The last seven days have provided a plethora of awesome aviation related videos. Sometimes doing an entire post on a single video makes sense, but doing that daily doesn’t. So I have condensed the best of the best here for your viewing pleasure in a new segment I call Cinema Aero.
First up, we have had some awesome, and I mean AWESOME video coming out of Australia showing RAAF aircraft rehearsing for the Riverfire celebration in Brisbane. You may remember this event as it featured probably the best ‘dump and burns’ by F-111s in the history of the maneuver. You can see what I am talking about in this old piece of mine. Since the F-111’s retirement, other RAAF have stepped in to keep the flyover tradition alive—and these aren’t just any sleepy aerial displays. In true RAAF fashion, the jets get down low and very fast.
RAAF EA-18G Growlers starred this year in the event, making very high-speed and low passes deep below the skyline:
You can check out the maneuvers from inside the Growler’s cockpit in the absolutely awesome 360 video below. Here’s a direct link in case the Facebook embed doesn’t pop up.
While the Growler was certainly full of energy, a RAAF C-17 crew pretty much said ‘hold my beer mate!’ and put on one of the coolest flybys we have seen!
Just
watch this:
Here are a couple other angles:
We go from Globemasters to Warthogs with this clip incredibly well-edited video from the USAF A-10 Demo Team which is back in action after closing up shop for a number of years due to sequester. 360 video capture technology is changing cockpit videos as we know it. It often offers an interactive experience where you can basically choose your own point of view, but they can also offer creative production folks the ability to capture just the right series of perspectives in a smooth and almost panoptic manner. Check out what I mean here as you sit in the A-10’s cockpit during a low-level flight. Here is a direct link in case the video doesn’t show up below.
The next video is one of the most gorgeous aviation videos I have seen in a long time. It uses a fixed horizon perspective to give us a view of what it looks like flying on the tail of one of Redline Airshows‘ RV8 during a night display replete with pyrotechnics. Once again, hero-cam technology is evolving so fast now that it is providing us with views really never imagined before.
Speaking of airshow demonstrations, this HUD footage from inside the cockpit of a Romanian MiG-21 Lancer during an airshow routine is really something. It reminds us of just how much of a ‘stick and rudder’ affair the ‘Kalashnikov of fighters’ really is and its flight-data probe sure doesn’t want to sit still does it? Not to mention that the steep split-s to landing at the end is straight-up bonkers.
This video came to my attention in our own outstanding comments section which is an eclectic rabbit hole of great information. Here is a direct link just in case the Facebook video doesn’t propagate below.
Then there was this ridiculously low pass by a Ukrainian Su-24 Fencer. You can’t get deeper into the weeds than this and have any chance of surviving to talk about it. Yes, it’s dangerous. No, it doesn’t have any distinct tactical value. But it must be one hell of a rush and it makes for a crazy video:
This Bell 407 really got itself into a tight spot. On departure, it gave a palm tree a major trim. Scary, scary stuff, not just for whoever was onboard, but also for those on the ground nearby:
Bonus video! Clearly, it isn’t new, but this is an absolutely awesome clip of Concorde departing in the twilight with its four Rolls Royce Olympus turbojets in full reheat:
I remember driving into JFK one evening in the early 1990s with my dad to catch a flight back home and seeing this exact thing. It was absolutely spectacular, both visually and acoustically. Concorde was always a fixture right at the end of the terminal, fully visible from the road when you got dropped off for a flight. British Airways loved showing off their marvelous machine to the masses even though most could never afford to fly aboard her.
Great memories of a bygone era.
Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com