The airshow season has pretty much come to an end, however that also means it’s time for another post-event report from a PhanCon. This year the location was Holloman AFB in Alamogordo, New Mexico, Oct 27th, 28th, and 29th. I will also provide a brief review of the Open House / airshow at the base, which was held just a few days prior to the Phantom Society’s visit.

Once again our ‘HQ’ was the Holiday Inn Express, as it was in 2004, though its now in a new location just down the block from its old spot. Lunch for the group was provided both days at the E-club. Approximately 90 people attended Phancon this year, coming from the US, the Netherlands, the UK and Japan.

Just in time for PhanCon was the arrival of Alamogordo’s first freeze of the season, with snow getting down into the foothills above the town. Wed Oct 28^th saw the group visit the 82^nd Aerial Target Squadron ramp, the T-38 ramp, The Canyon, and two German AF hangars. We had a treat in store for us - at the Holloman open house, I spoke to one of the 82^nd ATRS guys who told me precisely how many QF-4s would be present during our visit (over thirty!), which made me do a double take! As you can imagine I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut, not wanting to spoil the surprise for anyone. That morning as we arrived at the 82^nd’s ramp, there was indeed a ramp full of Phantoms, twenty-eight to be exact! The squadron also had four more inside a hangar for us to look at. All of the aircraft were E model Phantoms. No Recce birds - apparently they all go from Mojave to Tyndall AFB for maintenance reasons. Four of the aircraft were Heritage birds, meaning they are used in the Heritage Flight program. And one of these, #72-0140, appears to be a new one that Phantom West will be using for the 2010 season, as I’ve not seen it flying Heritage Flights yet, so looks like they will be replacing one of their current HF aircraft, either #162 or #626, that have both been in the program for three full airshow seasons now. Other highlights included an old St Louis bird (nose art still present), an ex-New Jersey ANG aircraft, at least one ex-Texas ANG aircraft, and several that used to be based at the old George AFB in Southern California. There were also two very interesting paint schemes that I’ve seen before, but can’t quite nail down where they were used (yet).

One (#73-1184) can only be described as a “tiger-striped” pattern that I thought the NJ ANG may have used (but have not been able to confirm), while the other (#72-0161) looked very similar to a special scheme that the Louisiana “Coonass Militia” (122^nd TFS) ANG used at one time, however they apparently used C models, and with #0161 being an E, I’m not sure where it’s from. A big highlight for me was seeing one of the original Heritage Phantoms on the ramp - #1485, Charlie “Tuna” Hainline’s aircraft when he was the Phantom West HF pilot. Even though the lighting conditions were rather poor for photography, that didn’t stop any of the shutterbugs from spreading out all over the ramp, attempting to be sure they took shots of each and every Phantom out there. The sun did try to peek out from the clouds occasionally, which made for some interesting effects, but for the most part, it was chilly and overcast. Just a few days earlier, it had been in the 70s, clear and sunny!

Next up was the T-38 ramp, where a handful of Talons were on display, including a pair of test squadron aircraft, and another from Whiteman AFB. Holloman is apparently the depot maintenance center now for all T-38s. The black Holloman T-38s, which used to support the F-117 Nighthawks and had F-117 silhouettes on their fincaps at the time, now have F-22 Raptor silhouettes, and apparently go up against the F-22s (as do some of the Phantoms!) to act as adversaries.

Later the group was treated to a visit to “The Canyon”, where the F-22s are kept. This is the same location where the famous F-117s were housed while they were at Holloman. Nighthawk fans have seen many photos of this place, but how many actually get to visit it? What a thrill it was to be there. Not having been out there before, the place, for me, had quite the aura of mystery, and I half expected to see the sinister silhouette of a “Black Jet” appear at any second. But alas, of course all of the F-117s have now been retired. At the recent Nellis AFB airshow, announcer Gordon Bowman Jones pulled his famous Nighthawk prank on the crowd, and just about everyone bought it hook, line and sinker - even those of us who know better! Getting back to The Canyon, we were also allowed go inside one of the hangars to see an F-22 Raptor on display. No photos allowed, and of course no touching. But the airplane was not roped off and you could go right up to it, under the wings, look under the belly, etc. The weapons bays were also open. This particular Raptor was in need of some tlc, as you could see some spots under the stabilators that had some work done, and certainly needed quite a bit more, and there was wear & tear on some of the rear facing edges. When you go to an airshow, the Raptors are always roped off, and you can’t get closer than about 20 feet from them, so our group got a rare opportunity here.

Our last tour of the day was a visit to a pair of the German Air Force hangars where not only did we get to see several Tornadoes being worked on, but we were also allowed to go visit a color aircraft inside a separate hangar, that had a special paint scheme in regards to mission flight hours accomplished. Fortunately, this aircraft was on static display at the previous weekend’s open house and airshow, so those of us who were there, didn’t really need to worry about the tungsten lighting inside the hangar. The nose art features what appears to be a flying clock bursting out of the aircraft’s side, while the tail features a White Sands landscape with a German Tornado flying overhead, and “55,555 flight hours”. On the plane’s belly is the German flag.

After this it was back to the hotel, a break, off to dinner and the vendor room. We had about a dozen vendors this year, selling everything from paintings and drawings, to patches, t-shirts, hats, books, mounted and unmounted photographic prints, to dvd slideshows.

On Thursday Oct 29th, we boarded the busses and headed over to Heritage Park, where an F-4C and F-117, among others, are on display. I should mention that the serial numbers on those two aircraft are not the true numbers. The F-117 is actually #782, which flew with the American flag on its belly during the 2005 Edwards AFB open house, but was painted up as #816 to honor a particular pilot who was unfortunately lost during an accident; and the F-4 is actually #63-7537, not #7535 that we saw on the tail. The real #7535 was damaged upon landing at a base in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. Also on display are an F-15, T-38, F-100, F-104, F-105, and a T-33. Next up was a trek out to one of the runways, to watch some F-22s takeoff. I believe we saw four of them, two with the AK (Elemendorf) tail code, and two with the expected HO tail code. Apparently Holloman gets ‘hand-me-down’ Raptors that have seen use at both Langley and Elmendorf, and have not yet repainted the AK birds with HO codes as yet. While we were out at the runway, a couple of the pilots gave us ‘wing wags’ as they departed.

We then headed back over towards the 82^nd ATRS ramp to see four Phantoms launch. Two of the Heritage birds went out with two others, painted in the standard drone markings. Lunch at the E-club featured a briefing and slideshow from one of the 49^th FW commanders. A couple of interesting points that stuck with me were the fact that the base is bigger than the District of Columbia (59,000 acres to 44,000), and the base gets assistance from the Border Patrol in keeping an eye on its perimeter. Holloman also has a Space Control squadron, and a primate research facility.

After the briefing, it was off to the High Speed Test Track, where the world speed record was set awhile back - 6,400mph +! A sign in the area reads “Maximum speed limit in the great state of New Mexico - Mach 10”. We split up into two groups - while one group went out to the nearby ‘boneyard’ area as well as the track itself, the other group watched a slideshow and briefing on the facility. While out in the boneyard, we came across a Phantom with what looked like two huge collars around it. Although most of the tail markings were ‘grayed out’, you could still make out the “GA” tail code (George AFB) and the last three digits of the serial number -247. There was also an amusing Wiley E Coyote reference on the aircraft’s spitter plate on one side. In the meantime, an MQ-9 Reaper was flying above us, shooting the pattern. We then headed over to the test track itself, which is ten miles long. After being allowed to spend some time photographing the track from within the bus, our group headed back to the main buildings for our briefing on the track, which gave us all a much clearer idea of what is done there. One of the comments during the briefing was “we CAN go mach 9, but we haven’t had the need to - so far we’ve done mach 8.5”. Just a LITTLE impressive!

Thanks go out to our hosts at Holloman AFB, specifically Tom Fuller with the PAO, the 82^nd ATRS, 7^th CTS, the high speed test track group, the German AF, and the 49^th FW. Thanks also to K-Bob, Jim and Helen Thompson, Fred Scheffler & everyone else at the Phantom Society for making this happen. All of one bus wants to thank our ‘den mom’ for keeping the mood light and entertaining! Also thanks to Jack Calloway, William Crean, and Kevin Helm for specific bits of information that went into this report.

Don Logan’s book, “F-4 Phantoms of the USAF Reserve and Air Nat’l Guard” was also used as a reference source.

As I mentioned earlier, the base held its bi-annual open house / airshow just a few days prior to Phancon. Several members made it to this event, and here I’ll go over what took place. Even though it was only a one-day event this year, as usual it was a good one. The three primary highlights were the F-22 demo, QF-4E participation in the Heritage Flight, and the CF-18 Hornet demo team, whose aircraft sports a Centennial paint scheme - metallic gold with blue and white. The T-38s and German Tornadoes participated with flybys, a C-17 mini demo was shown off, a four-ship F-22 Raptor flyover was seen, Matt Younkin saluted his father Bobby with an incredible aerobatic performance in his Beech 18, nicknamed “Magic By Moonlight”. Other aerobatic performers included Tim Weber and John Klatt, both flying Extra 300s. The USAF Reserve jet car was present, showing off its power. The B-25, “Pacific Prowler” was on display and also went up in the air to show off its beautiful paint job. The aircraft features some very well done nose art - a Grim Reaper with an American flag. The P-51 aerobatic team, the Horseman, was there as well. An MQ-1 Predator also made a pass over the flight line. Static displays included a QF-4E, F-22, the GAF color Tornado, several T-38s (two of which turned out to be ones we could not photograph just a few days later), a B-1, Predator and Reaper UAVs, a pair of A-10s, and a V-22 Osprey. I think though, that the main attraction was the ACC Heritage Flight - F-4 Phantom, F-22 Raptor, and P-51 Mustang. Some of us feared that because of it being scheduled as the last act of the day, that the sun would be in our faces and would turn our photos into silhouettes, such as what happened at the 2007 airshow. But fortunately this was not the case and they came by with the sun still a bit to our backs and with plenty of blue sky in front of the formation.

All in all, quite a weekend and week for photographing F-4s.

Phantoms Phorever!