Although I have always loved aviation, and especially military stuff, I have almost never had the opportunity to see real planes close up. A few years ago I was on a small commercial flight in Queensland - had a short stopover somewhere (Gladstone? can't remember this moment) But it was an airport where we had to walk across the tarmac from the plane to the airport itself. Whilst doing this a couple of F-15's took off - maybe Japanese? Who else operates these that does exercises in Australia? They were not yank. The thing that left me awestruck was the power. One of them trundled "slowly" along the airstrip, just sort of limped into the air, high angle of attack but appearing laboured or bored, then suddenly when about a 100 foot or so above ground level the pilot hit the throttle and the thing suddenly flew like an angry missile. Absolutely awesome