Almost craped my pants just before...

Flashanator

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Jan 19, 2007
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The 11th Dimension
oh boy, :sweat:

I was just working away in my shed enjoying the peace & quite. Maybe 10pm

When I got the crap scared outta me.:duck:

All of a sudden I heard this really really load roar overhead, I almost jumped outta my boots. I bolted out the door to look up & see what the hell the long loud roar was. The noise just hit me like a shock wave.

I swear I thought it was a meteor that entered the atmosphere & that had just passed over us. At that point my mind was racing 1000km/s & I was full on expecting an impact. thinking oh **** , are we about to be wiped out. (a small rock say 50-100m in diameter can level a whole big city) The noise was just so strange & frightening, especially since I was in a relaxed mood.

After a few seconds I spotted a airliner jet flying low over us. And was like "phew, crisis averted"
It was unlike any sound from an airliner passing over us before, & not as low.

My hands were shacking for some time after.

Got me thinking as I always do, about an impact from space.
Of course if it was a meteor the sound wouldn't come until after its already hit the ground or if it explodes in the air.

I'm now calmed down. :D
 

Lee1959

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Joined
Nov 18, 2005
Messages
2,020
Location
Michigan
Yep can startle you, wait till you hear a hot air balloon, they sneek up silently over you and then hit the burner only a few feet over your head, its an interesting sund when it breaks the quiet suddenly.
 

Flying Turtle

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Joined
Jan 28, 2003
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Location
Apex, NC
Our house is under the landing pattern of quite a few planes daily. They're not too loud or low at this point, so I actually like to see them. But, every now and then one comes around that's lower or larger, and the noise can be surprising. It's not unusual for me to run out on the deck to see what's going over.

Geoff
 

Illum

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Joined
Apr 29, 2006
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13,053
Location
Central Florida, USA
theres a Huey that patrols around here every so often...a black figure with blinkie lights in the night, and likes to fly very low [just maybe less than 100 feet from the tips of the powerpoles] and swing about. There will be this deafening roar overhead and stays or leaves then returns again...Once or twice I'd bolt right out and try to tell its position by the noise...but otherwise just woke from sleep only to mutter back to bed and be disturbed again:scowl:

I live about 20 miles from NASA and about 25 miles from the local air force station so whenever they decide to launch something they sweep in and observe anything that looks suspicious to them...like me who happens to like throwing the mag85 beam on distant trees:ohgeez:

yeah, when my N30 HID comes all this might get worse:(
 

Flashanator

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Joined
Jan 19, 2007
Messages
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Location
The 11th Dimension
yea, we have had a few hot air balloons close near us on early mornings, ive never heard them being very loud, but they creep up on ya.

Once our tree out the back was struck my lightning during a storm while i was inside. That was by far the loudest noise over ever heard in my life. Ridiculously loud, shock the ground, had to be 100's x louder then this. But it didn't set my heart rate sky high like this jet passing over.

It's just the thought of a meteor hitting earth I guess. The sound this jet made was just out of this world for me. Maybe my mind exaggerated it x10.
 

matrixshaman

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Jan 17, 2005
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3,410
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Outside the Matrix
Yep those hot air balloons used to surprise me when I was a couple miles from a popular launch place. Recently I had a fighter jet fairly low overhead turn almost straight up and then suddenly I see 4 things shooting out of the jet and I'm like WTH?? Looked almost like missles for a second until I realized it was probably the anti-missle flares being tested. Fortunately not much of that going on around where I'm at now. We also used to have stealth fighters fly fairly low overhead - by the time you heard the sound they were long gone. I really don't think that stuff should be going on over residential areas.
 

RA40

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Joined
Oct 15, 2004
Messages
1,397
Location
So. Cal
While we hear distant planes and local prop driven ones, the sound of a loud jet engine isn't that common. The last time I heard a jet engine that loud, the plane had crashed several blocks from our house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroméxico_Flight_498

Well, a few days back, I hear a jet engine and it is becoming louder, up to the point, the windows were now vibrating loudly in the sills. I'm thinking "oh sheep...not another!" I look out the window and it's a F-18 about 1K up and going very slow. I was like WTF is that doing here?!
 

DaFABRICATA

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Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
3,946
Location
Michigan
I was up north a few years back, sitting on the toilet....all a sudden the blinds over the windows, smacked into the window with violence and there was this HUGE noise.
I pulled up my pants and ran outside as fast as possible to see a black figure in the sky. All the people I was with said a stealth fighter just flew over at to speed and very low.....scared the crap outta me....not literally though, I was already done:eek:
 

Marduke

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Joined
Jun 19, 2007
Messages
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Location
Huntsville, AL
My office is close to the approach for military aircraft, and it is not uncommon for some young pilots come in practicing combat landings for Iraq and Afghanistan in C-130 and C-17 cargo aircraft.

Talk about loud, you'd think they were landing on your roof.
 

LuxLuthor

Flashaholic
Joined
Nov 5, 2005
Messages
10,654
Location
MS
I was up north a few years back, sitting on the toilet....all a sudden the blinds over the windows, smacked into the window with violence and there was this HUGE noise.
I pulled up my pants and ran outside as fast as possible to see a black figure in the sky. All the people I was with said a stealth fighter just flew over at to speed and very low.....scared the crap outta me....not literally though, I was already done:eek:

I almost sprayed my keyboard reading that! :crackup:
 

BlueBeam22

*Super Flashaholic*
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
1,518
yea, we have had a few hot air balloons close near us on early mornings, ive never heard them being very loud, but they creep up on ya.

Once our tree out the back was struck my lightning during a storm while i was inside. That was by far the loudest noise over ever heard in my life. Ridiculously loud, shock the ground, had to be 100's x louder then this. But it didn't set my heart rate sky high like this jet passing over.

It's just the thought of a meteor hitting earth I guess. The sound this jet made was just out of this world for me. Maybe my mind exaggerated it x10.

Lighting has hit our back yard a few times, the most notable was when I was standing at the window and it hit a tree only about 20 feet in front of me.:eek: It was a deafening crack and by far the loudest noise I have ever heard.

The loudest plane I have ever heard was a military jet flying low (they were practicing for an air show) and I was sitting in my bedroom, and the booming roar was so loud that I seriously thought I had heard a plane crashing.
 

Coop

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Jan 6, 2006
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2,199
Location
Tilburg, the Netherlands (perfectly reachable by U
A few years back, I lived on a houseboat, directly under one of the approach paths for Amsterdam Airport. Luckily the airport itself was about 20 miles away, so the planes were still pretty high when they passed over. But now I live just 3 miles from a military airbase (and work right across the street from it) so I get to enjoy the Apache & Chinook practice flights quite often.
 

TONY M

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Joined
Jan 31, 2008
Messages
1,548
Location
Belfast, NI
Yep can startle you, wait till you hear a hot air balloon, they sneek up silently over you and then hit the burner only a few feet over your head, its an interesting sund when it breaks the quiet suddenly.
I was holding my cat once when a hot air baloon was flying over our house, she was didn't move and had her eyes fixed on it when they hit the burner... That scared the life out of it and it immediately jumped out of my arms using its claws for grip - I still have the scars to prove it!
icon15.gif
 

kelmo

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Joined
Aug 27, 2004
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3,092
Location
Sacramento
I used to be an FAA contractor and have a few stories to tell.

I was working out at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada, this is the home to the Navy's Top Gun School. I was driving out to the base's long range radar site. This requires one to drive past the end of the main runway. There is a big sign you have to stop at and it reads "Look out for low flying aircraft." I stopped looked down the runway and didn't see anything taking off or coming in on final approach so I proceded. As I was crossing the end of the runway a F18 comes in very fast and very low. As soon as he was over my truck he hit his afterburner. My *** puckered so hard that I ripped my seat cover!

Another time I was working at the Prescott Arizona airport. It was summer and fire fighting tankers were staging out of the airport. My partner and I were working at the end of the runway and we watched a P3 tanker come lumbering down the strip. It was very hot and Prescott airport is in the high desert so the fully loaded tanker had a problem getting lift. It got about 20 feet off the ground and stayed there with us standing in its flight path. One of the advantages of this job was we got to work on active runways and got to watch aircraft fly over us when taking off. The P3 is a turboprop and the only thing we saw was whirling blades of death coming to cuisenart us. We screamed like girlie-men and hit the deck. The P3 barely cleared the fence and hugged the ground for who knows how long before it was able to climb.

kelmo
 
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Steve K

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Jun 10, 2002
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Peoria, IL
NAS Fallon?! Wow, that doesn't come up in conversation very often! I spent a couple weeks there while in the Marines, when my squadron of A-4 Skyhawks was deployed up there for some ECM training. It was my first time in the high desert.

My home base was Yuma Arizona, in the hot low desert in the SW corner of the state. I loved listening to afterburners and anything that made a lot of noise. Every type of aircraft made a slightly different sound, and you eventually started to distinguish one from the other.

The most novel was a visiting squadron of F-106's. Something about the design of the afterburner caused them to produce a huge shockwave that rattled windows all across the base!

I haven't worked in aviation since '94, but I did get to attend Oshkosh this year. Got to watch the F-22 Raptor make a ton of noise with the afterburners... lots of fun!

Steve K.
 

Black Rose

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Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Messages
4,626
Location
Ottawa, ON, Canada
We live 3.5 miles from the end of the runway at Ottawa International, so we have planes of all types flying over the house most of the day.

Most of the times its just commercial airliners and cargo planes, but occasionally we get F-18s, the Snowbirds, and CC-177 (C-17) Globemasters.

Most of the planes are quiet (as far as jet aircraft), but FedEx, Purolator, and Cargojet all still us 727-200s - those things are bloody loud.
 
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