[ScanIndiana] RE: [MilCom] Blue Angels freqs - Mount Comfort, Indiana

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 03:03:57 -0500

Hey Scott, good work on this.  I plugged in the freqs. you 
mentioned below, plus 126.07 (temp tower); 126.2 (air boss); 
121.8 (ground); 122.7 (unicom) into a little temporary bank in 
my R10.  That pretty much gave me the show.  The short bank was 
nice as the R10 isn't exactly known for it's blazing scanning
speed (yawn).  :-)  The short bank doesn't take long to scan,
and I didn't miss much so far as I could tell.  The Angels 
staged out of Indy International so there wasn't much ground
activity to miss.  But, Fat Albert *was* at Mt. Comfort for the
JATO demo, and the audio from that is somewhat amusing with 
someone humming a tune when they were released to roll, followed
up with some "semper fi" comments apparently from the Marines
flying 'Bert.  The Blues were really quite talkative at this show,
more than I think I have ever heard.  Due to weather it was Flat
Show, and a couple maneuvers got "busted" with some comments 
about visibility being an issue.  The show ended rather abruptly
right at the end of the Angels Performance when the heavens 
opened up and took a giant whizz all over the crowd which scattered
for their cars.  It also unfortunately closed down the vendors.
There was a patch seller there I wanted to hit.....

The R10 does have ONE thing that it does well.  The audio is crisp
and clean, and it stands out nicely on my video.....that is, where
my portable mixer didn't f*** it up.  Seems I have a fader that is
going intermittent on me, and it picked today to crap out so my
video has some gaps in the audio portion where the "ambient mike"
was lost due to the fader problem.  I switched channels on the mike
once I figured out that this was the problem, and didn't have many
more audio glitches the rest of the day.  I think my mixer needs to
go down for some *serious* maintenance......grumble, grumble.

I was probably 500 feet from the BA's ground comm cart, right
about show center, so signal strength was good from there.

Now, a funny thing happened on the way to the parking lot....

Since the traffic was backed up clear to Hades :-), the wife and
I decided to change into some dry clothes in the van (we knew there
was a good chance of rain today) and then walk back onto the field 
to see if any vendors stayed open and/or look at static birds.  Did
have two nice light gray A10's from Battle Creek, MI both with 1980
FY authorizations.  Won't have the serials until the wife gets her
film run.  ANYway, I kept the scanner running as we walked around
there since the BA crew was loading the comm cart and some other 
stuff onto Fat Albert and they promptly took off and left.  BUT, 
a short convoy of small trucks marked something like "Blue Angels
Official Vehicle" passed us on the tarmac/ramp and I started getting
hits on 345.9 "solos".  And I could not believe what I was hearing.
Without mentioning any names, there were apparently two threads
going on - one was about some Marine Gunnery Sgt. shooting his mouth
off and causing some sort of ruckus, and another about an "FAA lady"
who apparently was down on the Blues due to having dated one about 
20 years ago and having been dumped. (funny part about the latter is
that I saw some BA shows at Mount Comfort about 20 years ago.....)
I feel the need to leave out a lot of VERY specific information in
the name of decorum......

You're getting the CLEAN version of this.  The language was extraordinarily
rude, crude and damn near left me rolling on the concrete laughing.
My wife was about to split a gut as well, she is fortunately NOT the
frail dainty type :-).  

I don't know the whole story behind this - and Fat Albert was already gone
so I don't know what sort of support crew this was.  Potentially, 
I suppose, they might not have even been directly connected to the BA's
but some kind of private contractor?

Needless to say, anyone else who is going to a Blue Angels show in the
next month might want to listen up well AFTER the show is over and see
if you experience the same sort of thing.

FYI, got a couple nice passes from an unidentified B2A.  Sounded like
he spoke briefly to Air Boss and the Temp Tower and then split.  Also
had a flight of four Harriers (!) that took off, made a couple passes
and then split.  I've never seen 4 of them at ONE show before.  Made one
helluva racket - I loved it.  :-)

Probably my last show of the year, as I don't recall anything else 
within reasonable driving distance of Lafayette, IN.  If anyone knows
of anything, do let me know.

Duane
west central Indiana

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of wsr
> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 9:22 PM
> To: [email protected]; [email protected]
> Subject: [MilCom] Blue Angels freqs - Mount Comfort, Indiana
> 
> 
> Spent the day out at the Mt. Comfort (just east of Indy) airport today 
> watching the airshow practice.  The Blue Angels did their low 
> altitude show 
> today.  I confirmed the following active freqs:
> 
> 238.150  -  Diamond formation
> 263.350  -  Fat Albert Demo
> 275.350  -  All 6 a/c formation
> 345.900  -  Solos
> 
> 
> Scott Richardson
> 
> 
> 
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