Well, I attended the California Capital Air Show on Sunday with great excitement as their website stated that the Raptor was going to be there as well, among many other great performers. There were actually two Raptors there with two F-15Es, two F/A-18Cs, plus the Mustang as part of the performers. There were a few more of the little planes, bi-planes, and a helicopter but I didn't pay much attention to those as the jets are the birds that attract me the most.

I must say that I'm a bit upset now as my camera apparently fried my 2GB SD card, and thus no photos here for me to show you, unfortunately. I took about a hundred pics or so, and all of a sudden the camera says, "card unreadable". I did all I could and still no go. I came home with a bad hunch and no matter what I do, I can't get anything to read the card. I even downloaded a few recovery programs and they can't even recognize the card. What can I do?

With no photos, I will tell you what I saw and hopefully someone else from this site was there and can upload their photos to their file space and insert them in a post after this. From memory, the static displays were F-16C, T-45, B-1B, KC-10, C-5, U2, F-5s, KC-135R, C-17 (which also did a demo later), and several smaller propeller-driven planes which I could not identify. As Mather AFB is also a cargo center, there were a couple of FedEx and UPS planes as well as a DHL 767. The planes doing demos were in a sealed-off area and one could not get to. The lines to go to the C-5 cockpit, KC-10, etc. were pretty long, and in 93 degree weather, I opted out of those lines but rather spent my time inside the big planes, or sitting in the shade watching the aerobatics.

The first plane to fly was one of the Raptors. This was the first time I had seen the Raptor in action, and let me tell you, if you haven't seen one fly, do whatever you can to go see one. The display literally left me speechless. The things this plane can do is mind-boggling. It can turn left and right without pitching either wing 1 degree up or down, do tiny little loops, sort of like flipping on it's back, stop in the air, free-fall the plane, and then do a nice powerful recovery. I don't see how anything can go against the Raptor in air-to-air combat. After a few minutes of flying, the Raptor returned. Then it was the F-15E, the Hornet, a few smaller planes, a fly by of a KC-135R, followed by a U-2, and then some more demo flying. I was surprised how loud the U-2 was. All were pretty spectacular and impressive. The final flight before the Thunderbirds was a trio of the Raptor, F-15, and of course the P-51 Mustang. This demo was actually pretty long and I must say that this time the F-22 was even more exciting than the first demo. Again, if you really want to be dazzled and see things never before done, you have to see the Raptor in action. The Thunderbirds finally closed off the show with their aerobatic displays and another great show came to an end.

Here are a couple of photos taken my Mr. Jon Wright on the previous days:

Ray,

Have you tried Badcopy Jusoft

It has saved me a couple of times.

Just thinking are you able to see the images from the card on the camera? If not you may have trouble, but its worht running the card through Badcopy.

cheers

Paul