NAS Point Mugu show, April 1999

[alhenderson]

Just finished scanning a bunch of slides from my 2nd (and last ) spotting trip to the SW USA. We covered all the usual places and ended up at NAS Point Mugu for their airshow on April 24th 1999. Back in those days I was more of a spotter than a photographer, which possibly explains why I don't have that many pictures. Although, I was probably also rationing film. I think I was using cheap slide film. The pictures taken in bright sunshine have come out pretty well, but anything less than that and they look like they were taken in the middle of a UK winter.

Pride of place amongst the static participants appears to have gone to the resident Phantom target drones I have pictures of 7 different ones, and more logged - including, I think, Vandy 1 (the black bunny one) but the lack of a photo of it makes me think it was hangared or otherwise inaccessible. Either that or I need to have a very stern word with my 24 year old self!!

I did get a very nice white one:

151473 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

and a couple of clean-ish ex USN F-4Ns

153011 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

151482 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Few ex USMC F-4Ss, not quite so well looked after (or just used better, maybe!)

Point Mugu QF-4 155524 #2 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Point Mugu QF-4 153887 #2 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

CDR Scudder Brown by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Point Mugu F-4 155810 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Happily, a few Tomcats to be seen as well, from the resident NWTS and VX-9 "Vampires"

Point Mugu F-14 BH-211 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Vampire 240 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Point Mugu F-14 XF-135 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Point Mugu F-14 XF-241 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Resident VAW-116 Hawkeye looking rather splendid in the spring sunshine

164484 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

One of the range control NP-3D Orions. They looked a lot nicer when they were white and grey...

150499 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Standard ASW P-3 from the based VP-65, awful light on this slide!

Trident 407 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

And finally, no USN show is complete without the Blue Angels, #1 seen here on the flightline.

Point Mugu Blue Angels #1_ by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

These slides have not been well looked after sadly, seem to be greasy finger prints on a number of them which are not easy to fix. Hopefully the subject matter make up for it :-)

Cheers,
Al.

[Weazel69]

Hi Al. personally I think your pix are very good
had 2 visits there with a old friend of mine in 10.1999 - one a Phancon and the other set up by ourselves, even though we had been told the private one would not happen
to get those QF's was very good as they were certainly rare and they did not last much longer after 1999
Your White one - 151473 is actually a YF4J and was noted Preserved - NAWS China Lake - 01.2015

[paddyboy]

Hi Alistair

Any post with Tooms and Tomcats does it for me

Thanks for posting

Paddyboy

[Seahawk 11]

What a excellent set of photos, love the Phantoms,

Rob

[david14]

Excellent stuff - like the Phantoms.