In the 90's I was flying my glider at about 5,000' about 10 miles south of Lancaster, SC. Suddenly, I heard that unique jet engine sound that belongs to the A-10. Immediately, my head was spinning around trying to locate this aircraft since my glider has no transponder and if they were talking to ATC, they would not have been given a traffic warning for me. I was concerned about a mid air collision. After about 15-20 very looooong seconds, I spot the A-10 at my 4 o'clock position, my altitude and heading, about 100 yards away creeping past with what looked like full flaps. Then, another one appears next to him. His wingman. I wasn't in any restricted airspace and figured they were just curious. I gave them a little wing rocking to let them know I saw them. Even in a high drag configuration, they couldn't slow down to my 80 knot cruise speed and slowly went past. I saw them retract their flaps and make a turn to the left. They circled all of the way around me and returned on my right side in a much looser formation. The flight lead gave me a massive wing rock and accelerated away in a descent. I suspect they were based at Shaw Air Force base about 75 miles away and they must have been out on a training mission of some sort.
I agree these are some of the coolest planes in our inventory and the notion of using gazillion dollar F-35s for this mission is just nuts in my mind. There is no plane that is immune to all missles and doing ground attack in an aircraft is like getting in a knife fight. You are very vulnerable to some dude on the ground that is able to land his golden BB in just the right spot on your aircraft even if has nothing but a rifle.
Greg
ETA: I feel for you about the eyesight. Same thing happened to me. I got kicked to the curb.
If you are a Canuck that engages in gratuitous bashing of the US, you are probably on my Iggy List. So, save your self a bunch of typing a response unless you also feel the need to gratuitously bash me. If so, have fun.
"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f___ things up" - Barack Obama, 2020
I agree these are some of the coolest planes in our inventory and the notion of using gazillion dollar F-35s for this mission is just nuts in my mind. There is no plane that is immune to all missles and doing ground attack in an aircraft is like getting in a knife fight. You are very vulnerable to some dude on the ground that is able to land his golden BB in just the right spot on your aircraft even if has nothing but a rifle.
Greg
ETA: I feel for you about the eyesight. Same thing happened to me. I got kicked to the curb.
If you are a Canuck that engages in gratuitous bashing of the US, you are probably on my Iggy List. So, save your self a bunch of typing a response unless you also feel the need to gratuitously bash me. If so, have fun.
"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f___ things up" - Barack Obama, 2020