The bouncers

[Michaelaw]

The are indeed Hornets, part of our protection from cave dwellers flying high tech equipment. When these things depart Vancouver international, the make way more racket than any domestic flight. Most people don't seem to notice but the patrol above Vancouver 24/7 right now. Went online to find out how many were up there and found this

LINK

Good grief

Some children will do damned near anything for attention

[Mad Aussie]

Where's 'Vacouver'

[Iguanasan]

Where's 'Vacouver'

I have no idea but you better listen to their creditable story!

[Michaelaw]

Where's 'Vacouver'

Beats me!

[JAS_Photo]

Awesome 'bird' shot, Michael!

[crystalb]

Great shot

[Xenos]

Not to be a super stickler but those are actually CF18 Hornets. Same platform as the F/A18 but some differences specified for the Royal Canadian Air Force. The most noticeable are the painted cockpit on the bottom of the aircraft, distinguishable to the RCAF CF18 only, as well as a 600,000 Candela spot light on the lower port side of the aircraft for use in conjunction with Search and Rescue missions. On the West Coast the CF18's have been used a lot for SAR missions before the Comorrant helicopters arrived, they got on scene a lot quicker than the old SeaKing and Chinook helo's and saved on hours on those aged machines.

On a side note, our CF18 pilots have quite often walked all over pilots from other countries 3 ways from Sunday in the TopGun competitions held annually.

Sorry for the poor picture quality, this was scanned a while back from a printed photo. This was the first summer I had my Focus back in 01. I helped my sister deliver some stuff for her booth and asked if I could take the picture. I'd love to redo this shot with my car now.

[Mad Aussie]

So it's still a FA 18 ... it just has some mods for the Canadian Air Force. I guess we could call ours AF 18's then