My coworker says that over lunch today she saw a pair of these flying low overhead.
From the Shadows, Dark
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We have been playing Shadowdark, the current old-school darling. I've been
running the gang through the quickstart adventure The Lost Citadel of the
Crimso...
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I guess you're not used to the military aircraft in your area?
ReplyDeleteI grew up next to a Naval Air Station, then did grad school next to a Marine Corps Air Station, and now I work and live near an Air Force base. So it's been A-6s, F-14s, F-18s, transport planes and such my whole life (not to mention scads of helicopters). I haven't yet seen any F-22s, though
Incidentally, I just realized you put up a picture of a YF-23. Barring extraordinary weirdness, your coworker probably just saw a couple of F-22s, instead (they look very nearly alike at a distance, but one is in production, and the other was canned).
The air base around here has been closed for a long time. We don't see many military craft except for airshows. Also, Laurie said the main reason she picks this image over the F-22 pics I showed her is the color. The planes she saw were flat black, and not the more grey/silvery look of the F-22s I googled.
ReplyDeleteThe misnamed "stealth fighter" F-117's almost all sport a flat black paint job.
ReplyDeleteOf course there's no real need at the moment for the F/A-22 to execute its "F" mission, so perhaps she saw a couple in night-mission paint for its "A" role.
Can't say I'm not just a little proud--I am ex Pratt & Whitney.
I can remember growing up near Oak Ridge National Labs. (home of the Manhattan Project) Lots of sonic booms and very strange aircraft. Could be anything.
ReplyDeleteI became a gamer in Havelock, North Carolina, gaming mostly with pilots (both Marine and Navy), when my pop was stationed at Cherry Point.
ReplyDeleteIt was perfectly normal, in a typical game session, to have to pause every half hour or so, because the roar of jets overhead would drown out speech entirely for about 10 seconds. :)
One of my regular AD&D players in those days would sometimes end up working security around the Harriers, and we'd hang out there late at night poring through RPG manuals and shooting game ideas back and forth. The scary part was walking there ... approaching flightline security at 2 in the morning with a sports-bag full of gaming material is dodgy business (fortunately, he usually remembered to call ahead and tell them I was coming ... usually).
No reason you can't paint a F-22 black. I think they only built like 2 YK-23s as prototypes.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of things that fly and kick-butt: Eberron Sky pirates came out pretty good. Unorthodox, where you fly over most challanges that or hooks normaly would randomly encountered. Flying constructs and living cloud kills were cool to GM though.
I seriously doubt you saw those flying. Back in the early 90's These were developed by Northrop for a contract for a new stealth fighter contract for the military. The contract went to their competitor, I believe Lockheed, and these never went into production. I was dating a big wig at Northrop at the time which is how I know all this. I have a couple desk models of those aircraft which is cool because they were never made. I imagine the prototypes may still be around flying, but I don't think it is likely. It's pretty expensive to keep a plane no longer made flying.
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