December 2018 Drill Weekend

457th Fighter Squadron ( FS ) aka. ” Spads” do their drill weekend once a month and this chilly weekend is not exception for our boys from Spads. 2 sorties was made in the morning and one more in the afternoon. We get much more F-16 in the morning flights with callsign ” Mustang”, “Spad” and “Beast”

Mustang 3-1 returning for a Tac Initial… Runway 36

One of the Spads have some issues on takeoff and was circling the airfield and landed safely with her bomb loads intact.

Spads aircraft 86-227 return and landed safely after reporting problems. 

Lockheed Martin also had some activities this saturday with Lightning 1-1 out playing. ( F-35B). She was supported by Lightning 1-2 which is the Lockheed Martin F-16D chaser. They did do a SVTOL testing which open up the Vertical hovering of the F-35B.

Lightning 1-1 testing the Vertical Takeoff and landing mode of the F-35B

On this Saturday we did catch some transient traffic coming in for Gas and go. Namely 3x VMFA-314 Black Knights F/A-18 did a beautiful landing on runway 36.

A single VMFA-112 Cowboy F/A-18B did return to base and did a beautiful Carrier Break for runway 36.

Overall a very busy weekend with lots of actions…. There were actually 2x VAQ-209 growlers that came in and a missed VFC-12 F/A-18B departure on that day.

Article by Dave Chng