Not sure if I've told this one, but here goes...
One Saturday morning (back when I was a teenager, in the late 80s) I was barely awake and out walking the dog when suddenly, almost out of nowhere, this ... "sound" is wholly inadequate for the nigh-fortean event that happened. It was this...it was like God himself was having a morning gargle. It was like Gabriel pointed his trumpet directly at my abdomen and set for "disrupt". This...rumble started ricocheting off the concrete walls of the apartment complex around me and shaking me to the very core of my being. I was being physically pushed around by sound waves. Prying my eyes open (it was about 7 or 8 AM and I was - and am - a night owl so it was the crack of dawn as far as I was concerned and I was as I noted barely awake), I looked up to see a phalanx of 5 UH1 (unsure of series) all bearing Air Cav markings, flying at about 500ft over residential Central Florida, hell-bent for leather.
It was only one Robert Duvall and a PA-blared rendering of die Waulkere from being straight out of Apocalypse Now. I don't recall per se that they were armed, but good Lord it was impressive nonetheless.
I went back in and asked my dad if he'd heard it and he said "What, the Hueys? Yeah, they're probably headed over to Martin Marietta for an electronics upgrade or something."
It was even more impressive than a similar tableau I witnessed about ten years later - out in Apopka, FL, a string of AH64Ds (the radomes were clearly visible) hauling ass out over the campground we were at. That flight seemed to go on and on forever, two helos here, another four there, coming in waves over us. Easily a dozen or more birds. But their sound was almost disappointing - this sort of dull shriek with a soft "poppoppoppop" of main rotors overlaid.
The noise of the Hueys was a force of nature; the Apache's rotor sounds weren't much different from a TV station or sheriff's department Bell Jetranger.
But with that said, the Hueys seemed almost to creep up on me. I didn't really notice until they were almost right on top of us. It might have been the weather, the acoustics of the buildings around me, etc. etc.
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