Earlier this summer I was outside doing yard work and i heard the sound of jet engines. I turned and looked off into the sky over my neighbors house (about 30* high?) and saw an A-10 warthog chasing what looked like an F-14 through clouds. banking and flying through clouds and rolling out of them off outta sight past the tree line. I thought this was so awesome and just this last month I had another A-10 buzz my house(had i been looking at it from the front i woulda seen the pilots face but alas i only caught the tail moving past the treeline). My question is how often does the millitary play wargames like this over urban areas. I live in a suburb of Grand Rapids, MI (think Electrolux) and was just wondering why this isn't done over more....rural areas?

I don't know I always enjoyed the impromptu airshows. Where I used to live we had a rather livelly national guard apache squadron, and about once a week you'd see two of them chasing each other around. Maybe it's the militaries way of giving us a return on our millions of hard earned tax dollars that go into each airframe.

Wargames, I tend to think that's not what's going on.

I live near Selfridge ANG, (near Mt Clemens, MI) and have for many years. They do have an airshow once a year and other aircraft fly over from time to time. And, they were a regular presense after 9/11, but I don't remember any war games.

Are you by any chance new to the Grand Rapids area?

I've lived in Greenville for about six years and before that I lived in Muskegon. To my knowledge there aren't any air bases close to us. I have noticed millitary helicopters quite often. Come to think of it, I've probably got three a day flying past my house...usually medical helicopters but sometimes I get some that look like OH-6A's but I don't think thats what they are. We have a local armoury but that dosent exactly do much except hold gunshows and cookfests as well as keep a few military deployment vehicles in the back behind barbed-wire. We're also home to the 1073rd army reserves...