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24,950ft Above Sea Level is a Cool Place to Be
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The Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve sponsored an event at the Portland Air Force Base in honor of civilian employers of military reservists. Since one of my employees is in the Air National Guard, my boss and I were lucky enough to get invitations to this event.
We spent the whole day on Friday, 7/15 at the Air Force Base getting an excellent, very hands-on, tour. They took us up in a KC-135 in-flight refueling tanker and we got to see two F-15s being refueled at 24,950ft above sea level. We were able to hang out in the cockpit as well as operate the refueling boom which was a blast.
After the refueling, one of the F-15 pilots, Callsign "Stripper", spent the rest of the day with us offering his persepective on things. He was very cordial and seemed genuinely interested in us. I would have thought that he would be bored and aloof at having to give a tour. I later found out that he was in the reserves as well and when he wasn't flying fighter jets, he was a commerical pilot for FedEx. Now I know wht my packages always arrive on time!
We were also able to watch 2 F-15s take off in full augmentation (the new method of "afterburning"). It's really cool to see a Alaska Airlines 737 have to wait while two F-15's launch down the runway with a 10ft long streak of fire behind them. Then we watched 4 more F-15s take off in paired formation from the edge of the taxiway which was fun.
The next stop was the "Hush House" where they test jet engines after maintenance. In our case, we were able to watch a Pratt and Whitney F100 engine go from idle to full augmentation from about 15 feet away. The engine was sucking so much air that we had to brace ourselves as the wind was over 100mph at times. I've never been in a place where not having hearing protection would literally cause hearing damage within seconds. We had to wear two forms of hearing protection; ear plugs and ear muffs. Even with those on, the engine was very loud, especially when it was a full augmentation.
My camera is old and bulky so I didn't bring it. Luckily, my boss Kory was able to take lots of pictures which I posted on flickr.
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