The last official day of the Airshow and I left home early to arrive at 7am. I would have been on time, except I forgot to set my clocks back 1 hour before I went to bed (daylight savings ended last night). So, I wound up opening up the Green Room tent at 6:10am – no wonder there weren’t any other people on around. Oh well – the sunrise was great and the peace & quiet on the airfield was wonderful.
Soon enough the warbirds started to arrive and I put a few of them in on my own until some of the others arrived to help. A QANTAS 737 (painted in aboriginal designs) and 747 arrived and were squeezed into the keyhole. Not long after a BAe 146 from National Jet arrived and I wound up batting it into a tight space at Green-5. Lots of fun.
By now the whole team was on site and we were gearing up for another day much like yesterday. There were some slight changes to the schedule and a few additional shows, but otherwise it ran very well and everyone was happy. Early in the day we moved the majority of the light aircraft who wanted to leave at the end of the show down to modified holding areas near the Bravo holding point.
Kitt and Nykolai came down with UK Balloon Pilot Chris and his family in time to see the Super Hornet, B-52, RAAF F-18, F-111, USAF F-15 and the RAAF formation F-18s. They were all very happy to come on down and hang out – I even managed to get some time to join them when we had some quiet moments on the warbird tarmac.
All too soon the show was over and we had a mass exodus of lighties crossing over 18-Center to 18-Right, all the while charters were taking off from further down the runway (at Charlie or Foxtrot intersections). We slotted a number of warbirds in that were leaving and then just worked through the remaining lighties. It all went very well.
At the end of the day, Chuck Yeager came out to meet the F-15 and F-16 pilots so I managed to get some photos of him during these sessions. After this it was off to AGO for a couple of beers (light, unfortunately) then ASDU for dinner and home.
I’m back tomorrow to help remaining aircraft leave, then it’s all over for me.
