Here's a lovely music video dealing with the C-17 Globemaster III military transport, pictured over the mountains and coasts of California. I highly recommend watching it in full-screen mode.
Congratulations to everyone involved in making that. One doesn't normally think of military transport aircraft as being particularly attractive or good-looking, but that video is enough to make one reconsider.
Peter
5 comments:
I have had the privilege of flying in the C-17 6 times, two of which I sat in the cockpit, directly behind the pilot.
One of the flights included a high performance take-off and a tactical descent arrival. The aircraft's performance is incredible, the power evident as it rotates and climbs, as well as during the tactical descent when the thrust reversers are deployed while still in the air, allowing for a high, steep arrival.
One appreciates the capabilities of the aircraft, as well as the skills of the pilots and the loadmaster.
Nothing makes you appreciate the loadmaster more until you realize that if they didn't do their job right, tons of stuff is going to come crashing through the cockpit, on it's way to earth, an instant after sending you to your death.
It's an amazing system, one we are lucky to have moving our military around.
Hat's off to the plane, it's crews and the people who keep it flying.
Thanks for the post.
I live just North of the Long Beach airport where Boeing builds these. I used to see them on a fairly regular basis, but now that Boeing is closing production on them, not so much.
They have a very distinctive sound, and I can tell when one is going by without seeing it.
+1 on the Captain...
Can't top the captain's story, but living near an AF base, I've seen them on approach many times. The optical illusion is that they seem to be flying so slowly you can outrun them on a bicycle, but they're going well over 100.
I've only seen a C-17 for certain once. They do have a beauty, grace, and pwoer to them. My personal cockpit experience was in C-141Bs (the "stretched" version) riding (in the best flight) in the cockpit jump seat as a "pity passenger" who'd been bumped off 3 previous flight to Adak, AK. The C-17s sound similar to C-5's but different. Hard to describe. The C-141 should have been like a C-17. Why the USAF bought it with too narrow a hull (only somewhat, though not much, fixed by the later "stretch" variant) is a mystery of the [spit]McNamara years.
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