After seeing the NASA ER-2 708 in the hangar, I learned that the mission scheduled for the next day, Feb 8, 1997, was a “GO”. So I drove to Dane County Airport in the morining and waited in the heated passenger terminal. It was not only because it’s warm inside (hey, it’s Wisconsin), but also because I thought the ER-2 would take off from Runway 18/36, which is the runway normally used by commercial airliners and is closer to the terminal. Inside the terminal and to my surprise, I ran into a Meteorology student who also went to see the ER-2 the previous day.
I was very excited then because it was my first time to see a U-2 fly. But the ER-2 took off from the much shorter Runway 14/32, which is quite far away from the terminal. Even worse was that it did not use much of the runway before it rotated. I did not have big lens then (not now either), thus the grainy pictures here.
