Captured back on 10/27/08, at the 7th Annual Wings Wheels Rotors & Expo, held at the beautiful Joint Forces Training Base (JFTB) in beautiful Los Alamitos, California. As colorfully depicted on the sides of the aircraft, the Fokker F27 Friendship/Fairchild F-27 shown above is the one used by the Golden Knights. There was a no-entry perimeter set up around the ship at the show so this was as close I could get for my fotos. The top pic was taken with a reluctant guard's consent because I was violating air strip safety rules with that particular POV, so I was able to get only one shot of the starboard side of the F27 before returning to the admissible area. Had no problems with the other pictures, though, just as long as I stayed outside the perimeter. The pics were taken prior to the parachute jumps, and, no, I didn't wait around for the Knights to climb aboard because there were too many other targets of opportunity in the show to record for me to hang around. -------------------- The "Holy Grail" of aircraft manufacturers directly after World War II was the development of a replacement for the Douglas DC-3. Fokker's entry was the F27 Friendship with the prototype first flying in 1955. Fokker contracted with Fairchild to manufacture and market the F27 in North America. Fairchild (by this time Fairchild Hiller) developed a stretch version designated the FH-277 that first flew in 1966. More F27 and FH-227 aircraft were built than any other western turboprop airliner. In 1985, the U.S. Army acquired two Fokker F27s as transport and jump aircraft for its parachute demonstration team, the Golden Knights. Source: http://www.shanaberger.com/F-27_fokker.htm ---------------------- The F27 comes in several variants. This one has only eight windows on each side, as opposed to the ten on the generic models. It may be a cargo version because of the widened rear doors on each side, which also makes for easy egress by the jumpers. In addition, the plane is ideal for parachute jumping because of the high wing and tail section. Tally-ho, and thankx for the peek.