COOL NEWS: California Capitol Air Show 2007!

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A beautifully restored P-51 Mustang that made flybys with an F-15 and a F-22.

Hi Everyone,

I attended the California Capitol Air Show 2007 this past weekend on Sunday and it was HUGE! There must have been thousands of attendees and it was one heck of a way to wrap up Air Force Week 2007. I bumped into a couple of friends at the show and even someone I served with back when I wore the uniform. The famous Thunderbirds aerial acrobatics team was there and they were GREAT!

At times, the Thunderbirds must have flown about hundred feet off the deck!

They performed in a roughly thirty-minute show...
...with amazing acrobatics and precision flying.

There was tons to see and it was the first air show that several of my sister's children had seen. Unfortunately, the "portable video game" generation didn't seem to be as excited by the air show as I remember being as a child. One of the highlights of the show was getting my photo taken by a Russian airplane (a Yak-11 with the moose from Rocky & Bullwinkle painted on its side) by my sister. I'll share that photo when I get it from my sister... if I don't look too much like Quasimodo. Speaking of which, both she and I took lots of photos and I've added a link to the best of the photos I took near the bottom of this post.

Some of the biplane shows were breathtaking.

A beautifully restored PT-17 Stearman Kadet, my bro-in-law's favorite plane.

Another highlight was seeing the Air Force's latest fighter, the F-22, which was nothing short of amazing to see... its flying capability seem to defy nature and it is so capable as to make other jets seem obsolete. Amazing to see. I brought home a 60th Anniversary Of the USAF (1947-2007) T-shirt and a Thunderbirds ball cap as well as making sure that each of my nephews and my niece left with good presents as well.

The F-22 in flight was truly beautiful.

Even on the ground, the F-22 looked beautiful.

It's several generations more advanced than every other aircraft in existence!

You can find the best of the photos I took here:
http://s44.photobucket.com/albums/f23/Maksim-Smelchak/Personal_2007/Mather-Air-Show_6-10-2007/

My nephew, Vincent, has a very active imagination! And the kid loves camo!

There were a few downsides to the air show:
1. We had a bit of a wait (...about 10 to 15 minutes) to get on the buses at the end of the air show.
2. I got one hellacious "boiled lobster" sunburn... even the tip of my nose! My roommate joked that I finally gave meaning to that classic crayon colour: "burnt sienna"
3. Concessions were overpriced as they always are at these events. However, when compared to many other such events, they weren't so bad.

The tail of a California Air National Guard F-16.

However, the improvements this year were many:
1. Far more aircraft and events to watch.
2. Lots of food and souvenir choices. I made sure that my nephews, niece and I all left with a hat and a T-shirt if wanted.
3. Extremely efficient public transport. We took the RT Light Rail and buses the whole way and avoided the hassle of crowded parking lots.

I also posed in an Army scout chopper.

I had a great time at the air show and I'd highly recommend attending next year if you get the chance!

You can learn more about the California Capitol Air Show here:
http://www.californiacapitalairshow.com/

Have a great Tuesday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

HUMOUR: Love In the Air...

.Aren't flyboys lovable?

Hi Everyone,

I've always admired the fine art of flying, and especially of landing, particularly when I'm airbourne. And while I've spent some time learning the fine art of flying, I never got to the point of a solo (flying with noone else in the plane... just two wings, your own gumption, and a prayer)... rising fuel costs at the time scared me off. However, despite my admiration for pilots, I can also recognize some piloting humour. Enjoy!

And, as a side note if you live in my neck of the woods and love aviation, The California Capitol Air Show is just around the corner coming to town on June 9th and 10th. Hope to see you there!

Learn more about it here:
http://www.californiacapitalairshow.com/

Have a great Friday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.

That W.W.I movie "Flyboys" - avoid it. Great special effects and not much else.

Notes regarding photos / pictures: These are not all my images. I am using various images from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).

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.

Notes regarding photos / pictures / videos: These are not all my images and videos. I am using various images and videos from around the web, mostly from public sources and/or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images and videos under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your image/s (if it is indeed an infringement).