American Heroes Air Show - Austin, Texas

Rama and I went to this air show early morning on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at Camp Mabry. The intent of this show was to expose janata* to different kinds of helicopters and their uses. My colleague Martin says that this is a government propaganda to gain our acceptance to these machines which in turn would facilitate Orwellian Control!

What ever the intent was, I enjoyed the close look of these machines and feeling their controls. The coolest things of course was watching landing of Apache and then getting a closer look of this sleek beauty created for just for one thing - destruction. I couldn't think of a better example for "beauty is skin deep" while watching these war machines. I must admit that its intended use (annihilation) failed to bother me (but it should have) while watching and feeling this ~ $18** million engineering marvel. Here are some photos I shot at this show (double click on each picture for an enlarged image).

* Janata = public in Hindi (one of the official languages of India)
** Cost in 1984 , must be a lot more now, I guess

Some stuff on sale - I am assuming that the 100-meter warning is being used in Iraq

Apache - we were at the closest safe distance to the landing spot (I guess about 500 feet) and still we felt like we were facing gale force winds - the rotors were pretty powerful.

A small one, for medical and emergency evacuations

Another small one

One of the military helicopters

The pilot explaining about Apache and its Hellfire missiles

Controls of a small helicopter

Rama in front of Austin Police helicopter

Controls in one of the military helicopters