Saw RAAF Hornet, USAF F-16CJ, USN F/A-18F and RAAF F-111C and a couple of prop aircraft fly today.
No B1B or F-15 display
Hornets were both awesome. F-16 seemed to be flying his display on a line further west of the runway which made his display a bit dull as he never flew near the crowd.
The F-111 had some sort of malfunction mid-routine and landed.
He was heading south west after a pass and suddenly began flying very conservatively and lowered the landing gear and made a very large circuit to land runway 18.
The idiotic announcing did not make mention of this and acted like there was nothing wrong.
The same thing happened a few years back when the RAAF Hornet (the year Simmo was flying it) suddenly went all slow and shut down one engine and landed. Even with the airport fire trucks following it up the runway on a public day there was still no info on what had happened and the announcers acted like nothing was wrong.
I realise this is embarrassing for the RAAF when an aircraft gets broken but it's interesting for me.
As a contrast I saw the Blue Angels at NAS Oceana in 2002 and the opposing solo aircraft went unserviceable during taxi out and the broadcasters explained to everyone what was happening and we all watched as he took it back and jumped in the media two seater instead.
The other thing that annoys me about our military is the big secret attitude. The guys on the M1 Abrams tank were paranoid that someone was going to take a photo of the drivers station and were warning us not to.
I remember seeing this panel...photo freely available on the internet...
BFW