{"id":159,"date":"2007-07-30T13:44:50","date_gmt":"2007-07-30T05:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/?p=159"},"modified":"2008-02-28T07:21:11","modified_gmt":"2008-02-27T23:21:11","slug":"okinawa-trip-for-aviationmilitary-buffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/?p=159","title":{"rendered":"Okinawa Trip (For Aviation\/Military Buffs)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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No, we did not get to enter the base.\u00a0 Our bus just passed by one of the gates…<\/p>\n

Before my trip to Okinawa, I had been expecting to see military aircraft all over the sky there because it is a major base for American aviation forces in Asia.\u00a0 But during the four-day vacation, I only saw one C-130 (below) when I was cruising in Naha Harbor and two USMC Harriers take off from Kadena AFB when our bus drove by.\u00a0 The Harriers were flying too fast for me to get out the camera.\u00a0 I did not have time to change to a bigger lense for the C-130 either.\u00a0 All other military aircraft I saw were on the\u00a0ground but I was not able to get any clear shot.\u00a0 Sigh…<\/p>\n

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So, to me as an aviation enthusiast, the trip to Okinawa was somewhat disappointing.\u00a0 I had studied the layout of Naha International Airport on Google Maps before I set out.\u00a0 The satellite photo (http:\/\/maps.google.com\/?ie=UTF8&ll=26.197105,127.649218&spn=0.002166,0.005375&t=k&z=18&om=1<\/a>) clearly shows some F-4 and P-3C parked there.\u00a0 I did see them when\u00a0the\u00a0China Airlines Boeing 737 I flew\u00a0just landed, but it was too fast for me to take any photo of them.\u00a0 So I hoped I could photograph them from the airport terminal when I waited for my return flight because the terminal looked quite close to the ramp for the military aircraft.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the terminals with air bridges are in fact terminals for domestic flight.\u00a0 Since there are fewer than ten scheduled international flights to Naha, the international terminal is located in a small, one-story building to the North.\u00a0 In the photo below, the international terminal is the building with a sign saying “Naha International”, while the domestic terminal is the much larger building with the curved roof and the sign “\u90a3\u9738\u7a7a\u6e2f” in Kanji.\u00a0 From the international terminal, there is no way to see any of the military aircraft because there is no direct line of sight.\u00a0 Worse, all the windows facing the runway are blocked by either TV minitors or signs.<\/p>\n

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Because there are few international flights, Naha’s international terminal has only one X-ray machine.\u00a0 We had to wait in a long line to pass the security check point.\u00a0 It was not very efficient and of course did not make a good impression on me.\u00a0 And since there is no air bridge, we were bussed to our aircraft.\u00a0 So I was not able to get a good shot of\u00a0the aircraft for the return flight, which was a Boeing 737-800 (B-18610) in the speical Lavanda markings.\u00a0 Darn it!<\/p>\n

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B-18610 has been fitted with winglets, just like the Boeing 737 B-18607 I flew to Okinawa four days earlier (foreground) and B-18605 (background):<\/p>\n

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Anyway, it is worth noting that in the first hotel I stayed, we could watch American Forces Network (AFN) on the TV.\u00a0 Actually it was the channel I watched the most because it was the only channel with programs in English.\u00a0 I also saw a military surplus shop in Naha which sold used ammunition boxes.\u00a0 I did not buy any because I was not sure if it was legal to bring one home…<\/p>\n

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The influence of American forces present on this island\u00a0can be seen even on the taxi:<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, we did not get to enter the base.\u00a0 Our bus just passed by one of the gates… Before my trip to Okinawa, I had been expecting to see military aircraft all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}