided to blow from the south-west for most of the day. I really wanted to get a better recording of the C-17, but alas, I did not.

I did, however, get some really good recordings of the USAF Thunderbirds as they came in to land at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

This one is presumably all six of the F-16s flying at approach speed to the airport:



multiple_f-16s_landing_03sep07.mp3

Since six airplanes can't land at the same time, some of the planes flew back around to realign themselves with the runway. That's from where the really good recordings came.



multiple_f-16s_landing_2_03sep07.mp3

This last Thunderbird to land flew almost directly over-head in a tight right turn to the airport. The higher-pitched "zweet" and "zwoot" sounds (at about y=7800 and x=1500-2500 on the screen-cap) are from the aircraft. While not as noticeable on the recording, they were very distinct as I watched the plane from the yard.

It was pretty cool.

I don't know what specific part of the aircraft made those sounds, but my guess is that they came from the changing of the diameter of the engine's exhaust nozzle; although, I don't know for sure if the F-16 has that feature.



f-16_landing_overhead_03sep07.mp3