Is it possible to track them and figure out when they are going to arrive? There are obviously sites which one can use to track aircraft, but because they are military are they not trackable? They are flying into Boeing Field Seattle sometime today.
Speaking of which, they should post the 3-Dimensional trails for one of their shows for viewing in Google Earth as I think it would be really interesting to see how they set up for approaches as well as how far away they are during the show.
There is legitimate value in showing people when a plane containing family or friends is going to arrive. Not much “need to know” where a single-seat fighter plane is and where it’s going.
There is no particular value in knowing the flight track of your family’s aircraft, or that they are directly over Kearney, Nebraska at a particular moment in time. a simple block of text that tells you their expected arrival time is all you really need to know, and in fact has more value than the former.
In any event, the OP might be best served by directing his comments and requests directly to the Blue Angels.
Joe, that link didn’t work for me. The OP may be interested in the Blue Angels schedule for 2010, though.
Spousal unit says they’ve usually arrived at Boeing Field in the afternoons in past years.
For what it’s worth, if you know anybody with a scanner that picks up the military air bands (most of the better models) you can listen to both their air-to-air and their air-to-ground transmissions. Thursday practice is most interesting as they keep up a running commentary of what they’re going to use as checkpoints for the show.
eta: they came in about 3pm yesterday. From where I was, all I could really hear was that one of them was having a generator problem of some kind.