Another picture quiz

Congrats to John Lynch for quickly coming up with the correct answer to the previous picture quiz. The man in the statue is Richard Owen; the statue sits inside the Natural History Museum in London. Since that quiz was taken care of so quickly (and I'm going through pictures anyway), let's try another one.

This is a picture I took this morning. What's wrong (or at least atypical) about this shot?

i-99a7771a1dd0d8ea8db5b68f8e4c7671-blues1 (1)-tm.jpg

More like this

Today we need an example of something weirdly-shaped and electrically conductive. There's no shortage of such things, so we might as well go with the iconic. This is the Statue of Liberty:
It's a full-sized statue of a buxom pirate on display at an antique shop in Girardville, Pennsylvania. It would look fabulous by the doorway to my house.
On Tuesday, largely at the instigation of the Free-Ride offspring, the Free-Ride family went to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty.
Statues of marble or brass will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues ... But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind ... the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case.

There are two aviators in the #7 plane.

I don't see anything wrong with it, per se, but it's interesting that (a) the lead aircraft has no number on it's tail, and (b) the trailing aircraft is a two-seater. The second is normal in training for the blue angels, but I seem to recall reading that they seldom/never use their two-seaters in shows.

I think what's odd about it is that a couple of the planes aren't generating contrails.

Clearly, the government isn't gassing us as hard as they used to.

By Braxton Thomason (not verified) on 26 Aug 2008 #permalink

Plane #7 being used in formation flying is pretty unusual. It probably means that they are taking some publicity shots or taping some footage for some reason. The two-seater is usually the PR plane; used to take local media and notables on flights to provide the "air show" experience. Around the home base, seeing #7 in the formation would be fairly common depending on the need for PR shots.

Not contrails, smoke. The planes have devices that allow them to leave smoke trails so it is easier for the crowd to spot them, to leave "pretty pictures" in the sky, and to misdirect the crowd as one of the solos gets ready to make a high speed pass from behind. :-) It looks like three are leaving smoke. I imagine that #7 doesn't have a smoke generator, but that's just a guess.

This one is simple, I'm surprised nobody else got it first, the pilot in #4 is wearing odd socks.

Between (or should that be among?) you, you got most of the things. The tail plane is missing a number, and the plane in the #4 position is a two-seater, which does not fly during airshows. The #4 plane is flying in the #3 plane's position, and the #3 is missing.

The picture was taken during one of their practice sessions, which is why there are so many differences from what's seen at a show.