WOW-Yesterday on my way home from work I saw a C17 do the Overhead Break to land ...that was one of the coolest freaking things!! Such a big plane doing it!
There were 2 of them doing tng's at the time, so I tried to get a picture of the second one just in case it did it too, but it just did a low level flyover(?) and stayed in the pattern.
I know for you real-life military folk, this ain't really a big deal, but for we civilians, it's pretty freakin' sweet!
A Couple of weeks ago I saw a pair of C-17's flying an approach into Oceana on 5R and they both did an overhead break. I thought it was pretty awesome to say the least that these guys were trying to be like fighter pilots.
jetmax wrote:NAS Oceana airshow C-17 demo was great. Our KC-135 do an overhead break here at KGSB all the time. They like to pretent they are Strike Eagles
lol
Wow so I guess thats a standard military practice even for the big boys huh?
They did it at Offutt "Arrows to Aerospace" show this year also. I went out to see the arrivals and they did it then too. The overhead break isn't exclusive to fighters. It is actually a fuel saving manuver to avoid a long rectangular approach. I recall learning a similar technique, a 180 side, approach in private pilot training.
GZR_Sactargets wrote:They did it at Offutt "Arrows to Aerospace" show this year also. I went out to see the arrivals and they did it then too. The overhead break isn't exclusive to fighters. It is actually a fuel saving manuver to avoid a long rectangular approach. I recall learning a similar technique, a 180 side, approach in private pilot training.
yeah, all military aircraft except rotary wing use it I believe, some of my friends going through primary have mentioned how cool it is to get to "call the break" in T-6As and T-34s
Yea the purpose of "the break" is to take aircraft that are in a tight formation and seperate them as efficiently as possible and make them far enough apart for a safe landing. Saves fuel, saves time as a/c approach the field rather fast and use the break to slow down for landing thus eliminating long slow approaches, and saves time-on-runway too
-Joe W.
"I love the smell of jetfuel in the morning....smells like VICTORY!!"
Above all correct and also used in a "combat" environment, as stated, as to not have the landing aircraft drag in the approach.
For the helos, USN/USMC students do the "break" the TH-57's at NAS Whiting Fld South, probably just a carry over from primary flight training in the T-34.
We would do the "break" mostly after doing a fly over mission on our H-60 Blackhawks. If I was in the "lead" helo, I (Crewchief) would remind the pilots to call for a break overhead on our return to our unit base and it did make an impression on the guys in the ground, ( it feel awesome also in the air). Flying in Army Guard helos for 25 years gives you some "voice" in the cabin. Lewis
Nice Lewis, come back and crew for me. Having a Navy background and very used to watching fast movers come in to a NAS for the break. I can't convince anyone to do it, besides the Army controller wouldn't understand my request! Now I just joke about, "Hey lets do the break".