Ramble On

Thursday, October 1, 2015

The C-130 and the Blue Ridge

As I'm wont to do, I was sitting out in the sunshine on the brick terrace a few weekends back.  I heard a gentle rumble of an unfamiliar airplane overhead and started looking around for it.

To my surprise, there was a C-130 in an unusual paint scheme crossing the sky - flying quite low actually, since it was headed for the Blue Ridge in Shenandoah National Park.  The mountains near us - including Stonyman, Hawksbill, and Big Meadow, stretch upwards to 4,000 feet, and I thought the C-130 might have to climb a bit to clear.

In the first photo, you can just see the aircraft.  The line of trees below obscures the view of the park here, but that is on a line to Big Meadow, so that probably gave a thrill to some of the park visitors.

As I was looking through my photos yesterday, I thought I might zoom in on the photo of the C-130 to see if the paint job would come in any clearer.  Here you can see the bright silver of the plane - really caught be by surprise, as we more often get Air Force Reserve or National Guard flights in the area, and the planes are usually green.  I can't identify ths one from a web search, but I suspect it may be a Navy version.


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