Current plans call for the F-35 to be operated above 7,000 feet over Maine, but there are special low-level corridors.

Some Maine residents seem resigned to the prospect that the louder F-35s will be operating over Maine, said Tom Mauzaka, a retired Air Force colonel, who lives in the western Maine town of Strong.

"This plane is loud," said Mauzaka. "It would be loud at 7,000 feet."

Little, if any, opposition has come from the other two Air Guard bases seen as suitable for operating the F-35s, Jacksonville, Fla., Air National Guard base and McEntire Joint National Guard Base in Eastover, S.C. But in another area of South Carolina, plans to base the F-35 at the Marine Corps Cherry Point Air Station in Beaufort have brought complaints about potential noise.

Back in Vermont, Winooski Mayor Michael O'Brien, whose city is about a mile from the north end of the runway, traveled to Eglin Air Force Base last month with Shumlin and other officials to listen to the F-16 and F-35 fly over, one after another.

Winooski opposes basing the F-35 at the South Burlington airport if the planes are significantly louder than the F-16s. O'Brien said he was at one end of an Eglin runway while the different planes went over in a number of different configurations.

"They are both loud, but it was hard to really get a handle on just how much louder," O'Brien said. "It didn't blow my socks off, the difference."