[ScanIndiana] La Porte Parade flyover

[Duane Mantick]

Speaking of La Porte County, were any of the folks on this
list who are from the area at the Parade Sunday?

The 122nd FW from Fort Wayne gave the most insipid excuse
for a flyover I have ever seen, anywhere, anytime.  They
did not even fly the length of Lincolnway as they have in 
past years but made a single pass NE to SW somewhere
between 30 or 45 degrees off the length of Lincolnway.
The two, and ONLY two F16's then turned off to the south
and that was it.

Freq. heard was 138.4 (my listing sez "IN ANG - Forth Wayne
Ops") with the call "four miles out".  After they left, had
some hits on 3 or 4 ANG freqs, and also some weak hits on
343.5 which is an aerial refueling freq.  I cannot be certain
that these were real or were IMD from the parade route, which
was a decidedly rich radio environment what with cops, fire,
EMT, military etc. (My video shows that the underwing stores
on both planes were clean, no ext. tanks, so depending on
their itinerary they might have gone up and tanked....I
can tell you that they certainly "tanked" according to
crowd reaction.......   :-)   )

Wondered if anyone else caught them between Ft. Wayne and
La Porte, over La Porte, or on the way back to the Fort???
They were over La Porte at approx. 1PM +/- 10 minutes or
so.

I would have thought that with a U.S. Senator from Indiana
(Evan Bayh) present at the event, a better flyover would
have been more in order.  I'm inclined to email the senator
and express that opinion.

I wonder if our Senior Senator, Mr. Lugar, had been there
if the flyover would have been quite so rotten?  Given
Sen. Lugar's having served on military appropriations
committees, etc., they MIGHT have paid a bit more attention
to some smart flying......

Should they change the name from 122nd Fighter Wing to
"122 Flying Weenies"?  :-)

Duane
WB9OMC

p.s.  GO NAVY!  The last two times we have had local La Porte
Naval pilots allowed to do this, we got one F14 Tomcat with
multiple passes at, er, "high rates of speed" and one big-time
high-performance afterburner climb that shook the town. Of 
course, there were some weenie-asses who wrote the newspaper
and bitched that it scared their kids or dogs, but THAT was
a great one.  Another local fellow got to fly his A-6
Intruder over and did it low and loud and KICKED BUTT.
Even when we have had CARGO planes in other years they did
better.....C-130's out of Milwaukee in the last couple years
were hot and low over town....we had KC135's from Grissom
more than once, and they could at least FIND the main drag;
(which the gents from Fort Wayne seem to be having trouble with)
and picture a C-5 Galaxy, flaps down, gear down pretending
to be a big, aluminum cloud flying over your main street at
a low altitude.  Yep, we had 'em.