Bouncing

I have been so slack the last week (well kind of) and have not updated. I wanted to make this post earlier but it has taken me a number of days to work through it. On Wednesday there was forecast of good weather and I wasn’t working. A Friend of mine was also free and we decided to head up to Whidbey Island. Why? Well because the US Navy was sending some of their jet’s for Field Carrier Landing practice. What is that? Well to put it simply the jets from the local Naval Air Station head to a small local runway (called an Operational Landing Field or OLF for short) at Coupeville and spend time doing touch and go’s practicing for when they head out to sea and have to land on a carrier. They practice pattern work and approaches etc.

So my friend and I headed out there and had a blast, albeit leaving early in the morning

From Seattle Life 2015

This is what OLF Coupeville looks like:

From Seattle Life 2015

Doesn’t look like much right? Correct! Pretty much it is just a runway right beside the road and there isn’t even a real fence. Just a line of concrete blocks the whole way around. It means you can have a great time getting photos. We went out there expecting maybe 1 or 2 jets to do 5 or so circuits total and that was it. The Navy had released they were doing Mid Morning to Mid Afternoon. Thinking that there might be time for a lunch break in the middle we got there early and just waited. What we got though was a whole different event.

The Navy brought out the jets around 1030ish and they stuck around till about 2pm. A total of 6 different aircraft did approximately 50 touch and go’s and to be honest, it was a BLAST! I took around 1700 photos and a few videos and had some fun in the process as well: