I took the following two pictures on Wednesday, June 9, 2004, the day of President Reagan's final trip to Washington. After the procession from the ellipse to the Capitol, President Reagan was honored with a flyover by 21 fighter jets. The flyovers were in done in successive groups of 4 jets apiece, with each group in the missing man formation, sans the actual missing man that usually flies far above.

In the final group, one jet broke from formation and symbolicaly flew skyward towards the heavens.

Fortunately, I was able to catch both a formation and the solo plane on camera. Unortunately, I didn't use a better camera, and the planes look a bit undefined in the resulting pictures. Believe me, I'm going to be kicking myself over this for a long time to come.

Despite the disappointing quality of the resulting photos, I still think they make pretty cool background images.

Each of the following images is a thumbnail that links to a full sized image (about 500k each). To set one as your background, first click on one of the images below, then right click on the picture that comes up and choose "set as wallpaper."

In case you're wondering, these planes are flying from south to north, from Virginia, over the District, towards Maryland. I was standing on the mall, my body facing southward, pretty much directly north of the Smithsonian Castle, when I took them.