jblomenberg16
Grandmaster
My family and I got to see an awesome sight tonight...paratroopers practicing at our local airfield!!!
I live just northwest of Freeman Field in Seymour. For the past few years the airfield has been used for a variety of national guard training missions, including parachute drops from low altitude.
Our house is a perfect vantage point to watch the C-130's come in from the Southeast and drop soldiers. Tonight we drove over and watched 3 different runs.
Talk about an adrenaline rush, and we weren't the ones jumping! It was right at dusk, and I'd estimate the altitude to be maybe 500-1000ft? (Someone who knows more about this, please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure how high you have to be to jump). It would take maybe 20-30 seconds for the soldiers to land.
The plane would come in lined up with the runway, and then as it passed overhead, out would come a string of 8 to 10 soldiers. The plane would bank hard left and head back the opposite direction, and return about 5 minutes later for another run.
I snapped a few pics with my cell phone, but they didn't come out well due to the distance and lighting. Wish we would have grabbed our digital camera.
The first is after the drop is complete, and the plane is turning around for another run. As you can tell from the sunset, this is looking in more or less a Westerly direction. The plane is the "blob" in the middle.
The second is in the middle of a drop. To the left you can make out a full canopy, and right below the plane you can see another one just opening as he exits the rear of the aircraft.
What really made it great was how close we could get. Because Freeman Field is a municipal airport, you can literally drive right up to the taxiway and park and watch. We could see the soldiers walking across the runway and boarding busses about 25 yards away from us. There were 4 or 5 other cars that had stopped to watch as well. Very Cool!
I live just northwest of Freeman Field in Seymour. For the past few years the airfield has been used for a variety of national guard training missions, including parachute drops from low altitude.
Our house is a perfect vantage point to watch the C-130's come in from the Southeast and drop soldiers. Tonight we drove over and watched 3 different runs.
Talk about an adrenaline rush, and we weren't the ones jumping! It was right at dusk, and I'd estimate the altitude to be maybe 500-1000ft? (Someone who knows more about this, please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure how high you have to be to jump). It would take maybe 20-30 seconds for the soldiers to land.
The plane would come in lined up with the runway, and then as it passed overhead, out would come a string of 8 to 10 soldiers. The plane would bank hard left and head back the opposite direction, and return about 5 minutes later for another run.
I snapped a few pics with my cell phone, but they didn't come out well due to the distance and lighting. Wish we would have grabbed our digital camera.
The first is after the drop is complete, and the plane is turning around for another run. As you can tell from the sunset, this is looking in more or less a Westerly direction. The plane is the "blob" in the middle.
The second is in the middle of a drop. To the left you can make out a full canopy, and right below the plane you can see another one just opening as he exits the rear of the aircraft.
What really made it great was how close we could get. Because Freeman Field is a municipal airport, you can literally drive right up to the taxiway and park and watch. We could see the soldiers walking across the runway and boarding busses about 25 yards away from us. There were 4 or 5 other cars that had stopped to watch as well. Very Cool!
