I have never before seen an Osprey in flight. This made my day!
One benefit of living along the glide path of Moffett Field is we get to see some interesting planes from time to time. Coming in to land, they’re low and slow, and fortunately not at full throttle. In recent years I’ve seen these over my house: B-25 Mitchell. B-17 Flying Fortress. B-29 Superfortress. P-51 Mustang. B-24 Liberator. F-35 JSF (in Nov 2014, posted here). C-5M Super Galaxy. C-17 Globemaster. B-26 Invader (Douglas) - to me one of the most beautiful planes ever. And others.
And now the V-22 Osprey! Inside my house, I heard it long before I saw it. At first it sounded like a military helicopter, getting louder and louder. It got very loud and the house started to shake. And then I saw it out my window, it passed directly overhead at about only 500 feet. Awesome. Incredible, powerful.
This was like the one and only time I saw a P-38 Lockheed Lightning in flight - one of my favorite WWII aircraft, man, those things are tiny, and that made my day then too. That was at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino CA.
Which reminds me of my friend, Ben Herbert Smith of Los Altos CA who flew the P-38 in WWII. He told me stories of flying his P-38 underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Back in the days when it was allowed - or, strictly speaking, not disallowed.
R.I.P., Ben, but you’re now living forever with God and with your beloved Val, whom we never had the pleasure to meet. We’ll see you when we too are called home, soon enough.
But I digress a little. That V-22 Osprey was LOUD. It sure made my day seeing it fly!
You can sometimes catch Ospreys (all three kinds*) in action in the eastern Sierras. CA 108 runs right past the Mountain Warfare Training center where I took these pics of an approach and landing. It was really cool to watch the whole thing–I could hear it just before it cleared the northern ridge and then it made a big wide circle over the valley and then came in almost right on top of the roadway before touching down.
Vertical. Probably why it was so loud, being directly overhead at 500 feet it was coming in slowly.
It was very cool! You should be jealous.
That’s a beautiful, dramatic drive, CA-108 over Sonora Pass. (well, so to is CA-120 Tioga Pass). 108 takes you within 200 yards of MCMWTC at Pickel Meadows, where the USMC has the only mule warfare team in the US military, specially trained for mountainous terrain.
I drive by Miramar every time i go to and from work. There are Ospreys in the air all the time around here, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff, from helicopters to small business jets to cargo planes to F/A-18s.
If you’re on the freeway right as one of the Hornets come in for a landing, and you don’t see that plane coming, the noise can scare the crap out of you.
I have, and yes, agree, it’s a great ride! Great scenery and riding experience. My in-laws used to live in Bishop and I was in San Francisco, and I’ve ridden every pass and permutation over the Sierras, from I-80 Donner Pass in the north to CA-58 Tehachapi Pass in the south. That includes Chowchilla Mountain Rd between Mariposa and the Wawona in Yosemite - a muddy Jeep trail that I did in my SUV once. That was a fun experience.
My last job was aboard NAS Patuxent River and our building was right next to one of the hangars where they tested the Ospreys, so we’d occasionally be treated to them firing up on the ground, taxiing around, and such. The whole building would shake, and if you happened to be on the phone, you had to give up till they were done.
We also used to sail in the Patuxent, so we’d see them flying around occasionally. But I quit that job and we’d sold the boat years ago - I rarely see them any more.
This has been a problem in Okinawa, Japan because the V-22s are stationed in Futenma, a based surrounded by densely populated housing. See this pic, for example.
There is an ongoing issue of where to relocate them.
The USAF trains pilots and crew on Ospreys at Kirtland, so they’re a fairly common sight around here. Easier to spot if you’re in the extreme northern or southern parts of Albuquerque. I’ve mostly seen them flying in the airspace near Sandia Pueblo and coming in on approach to the airport.
There was an Osprey doing touch-and-goes (um, whatever they’re called in an Osprey) at Asheville airport a few months ago. It was pretty surreal, in the misty hills - endlessly circuiting, landing, taking off, etc. Felt like a video game level.
