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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

When I was a kid, my uncle (a construction contractor) worked on a contract for a few months at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California, where SR-71s were based, and one day he took me along. I got to see the actual planes on the runway from behind a chain-link fence, warming up for takeoff. It's one of the my memorable experiences - the planes are huge, the engines are loud, the jet fuel was steaming off the tarmac, it felt like being in a sci-fi film. I can still see it like it was yesterday.

That was a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I was sure we were all going to get nuked.

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Watching fighter aircraft take off in close quarters is quite the experience. The SR-71 must have been epic.

This one time, I was in a civilian aircraft, on a shared military/civilian airport. It was nearing twilight. Our cute little Airbus A320 was nosing about and stopped alongside a Sukhoi 30-MKI (the squadron is based there). Now this bird is no pipsqueak. In that light, in that surprise moment, it oozed menace on the tarmac. Then the pilot started letting loose, and a needle-point blue dart jetted out from the afterburners. It felt like the aircraft doubled in length. The roar in our cabin was deafening. The sonic vibration in my body curdled my blood. And then off it went. I almost sprained my neck tracking it. Crazy angle of attack when the pilot nosed up. That was quite the experience.

(edit: typo)

Lohegaon?

I too had a very similar experience there. The jet of blue from the afterburners is truly a sight to behold!

On a different note, the Sukhois would routinely trigger car alarms in the building where I worked, whenever they flew past :)

Yes :)

Tangentially related question: I've always wondered why afterburners on more modern Soviet/Russian engines seem to glow blue, while European or American jets seem to have a more orangey glow. Anyone here know why?

My understanding is that afterburner flame color mostly comes down to temperature. American jets have blue afterburners, too, at lower power levels, it turns orange towards the upper limit. Maybe Russian jets typically have the maximum dialed down, or that's just the limit of the particular design. I know that it is (or was, at least, 30 years ago) pretty common in the US for Air National Guard fighters to have stops installed when they're training, and not on alert status. IIRC they were typically capped at zone 1 (out of 5 available)[0]. Barely visible at all.

[0] That's 30 year old memories right there, take with a heaping spoonful of salt. I used to know a fighter pilot in Portland flying F-15s and learned a lot about their operations. But memory fades...

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