The air to ground training exercise that I mentioned above is wrapping up this afternoon as I type this with the last of the F-16's flying the afternoon sorties inbound for their tactical recoveries. I spent most of the day yesterday at the airport watching and listening to all the air operations from my new perch 5 stories above the field and directly adjacent to and 2 stories below the KBTV tower cab. The F-16C's flew 10 sorties in the morning and another 10 in the afternoon while one U-28A, Hunter 447, flew both a morning and afternoon sortie. The other U-28A, Hunter 96, had an emergency during his return in the morning and didn't fly in the afternoon. It was interesting watching the VT ANG fire fighting equipment scramble and escort Hunter 96 to his parking spot after his uneventful landing.
The afternoon was highlighted by first an LC-130H, 31096, from the NY ANG's 109th Airlift Squadron flying multiple TNG's and missed approaches and then a KC-135R, 10298, from the WI ANG's 126th Air Refueling Squadron landing and parking on the VT ANG's north ramp.
For purposes of this exercise a temporary MOA had been established over KBTV above 12,000 feet. The F-16's returning to land on runway 15 would return to a point within this MOA called Sugarbush and then descend to another point to the north at 7,000 feet called North High and from there proceed inbound for their tactical recoveries.
Both the morning and afternoon F-16C sorties consisted of 3 flights of 2 from the VT ANG's 134th FS, 1 flight of 2 from the CO ANG's 120th FS and 1 flight of 2 from the WI ANG's 176th FS except in the afternoon when the latter couldn't muster 2 flyable F-16C's, so the 134th FS's F-16D, with an empty back seat
, paired with the lone flyable 176th FS F-16C. All departures were with full burner and exceptionally steep climbouts and all tactical recoveries were from about 3000 feet and exceptionally tight. One of the CO ANG's F-16C's landed in the afternoon with only 5 minutes of fuel remaining.
I don't have an SLR digital camera with a telephoto lens, so I couldn't get any really good photos or videos to show. I took some of each with my smartphone, but the distance was just too great for good photos or videos.
Mike M
