On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 11:31:22 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:


That's cool. Man, I wish they could still do that today!

I spent a couple of weeks at my grandparent's home in Bakersfield, CA during
the heyday of supersonic flight testing at Edwards. (1961 and 1963, to be
precise) Every day we'd see/hear (mostly hear) the X-15 go over, and the
sonic booms.

Call me crazy, but I *liked* the sound. So did my grandparents! (My
grandmother worked on-base.)

:-)

I guess I was just lucky to live in Tennessee at the right time.

You could actually see the shock wave coming when someone was
supersonic. It looked like a (I'm at a loss for words here so I'll
use my own old phrase) shimmera. It was just a glint in the air, but
you could definately see it coming. Most of the planes were pretty
high up, so you could only hear one boom. We could see the plane, and
at my age then, it was just sort of a learning experience.

My son, when we went to an airshow with the Thunderbirds, would beg
one of them to go supersonic.

When I get around to it, I'll put a couple of pictures on my web site
with the F-100s and F-4s.

Mike Weller