Least favorite airshow act: a synchronized drone array. These stayed pretty far from the crowd so it was essentially a bunch of lights that could have been replicated with a big TV (it is possible to project 3D onto 2D!). Unless the drones are all around a crowd I don’t understand why a 3D array of drones is more compelling to watch than a big TV (or your phone held up close to your eyes).
This year, however, the drones were integrated with the fireworks show and added a lot. The crowd for the Wednesday night air show was insane. Get there early with a group of friends and stake out a space near show center (Boeing Plaza) if you don’t want to stand through the entire show or view it from an angle (if you arrive at 7:30 or 8 pm for the 8 pm show the only spaces left will be to the north or south). There was a “Peace the Old-fashioned Way” opening with the Avro Lancaster (one of two airworthy examples worldwide; lock up your dams if you see one) and both of the world’s airworthy B-29s. Nate Hammond shooting fireworks out of the DHC-1 Chipmunk closed the show.
A few pictures of the Lancaster and B-29s while parked:
(It is unclear if Japanese visitors appreciate the cartoon character on a machine that was extremely destructive even before the atomic bomb, e.g., during a March 9, 1945 raid on Tokyo.)
One interesting act this year was the Canadian demonstration CF-18 team. “I’ve never seen an F-18 do anything like that,” said a friend who is an accomplished aerobatic pilot. Caleb “Tango” Robert mostly flew slowly and tumbled the aircraft in maneuvers that one is more accustomed to seeing from Extra and Gamebird pilots. Where the U.S. Navy flies the same type of plane as fast and loud as possible, the Royal Canadian Air Force, celebrating its 100th birthday this year, takes a more subtle approach.
The Snowbirds also showed up and played Elton John while doing gentle aerobatics in the 1966 Tutors (9!). Why not Celine Dion?
The Wisconsin National Guard put on a show that was the opposite of the Canadians’ mostly peaceful displays. They brought Blackhawk helicopters packed with troops, howitzers on the ground (“Let’s hope that Alec Baldwin isn’t behind one of those 155mm guns,” I said), and an F-22 and F-35 flying overhead in formation with a tanker. Much drama for the kids (we’re informed that kids are gentle peaceful creatures, but if kids were allowed to run governments I think that nearly all disputes would be settled via strategic bombing).
Bill Stein tossed around his Edge 540 and Mike Goulian tumbled in his Extra 330SC.
Here’s a video of relative newcomer Philipp Steinbach in the Gamebird:
I skipped the show on the one day that the Italian Tricolori team was flying. Here’s a video:
Why not Celine Dion? No idea!
After a spate of vicon guided aerobatic demos 15 years ago, it’s disappointing quad copters went back to super slow GPS demos ever since. Figure GA pilots hate quad copters because the mighty Greenspun never owned one & they negate zillion dollar investments in the family SR-20.
> The Snowbirds also showed up and played Elton John while doing gentle aerobatics in the 1966 Tutors (9!).
There used to be 10 Snowbird Tutors, but in 2020 one of them ingested a bird into its single engine just after takeoff from CYKA. Then stalled trying the “impossible turn” (alternatives: river+sandbars straight ahead, city on left, hills on right). Then crew ejected pitch-down at low-altitude. Pilot survived, passenger (public affairs officer) was killed.
Plane spotter recorded the whole thing:
Alex Baldwin best comment ever
Despite Japan having adopted and improved on western aviation technology and practices, photos of Japanese WW2 aircraft don’t generally show the sort of decoration popular in the European theatre and the US (I was half-expecting some sort of pre-Hello Kitty stuff); but then there’s this. Regardless of this possible cultural divide, should not the questionably tasteful decoration of the B-29 have led Japanese visitors to reflect sadly on the unprovoked aggressive and atrocity-laden war waged by their not so distant forebears that made the B-29 with its deadly payloads necessary? Winds and whirlwinds, etc.
What was “necessary” about us fighting a total war against the Japanese? They expected a negotiation after their Pearl Harbor attack and an agreement to divide up the Pacific into spheres of influence (perhaps with an end to the U.S. August 1, 1941 oil embargo on Japan), not that we would kill millions of their civilians after they attacked some of our military personnel in Hawaii. We are informed that it is “disproportionate” for genocidal Israel to cause deaths among the noble Palestinians after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023 (which two thirds of Palestinians polled in June 2024 think was a “correct decision”; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-rise-support-armed-struggle-by-palestinians-2024-06-13/ ). The Japanese never targeted any civilians nor took any civilians hostage in the Pearl Harbor attack.
Pearl Harbour was only one target of the Japanese war, one in which 68 civilians died, though mostly as a result of desperate (misguided, would you say?) attempts to down the attackers. Had the Japanese invaded Hawaii as they did China, SE Asia and the Philippines, US civilians would have had a lot more to complain about, especially if they did complain. There was already a total war that was 2 years in (longer if you count Manchuria) by the time Pearl Harbour [forced the US to participate|allowed Roosevelt to justify participating] actively. Like Hamas, the Japanese could have abandoned war and avoided reaping whirlwinds, which the more sensible Japanese commanders foresaw even if they may not have imagined Little Boy and Fat Man, but like the residents of Gaza the deluded Japanese populace were sacrificed by their militaristic government. Is the popularity of martyrdom in both protagonists a coincidence?