Jet fighters overhead! 3 videos

.
The Independence Day flyover!
Today Israel Air Force plane flew for two hours, all across the country.
I climbed the high hill in Meitar's center to get the best view and be closest to the aircraft.
.

These jets demonstrated  mid-air refueling.

A bird and a child's kite got into this clip of some fighter jets.

I think these are our new F-35 Stealth fighters.
They were shown to the public for the first time today.
The Times of Israel writes this:

Israel is the first country outside the United States to receive the state-of-the-art F-35, which is manufactured by Lockheed Martin. In total, the country is planning to purchase 50 of the fifth-generation stealth aircraft, known in Israel as the “Adir,” or “mighty one,” and has thus far received five of them.

You can see clear photos of them in that article.
.
And now tonight, we end our happy 69th Independence Day and start our 70th year as a State, thanks, in great part, to the planes and pilots we saw today.
.

A heart for our Air Force

.

Our community of Meitar was treated to a flyover at noon today in celebration of Israel's Independence Day!

Several formations came over low and fast right above my street.

A Boeing showed how they do in-flight refueling of fighter jets.

Strange how a white heart appears at the wingtip in this photo!
(You can enlarge it with a click or two.  See it?!)
A sure sign of our love for the Air Force and for all our boys and girls in uniform.
.
Happy 68th Independence Day, long live our little country!
.
UPDATE:  Just published--a first-hand account of the turbulence endured by the press photographer assigned to the Hercules cargo plane (in my 2nd photo).  But he got great aerial photos of Israel!
.

Fly me away

.

For today's City Daily Photo Theme Day I chose as my favorite blog photo of 2015 this shot of mountain- and highrise-flanked Hong Kong airport.
It is a happy reminder of much flying.
From August to November I was lucky to be either running through, or sitting and waiting in, the airports of Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Sydney, Bangkok, Athens, Vienna, and Berlin.

It was wonderful spending a month in Australia and a month in Austria, first with my dear little grandchildren near Sydney and then with a nice farming community in rural Austria.
And the whipped cream dessert at the end was a visit (my first!) to friendly lovely Vienna!
.
A happy and blessed new year to you all!
.
UPDATE:  And even for this there is Jewish humor:
Q: Is one permitted to ride in an airplane on the Sabbath?
A: Yes, as long as your seat belt remains fastened. In this case, it is considered that you are not riding, you are wearing the plane.
.

Berlin by night and home again

.

Last night was the first time for me to fly Air Berlin, now Germany's second largest airline.
My Vienna to Berlin and Berlin to Tel Aviv flights were pünktlich, exactly on time and pleasant.
Plus, the cabin crew stands at the door with a smile and a basket of red heart-shaped Lindt chocolates as a way of saying a sweet goodbye!

Too bad my first and only time to see Berlin was only from above.
Maybe someday ...

 

I waited a few hours in Ben Gurion Airport until the first train to Beer Sheva and was rewarded with a nice sunrise on the way south.

Back home already at 8:15 am with the good earth of Israel smelling fresh from RAIN (so pleasant when you haven't seen rain since last spring).

The end of a marvelous 37 days in Austria.

.

Thai citizens en route to Israel

.
My month with the grandchildren came to an end all too quickly.
Early Saturday morning I bid farewell to my daughter's family and boarded a Qantas jet at Sydney airport.
After sitting in the plane half an hour waiting for two late passengers, we took off and had a nice10-hour flight to Thailand.

The 7-hour wait time in Bangkok airport was very long.
Sitting in this cavernous terminal until their midnight, with the reflections above and on every side, was kind of creepy. 

The second flight took 11 hours but after a long dark night we were rewarded with a lovely dawn, with El Al's star of David in the changing sky.
The sun was just rising and the views of southern Israel's deserts were breathtaking!

Touchtown at Ben-Gurion airport and, following tradition, everybody applauded.
It was a joy to be back home in the Holy Land, my land.

But as I looked around in the now-light plane, an El Al  jumbo jet, a code share flight with Thai Airways, I realized that very many of the hundreds of travelers were Thai citizens.
These are the men and women who come to work as in-home caretakers for our elderly.
These are the men who labor in our fields and our very hot hothouses, producing the food we eat.

It made me sad.
What has happened to our once pioneering country, that for the last several decades Jewish Israelis no longer do such physical work?
A.D. Gordon, who died in 1922 in Kibbutz Degania, must be turning over in his grave at the situation today.
He was a Zionist ideologue who believed that physical effort on the land would bring about the redemption of the Jewish people.
He attributed pioneer work a semi-religious status, arguing that it created an organic interrelationship between man, the land and culture.

A. D. Gordon: "Tolstoy in Palestine" - Poem - by Steven P. Schneider
Like Tolstoy, you longed to connect your life
to the soil.
You turned your back
on property, family, the high culture of Russia-
to live with peasants,
to work the vineyards and orange groves of Rishon Le-Zion.
Your stamina stunned the younger men
and women who worked beside you.
Your labor connected you to the land of your people.
It made you free.
Turning your back on the occupations of the Pale--
Talmudic scholar, money lender,
peddler, victim of pogroms--
You wanted to remake the Jew into a farmer.
Your weapon against history was the hoe--
Your work in the fields a new kind of worship.
With each digging of the hoe--
you discovered a new rung upon which to climb to heaven.
The sweat bathed your white beard.
Your eyes burned with the fire of holiness.
Tolstoy in Palestine,
you scribbled "Some Observations"
by candlelight in the predawn hours--
"our people," you wrote, "can be rejuvenated
through labor and a life close to nature."
At night, under the moon of Zion,
beside the campfire,
you preached your religion of labor
to all who would listen.
And when the dreamers of Israel
sang and danced,
you joined them
in the hora of the body reborn.
.
.
(Linking to OurWorld Tuesday.)
.

Above the clouds!

.
Some aerial shots taken for this Skywatch Friday as I flew from Tel Aviv to Hong Kong to Sydney on Monday, Tuesday, AND Wednesday!

The little island seemed to attract clouds.

Approaching Hong Kong airport, my first time!

 A big dam.

Mountains around Hong Kong airport.
.
It is nice to have a month on the earth now with my grandkids in Australia.
.

Children's hospital

.

 
I was surprised to see a little El Al Airlines airplane sitting on the lawn at Beilinson (Rabin) Medical Center.
It's a nice display but unfortunately for kids it has a sign saying no climbing on the wings.

It has the logo of Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, which is the building you see in the top photo.
I remember taking black and white photos of the corner-laying ceremony in the late 1980s.
.
This brief video explains what the pieces of the puzzle stand for.
.

Greeks and Jews in mock battle

.

Meitar is used to hearing the deafening sound of Air Force jets overhead many times a day.
But these two fighter jets were so high I didn't even hear them.
I think they were part of the joint IDF-Hellenic Air Force drill week that took place down here in the Negev (Israel's southern desert).

This article says the Greek and Israeli squadrons "practiced different complex air-to-air scenarios, with a combination of aerial refueling, protecting strategic assets and dealing with unexpected threats in the sky in order to learn from one another."

Bonus: a sharp close-up of one of our F-16s taking off during the joint exercise.
. 

Fly the friendly skies, they used to say

.

Another reason to fly EL AL. 
Our national airline's commercial jets will be the first to be equipped with the new Sky Shield system.
(Let's hope some of the government ministries will come up with the over one million dollars per plane.)

Sky Shield was successfully tested using live missiles on Wednesday, Haifa-based Elbit  Systems proudly announced.
As the Times of Israel article explains, the defense system integrates laser technology with a thermal camera to protect aircraft from shoulder-launched missiles fired [by terrorists] from the ground.
Sky Shield deflects an in-coming missile by changing its direction.
I assume the missile then explodes in the air somewhere.

C-MUSIC is another name for the system and stands for Multi-spectral infra-red counter-measure.
Here is a photo of a dismounted unit. 
See a simulated scenario of how it works in this short video at the Jerusalem Post.
.
(A post for Sky Watch Friday.)
.

Good drones and bad drones

.

How strange.
Last night I wrote this little post (below) and today we hear that a drone entered Israel airspace at 10 a.m. and was  shot down by our air force.
But  the intercepted drone was one in the shape of an airplane.

Our jets followed it for half an hour  a short while after it turned inland  from the Mediterranean.
At the edge of the Negev desert, on the southern slopes of  the Hebron mountains,  the UAV unmanned aircraft was shot down. 

See the video here  and read  Ynet's latest speculations [updated] about where it came from.
_______________________________________

Here is my innocent post written yesterday:

The dream of every photo blogger, no?

But would you trust your camera to this little flying machine?
Or more precisely, this remotely-operated unmanned miniature helicopter.

Seen and admired at AgriTech exhibition in May.
.

Sixty-four years of independence

.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

HAPPY 64th BIRTHDAY, ISRAEL!

By chance, I came out of the recently redone galleries of the Israel Museum exactly when the Air Force acrobatics began in the sky.
I don't know which was more breathtaking--the archaeology indoors or the aircraft outside!

The planes seemed almost low enough to fly into the 5-meter-tall polished steel hourglass "Turning the World Upside Down, Jerusalem" by sculptor Anish Kapoor (more about it here).

With a click to enlarge, you will find the four planes over the Knesset.

Appropriate for SkyWatch Friday, I do think.

May our pilots always fly in peaceful skies.
.

Flying

.
UPDATE to yesterday's post!
The IDF Blog has a slideshow and short videos (from the cockpit) of yesterday's Independence Day flyover by the Air Force!
.

Aerial salute on Israel's 63rd birthday

.

Quintuplet -- 1. a combination of five of a kind
OK, I got my Q word for ABC Wednesday.
.
This morning a quintuplet of helicopters flew right over my house, followed by a second identical formation.
They must have been on their way to Jerusalem to do an Air Force fly-over for Independence Day.
.
The choppers were followed by five fighter jets and then several Hercules transport planes.
.

This combination was about aerial refueling.

.
Thanks, pilots, for letting me enjoy hearing and seeing these aircraft without leaving my doorstep!
Happy 63rd Independence Day!
.

Rain helps end the fire

.
In the week since last That's My World Tuesday Israel has been through trying times.
.
We are mourning the loss of 42 men and women in the service of their country; all burned because a bus was engulfed just after the forest fire started on Thursday.
Some 250 housing units burned either totally or partially.
50,000 dunams (12,500 acres) of the Mt. Carmel forest, 5 million trees, were on fire.

Photo: Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson

The good part is that many nations came to Israel's aid.
.
In the photo, in orange and blue, are just some of the fire fighting aircraft crews that came from ten countries.
Israeli pilots accompanied them in every sortie over the flames.
In 82 hours the fire was stopped.
.
Yesterday and today 4 Israel Air Force bases held ceremonies for the departure of the international teams. IAF medals were presented to 192 foreign crewmen, and all the delegations received a certificate of gratitude from the commander of the IAF.
.
But before leaving, they were taken around the country to visit the holy places.
.
The water-dropping planes that Turkey graciously sent us flew up to Lebanon to battle the fires that are burning the majestic cedars.

The other good news is that for the first time in 8 months RAIN started falling all over Israel last night! Just in time to cool down the smouldering ground in the Carmel range.

.

Above you see the welcome clouds over Jerusalem at 4:18 pm today, as seen from my village.

.

The Boston Globe has incredible images of our fire online today, including the airplanes.

WARNING: On Photo 6 they give you a choice whether to open it; please PLEASE skip that difficult one.

.

Thank God it is over.

.

Saved by Google

.
NASA's satellite photo shows the smoke from the Carmel fires drifting out over the blue Mediterranean.
Thankfully, today, for the first time since Thursday we have more smoke than flame.
.
A year ago I took this photo of flame retardant being released over our neighborhood monastery when their forest caught fire.
It shows you what kind of firefighting equipment the great state of Israel has--small agricultural cropdusters doing double duty!
What's more, in normal times these Chem-Nir planes do not stand at the ready; it takes at least 2 1/2 hours to get them airborne.
If not for the generous sending of help from neighbor countries and from Europe and America, we would be in big trouble right now. See the impressive list of aircraft that has arrived in the last few days here.
.
This morning the world's largest firefighting aircraft landed at Ben-Gurion Airport.
The Evergreen Boeing Supertanker--see it being welcomed here!
.
I watched the live coverage of its first sortie at 11 o'clock and it was very scary.
A huge aircraft flying over hills and around high tension wires and dropping its load of 80 tons of water plus chemicals just 300 feet above the ground!
All the other 34 aircraft in action were kept clear of the path of the huge Boeing.
.
People in buildings in the area were told to shut the windows and turn on the airconditioners (IF they are not outward-facing) because this anti-fire material is dangerous to one's health.
.
And how did we come to know about the existence of the Evergreen Supertanker?
Someone in our aircraft industry remembered hearing about it once.
They Googled Evergreen, found the company in Arizona, called, got PM Netanyahu's OK to pay the gigantic rental fees, and the deal was sealed in 15 minutes.
.
I ask you, is this the way to run a country??
Does our safety depend on Google and the good will of foreign countries?
.

Helpful helicopters

Not one but two helicopters landing at Hadassah. The hospital is now building a bigger helipad atop its tall emergency medicine building. I am always saddened seeing such copters fly over my house, wondering who has been hurt, and where, and why.

.