Any airshow fanatics here?

[KitchenWitch]

:shrug:

[fertilizeonarbusto]

1. Love them! n/t

[KitchenWitch]

2. Just got back from one this weekend

It was AWESOME

[Jara sang]

3. Is it me or...

have there been an awful lot of crashes at airshows recently?

[Bluzmann57]

4. Not really a fanatic but

do find them quite interesting. It amazes me what those people can do while up in the air. Wing walking, loops, etc., not to mention the Blue Angels and others like that. We have a first rate airshow here in Davenport, IA this weekend, btw. Friday-Sunday I think. Being somewhat cheap,er, poor, I probably won't go, but I may go out on a country road near the airport, stock up the cooler and watch what I can from the far away perch. Binoculars are wonderful inventions.

[GOPisEvil]

5. I was when I was a kid.

I'm still a huge aviation buff. I've been a member of Air and Space Smithsonian for years.

[lenidog]

6. I haven't been to that many but I have thoroughly enjoyed those I do go

to. I usually at least hit the local Reading Airshow which is a pretty good sized one.

[MemphisTiger]

7. I haven't been to any since I was a kid, but the Blue Angels

are coming in October and I'm taking my son to his first air show then.

[punpirate]

8. Since I grew up on or near...

... air bases, they were sort of a fixture in my younger years. When I was eight or nine, I could rattle off statistics for most of the jet aircraft in the Air Force.

But, there was a long period without seeing any, and it was not until I found myself where I am now that I saw any more. Those dried up in 1993, I believe, since the city didn't want to help fund the airshow committee after that.

The last show, in 1993, was quite interesting. It was the first local unveiling of the F-117A (the wing for which is stationed nearby) and there were, sort of, mock dogfights between a restored F-86 and a MiG-15 (which, several years later, I believe, crashed on a hop between Texas and Arizona due to a fuel pump problem). The usual aerobatic teams were there, including the Thunderbirds, and fly-bys of an F8F and a B-25, along with statics of a lot of then-current Air Force hardware. Toward the end of the day, there was a distant fly-by of the then-new B-2 and the engine-off multiple loops by the Rockwell test pilot (whose name escapes me now) in his Aero Commander twin.

Yeah, kinda miss air shows once in a while. :)