This weekend was the club’s Air Show. Jay did a good job of keeping the number of planes he took down to six. He had the MiG-15, the F-16, his A-10 Warthog, the Watermelon Combat Foamie, his Extra, and my LT-25 (upside down in this picture to keep the wind from knocking it over).

The weather really wasn’t the nicest. We were lucky that it didn’t rain at all during the day, but the wind was horrible! It kept a lot of guys from flying. Again, not Jay. lol. I took a picture of this windsock that Sam had on his canopy so that you could see just how windy it was. It reminded me a lot of SEFF in that respect.

Considering the fact that it was windy, chilly, and threatening to rain at any moment we really had a decent turn-out. There were a couple of pilots there that I hadn’t seen since last year’s show. And the crowd was really quite large. Jay’s Warthog attracted a lot of attention and I saw many people taking pictures of it. I was so proud of his hard work! He was so busy being pulled in six different directions most of the time that he probably didn’t even have time to notice the people drooling over his jet.

Due to the wind we couldn’t do a lot of what had been planned. They usually do a flag drop out of a plane while they play the Star Spangled Banner, but it was too windy to do that. Then we were supposed to have two candy drops, but when landing after the first one Cliff’s plane was flipped at the last moment by the wind and completely damaged the wing.

The kids really enjoyed the candy drop. Most of the chutes opened (I think!) and I only saw one group of chutes that were tangled together. A few of the kids really did a good job chasing down the stray parachutes.

Not all of the kids received a paratrooper, though, so as they came off of the field I held the box with the extras and allowed anybody who hadn’t found one to take one. That made them really happy. And it made me happy because that meant I wouldn’t have to take as many home with me. This is Cliff, the president, in this picture.

They were also supposed to do two rounds of combat, but half of the guys hadn’t even brought their combat foamies! We managed to scrape together a group of three foamies and decided that we were going to have combat anyway. After all, I had spent the time cutting streamers into 20′ lengths. They were GOING to be used!

The crowd had a good time watching these guys try to take each other out, though. It’s my hope to be good enough to fly solo next year so that I can join in and be one more person. At one point Jay and Mark put their F-16’s in the air and were basically chasing each other around, trying to show the other up. The crowd REALLY enjoyed that. I think that it would be neat if we could work out a flight sequence to really put on a show with the 16’s. Again, that means that I have to be good enough to fly solo by next year. I’m not sure that will happen. After all, I’ve managed to rip the landing gear off of the LT the last 2 times I’ve flown it.

The other demonstration that the crowd really enjoyed was the jet powered by an actual turbine. This thing can fly like a bat out of you-know-where! Unfortunately the closest place to fly turbines regularly is an hour away, so Jay isn’t going to get into this part of the hobby (thank goodness!). It can be rather expensive. Just the turbine engine alone costs around $2,500 for a cheap one. When they crash they CRASH. There’s no saving anything from a turbine crash. You don’t often pick up pieces that are any larger than a quarter. I’ve heard some really good crash stories where at the end they could only find enough pieces that could be picked up and would have fit into a quart size ziplock bag. No, thank you! I don’t want over $5,000 to end up fitting in my purse.

I would say that overall the Air Show was a success, especially when you factor in the weather. We had a couple of crashes, but nothing absolutely crazy. The girls at the tent next to us completely sold out of the cookies that they had made to benefit the Make A Wish foundation. We gave out every single glider and toy helicopter that we had purchased for the little kids who attended. I would say that it was a very good day. 🙂 And to celebrate I want to end this post with a balloon (filled with air so it counts for this post) that I saw at the grocery store this weekend. Enjoy!