COOL NEWS: California Capital Airshow 2006 a Success!

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Hi Everyone,

This past weekend was the first major airshow we've had in the Sacramento area in ages. Back in the days that ended the Cold War in the 1990s and early 2000s, Sacramento area military bases took some huge hits, in fact, just about every base we had was closed down... Mather AFB, McClellan AFB, the Army Depot... all closed down or gone. At one time, Sacramento used to host airshows several times a year. When my folks moved down from the Bay Area to Sacramento, my father served at Mather AFB and so did I at a later time. I used to make every one of the Mather airshows and loved every minute of them.

Well, those days were over or so I thought until this past weekend. Warbirds filled the Sacramento skies again! I was driving down Watt Avenue Sunday afternoon and had the Blue Angels' F-18s fly by at what must have been less than a 100 feet above me. It was great! My apartment is on Folsom Boulevard (just a few miles from the former Mather AFB) so all I had to do was pull a chair out on to my patio and I saw the entire show. Again, it was great!


I hope that my friend Rob "Mako" Kent, one of the area's biggest aviation buffs, was able to catch the airshow as well.

Another local, Wayne Roberts, wrote the following about the airshow on the Airpower E-group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airpower/

Today was Day One of the first California Capital Airshow, at Mather Field (formerly Mather AFB) near Sacramento, CA. I took my wife for her very first airshow experience, and we had a pretty good time. The aircraft static displays were: EA-6B, F-16, FA-18, T-34, T-38, UH-1, UH-60, UH-47, C-130, B-52, AH-1T, HH-65, SH-60, F-20, U-2S, C-17 (with only 400 hours on it), C-5B, KC-135, KC-10 and some FedEx, UPS and DHL cargo liners (can you tell which type of aircraft I find more interesting?).

The flight performances were:
- Julie Clark and her Mopar T-34...
- Michael Hunter and his Laser 230...
- Chuck Lisher and his F-260 Warrior...
- Tim Decker and his Pitts S-2B...
- Rich perkins and his L-39 "Firecat"...
- Nikolay Timofeev and his Sukhoi SU-26M...
- A rescue by CA NG UH-60...
- A rescue by USCG C-130 & HH-65...
- Fly-bys by T-38s...
- Airstrikes by A-10 and P-51 with pyrotechnics...
- Rich Gibson and the Incredible Pyro...
- Fly-bys by FM-2, F8F, P-40, P-51 and T-28...
And the finale was...
- A show by the Blue Angels!

Frankly, after the warbird fly-by, I was semi-joking with my wife that we could leave now. It was the very first time I saw a Wildcat in flight and only the second time I've seen a P-40 in flight, so I was stoked.

(I've seen quite a few Bearcats, Mustangs and T-28s in flight, but they were still great to see.)

All in all, this was a great show, although it had some glitches that many first time shows suffer - the PA system dropped out several times; there not enough trash receptacles available; the food vendors generally were out of supplies by the time the Angels started and traffic on exit was generally uncontrolled for the first 45 minutes.

Hopefully they'll get these things fixed and we'll have a bigger and better show next year.

GW Roberts.

I think he said it better than I could have.


Here's the web site for the airshow:
http://www.californiacapitalairshow.com/

And two more links for a master airshow site and the Mather Airport website:
http://home1.gte.net/lbalders/

And:
http://www.sacairports.org/mather/

Have a great day!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

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