Friday, April 06, 2007

Airspeed - Shut Up and Listen to the Airplanes!

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Here's a change of pace from me running at the mouth. It's audio culled from three or four days of stalking airplanes through the rain, mist, clouds, and some sunshine.

I though that it might be nice to shut up and just listen to the great big radial engine of Gene Soucy's Showcat or the JP-5 conversion stylings of the F-16 (both Thunderbirds and ships from the 107th Fighter Squadron at Selfridge ANGB), the F-15, and the A-10.

The picture above is from the first day at Battle Creek. Spitting rain most of the day, but Gene Soucy was right up there in it, flying his heart out for the crowd.

The F-16 sound is pretty realistic. I finally managed to get the levels just right. I recorded a couple of passes at KPTK during the open house while on duty with CAP. I then plugged the MP# recorder into the 200-W Klipsch sound system I'd brought to handle the audio for the recruiting video and cranked it up behind some unsuspecting cadets. When they ducked and started scanning the skies, I was pretty sure that the system was working well.


Here's Gene Soucy's heavily-modified Ag Cat with its throaty Pratt & Whitney 985. Probably the sweetest non-jet sound out there.

The pulled pork and Diet Coke. I haven't had a sandwich this good before or since. Absolutely amazing. I'd go to the show just for the sandwich!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Steve,

Shut Up and Listen was another gem. As soon as I heard the intro, I grabbed the good headphones and headed for the garden lounger with the Ipod. Its sunny and warm here in the U.K. today, so I shut my eyes and was transported to an airfield in another country.
I could smell the kerosene as the jets ripped past and the announcer got himself excited in the middle distance. Then there was the Pitts (was it?) looping and rolling in my mind's eye while that lovely warm exhaust note came and went.
That was this morning. Its a holiday today and we've just come back from a good pasta-lunch-and-two-pints at the local pub. So guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to grab the Ipod, head for the garden and listen again.
After that, I may just listen again.

Much appreciated, thank you.

--
Chris
PS My emails are bouncing from steve@airspeedonline.com

Stephen Force (Steve Tupper) said...

Hi, Christopher. Many thanks for the kind words. That's the nice thing about being on-air personality, producer, chief pilot, and janitor. I can put any damned thing I want to up on the podcast. It happens to be doubly nice that there are those with such finely-honed tasted as yours out there who write with such kind praise. Many thanks! The really sweet rotary engine sounds at the beginning and end were all Gene Soucy's Show Cat, although on adjacent days. Gene is as nice as his plane is sweet-sounding. I'll probably get him on the podcast soon. BTW: The "steve@airspeedonline.com" e-mail should be working again now. Please feel free to write any time and please let me know (with a blog comment or otherwise) if you get any bounces.

Mike said...

Steven,

Shut Up and Listen was a fantastic show! I absolutely loved getting to hear the aircraft that I don't get to listen to that often. I'm currently stuck at work right now but I'm going to hurry home and play this on my 6.1 Home Theater system as loudly as my wife will let me.

Again, fantastic show, thank you for recording this!

Mike said...

Oops, sorry about the 'Steven;' I work with several of these. Haven't seen a 'Stephen' since high school.

Thanks again,
Mike

Stephen Force (Steve Tupper) said...

Thanks! I hope that the M-Audio Microtrack recording device and Audacity processing do justice to your playback system!

There's nothing like just sitting there and listening to the ambient excitement of an airshow. I can't wait for the season to get underway!