There are some cool things that I've done in my aviation career, and this past Tuesday was one of the more memorable... I got a ride as a passenger in one of two chase cars for a U-2's recovery/landing. The U-2 is a special jet that has minimized its weight to increase performance... so it doesn't have traditional airplane features like a full landing gear or bright landing lights. The pilots wear space suits and helmets which restrict their visibility when landing. Given all of these limitations, the solution is to launch chase cars which drive right behind the landing plane to tell the pilot how far he is from touchdown and also to provide their headlights to illuminate the runway ahead during night landings. The recovery I went on was a night landing, darker than the video below but pretty similar.
I still can't believe that I was in a car going 15o mph chasing right behind one of the world's most famous planes! I loved it, and have such a great appreciation for the amazing things these folks do every day... If you have a minute to spare, I highly recommend watching the first 50 seconds of the video above.
2 comments:
That is pretty cool!
That's awesome! Thanks for sharing. - Brig
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