AirshowStuff Forums

Hello, just want to let everyone know here, there has been U.S Marines F-35C Lightning II's that have been coming into March ARB in Riverside, CA very recently. The F-35's are from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 (VMFA-314) known as the "Black Knight's" stationed at MCAS Miramar in San Diego, CA. Their motives for visiting the airspace is mainly unknown, however, I've overheard the Marine Corps base is an "Uncontrolled Airspace" during the weekends. In general, the F-35's have coming in and out of March ARB every other weekend for various sorties, and since March Field Air Museum is right across the base and actually next to the base's RWY 14 & RWY 32, we've been fortunate enough to them up close when the jets launch for certain sorties.

Here's a few other photos I also captured on the same day.

Awesome pictures Nick.

Here's a duo pair of VMX-1 F-35B Lightning II's (VTOL Jets) launching for another, rather typical, sortie out of March ARB last weekend. The F-35B's are from MCAS Yuma of the VMX-1 Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One.

Also as a side note, we're still (on behalf of March Field Air Museum, including to speak upon myself) hoping for some more departures/launches as were anticipating the arrival of the VMFA-314 Black Knights (Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314) from MCAS Miramar again. Likely the fighters arrived today since they usually arrive on Friday Nights and conduct 2 sorties per day over the Saturday & Sunday weekends.

I know this isn't quite related to the Marine Corps F-35's, but unfortunately, no F-35's neither the C-variants or B-variants arrived yesterday, so it appears they will not be coming this weekend to March ARB. But, however, when we docents and the staff first walked into the museum to open our facility to the public, we were very startled to see one of the U.S Navy Blue Angels Jet conducting Touch-n'-Go's, right in our backyard, on the base's RWY 32. Very cool surprise we got from Blue Angel No. 7 that was the jet, an F/A-18F Super Hornet, the two-seat variant basically, that was at March ARB earlier this morning. Not much photos I got of the jet since this was all unexcepted and of course it didn't stay to long, but good it was enough to see a special jet like that flying around the airspace, and trust me, you don't get a Blue Angel buzzing your airspace very often. The photo quality as a reminder is not that good since there was a lot of our typical SoCal smog/haze that was present this morning as usual.

Another rare appearance and quite a puzzling day for me. A E-3A Sentry commonly called the "AWACS" from the 552nd Air Control Wing Squadron stationed at Tinker AFB conducted pattern work at March ARB earlier ago, quite nice the sun was out for the golden hour. Excellent photo for Valentine's Day.