AirFest 2007-Part Fifteen

Continuing on with the high-powered fighter jets, here's the F-16. You've seen plenty of pictures of them before, so I wanted to highlight these that showed the water vapor condensing in the shock waves. I tried to concentrate on these while shooting, and I think I got some decent shots of it. I wish I knew more about the physics of it. I didn't see it on the F-15 nearly so much, pretty much only on the wingtips, but this F-16 seems to have it all over. Top of the body, bottom of the plane around the engine intake, across the wings, wingtips, all over. I've seen pictures of it nearly enveloping the plane recently, but I didn't see anything like that. I did notice that it doesn't seem to happen in straight, level flight. It occurs when the planes tried to turn. Perhaps I should have gone into aeronautics.