FA-18 Hornet and Super Hornet at Fleet Week 2012

Boeing introduced the F-18 in 1999 and the plane remains in production with more than 500 built to date. At a cost of $67 million per plane, this is a pretty expensive piece of equipment, but the performance speaks to why. This first plane was from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). The latter I'm not sure about since it isn't listed on the Fleet Week website as part of the show. Odd.


Fun fact: The RCAF Snowbirds are officially called the 431 Air Demonstration Squadron.
Fun Fact 2: That previous fact was a fact but not fun. I apologize for misleading you.


Fun fact: the Super Hornet and Hornet can be discerned by looking at the air intakes. The Super Hornet has rectangular air intakes and the hornet has ovular. (This plane was introduced as a Super Hornet by the announcer, but those air intakes look distinctly ovular to me.)


Fun fact: My DSLR sensor was super dirty during the air show (a few photos on this page show the dirt dots) and I spent no less than five times as long editing dust dots off  the 200 images I kept as I did taking the initial 1,500 photos. No kidding. And I didn't even catch half the spots.




By now this plane has returned to the true north. The next hornet is an actual Super Hornet (the photos with the air intakes allow the intake shape to be made out more clearly. This is a U.S. plane and did some nifty stuff.


A high-gravity maneuver.



Right on the sound barrier's cusp.


"Wait, no, I can't land there. That's water, not a runway."


Some nifty con trails coming off the vertical stabilizers.


A-ha! Rectangular air intakes.