Hawgsmoke 2010

Every two years, the A-10 Thunderbolt II community gathers for a bombing, missile, and tactical gunnery competition. Known as Hawgsmoke, the competition tests the skills that A-10 pilots employ in the aircraft’s primary role of close air support.

What is Hawgsmoke?
Hawgsmoke is a biennial worldwide A-10 bombing, missile, and tactical gunnery competition. Hosted by the winners of the previous competition, Hawgsmoke is an intense competition and an opportunity to share in the camaraderie and fellowship of the world’s premier Close Air Support fighter, as well as legacy of its pilots and support crews.

Hawgsmoke traces its heritage of the now discontinued "Gunsmoke" event. Gunsmoke was the USAF's air-to-ground gunnery and bombing competition with multiple airframes held at Nellis AFB. The last Gunsmoke event was held in 1995.

Since I am a big fan of the A-10 "warthog", it was a 'must' for me to go to one of the hawgsmoke competitions.

The last time Hawgsmoke was held was in Kansas,

and the 190th FS won, the squadon is based at Gowen-Field in Boise Idaho.

And january 2010, I decided, to go,
booked my ticket in june, and waited for 4 long months, before finally, the month october came in sight!

I know a A-10 pilot, I met @ spangdahlem airbase, who is based at the 190th Fighter Squadron,
who was planning to get me on base, but an two star army general, had plans to ban all the foregn,
media and civilians from base during the exercise.....

The A-10 pilot, arranged me to get to the sailor-creek live firing range,(few miles southeast from Mountain-Home AFB) were all the action was!

Took a lot of pic's there, was really a great experience, to see and  (HEAR!) the GAU-8/AVENGER hydraulically-driven seven-barrel  shoot!, what a noise!.

We were about 150 yards from the line shooting- target, so pretty close.....
and the weather during my stay at Boise was really great! mostly clear skies,
and temperature about23C / 73 F.

Also managed to get some pic's were you can see some bullit's coming from the GAU-8 barrel!
http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image106906.html

some links were I posted some hawgsmoke pics,

http://forum.scramble.nl/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=67664

http://www.milspotters.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4610

http://fightercontrol.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=21455

some arrival pic's, not shown on the link above...click on the pic's for higher resolution!

please come back later, will put some pic's (live shooting and departure) on my blog later!

Nice video i'd made of the hawgsmoke exercise...

                                                        
                                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqgAgP4o4O0