Gatoratti's listing of air shows brought back so many memories from when I was active. At Abottsford in 1969-70. We pulled the clown plane up in front of the Blew Angels to take a picture of our ratty Champ in front of the prissy F-4's of the fancy Navy team and we triggered a frantic response from the ground crew to remove our " machine" because it was not " DIGNIFIED". Well, my partner was quite incensed and he stood there in his filthy grease stained white coveralls while wearing a bowler whose lid had been blown open and challenged the fancy mechanic with the question, " Now what makes you think that we aren't "DIGNIFIED! " ? I wish that I could find the picture that we took anyway with the mechanic loosing his composure in the foreground. Later that day the PR man for the Blews went into the tower to inform the tower chief, Bill Warn, that THEY were going to change the schedule of the show whereupon the tower chief informed the PR guy that they did not operate the tower OR THE SHOW and promptly removed the upstart Schram from the tower. Every show that we performed on the same schedule with the Blews we bumped into the same sort of arrogance and grew damn tired of the pumped up little boys from Pensacola. Okay, they are good but so are the Thunderbirds and our contact with them was quite the opposite of the Blews. We had fun with the Birds and they were a part of the show, NOT the entire show. I suppose this is going to illicit some negative responses, but so be it. Switches
The aerial demonstration team that takes the trophy is the Snow Birds in my mind. We saw them as the Golden Centennaires at the first big Abottsford show in 1967. They were flying lighter and lowered powered airplanes than anyone else and put on a show that showed their skill and grit because they had a very small budget with which to train and a limited fuel allotment. They did a show that addressed the public with a ballet of maneuvers that required some very tight and demanding flying. A roll with a line abreast formation of 7 or 8 airplanes was striking to say the least. Think about it. The speed differential between the inside airplane and the outside airplane is extreme but they did it with precision. They finished their act with a beautiful heart in smoke facing the crowd with two airplanes climbing up through it in rolls as a salute to the ladies. I made friends with the solo guy, Jake Miller, and he voiced amazement at we did. And he was flying an F-5 doing 8G 360 turns in afterburner within the confines of the airport without a G suit. I would hate to try that even if I was young. The Snow Birds are still good to this day. Switches
I freely admit to a little bias here being Canadian and all Bob. That being said I've seen all three north American precision flying teams and the Snowbirds continue to amaze me in a way that the Blues and Thunderbirds don't. Please don't think I'm denigrating the skill of the other pilots here, but their equipment is not suited for precision flying. High speed passes and other small tight ship formations are the order of the day. For my money I want to see the best pilots doing the coolest maneuvers, and something about the snowbirds show is dare I say intimate. Dare I say you get to know the airplanes as you watch them go through the line abreast loop, or have eight airplanes in a diamond formation break off in to a flower shape with smoke on. You can't do that in a cleaned up F-16 or F-18... This year is a Northern Skies Airshow year, and the Snowbirds usually anchor the show (in fact usually there the only headliners with a smaller act in there for filler), I'm looking forward to seeing them again and collecting my 2010 Snow Birds Season poster. I've been trying to collect the promo poster from the snowbirds every year since I first saw them in like 1996, needless to say my collection has gaps and it's not something that people sell on ebay .
I have been thinking back to that centennial show when we had our premier showing of the clown act. It was the hit of the show I was told and we got a personal note from Canada's premier during the show. To give you the flavor of how we were treated , the Centennaires invited us to their bash at the RCAF officer's club in Vancouver, B.C. after the Sunday show. Everything was on them except our hotel room. My wife, her sister, and me were given a wonderful evening with a gracious group of people. They were genuinely interested in how we managed to fly an airplane with so many of the control surfaces missing. The next year I had my three boys with me and they were scooped up by one of the Abottsford Flying cub members and he had them as quests every evening at his farm for the entire weekend. I have the fondest memories of our participation in the Abottsford Air Show and the considerate and warm treatment we received from the Canadians. We never saw that other demonstration team at the dinners during the show weekend. A great memory and I wish that I could do it again. Switches
The way I look at it, there are two different types of national jet demo teams, the "American" style and the "European" style. The "American" style is currently only used by the Blue Angels, the Thunderbirds and the Russian teams, using high-performance fighters in formations that never exceed six aircraft. The shows emphasize brute force and loud noise, to a large extent, over grace. They have several different formations but spend much of their time in the 4-plane diamond, with separate solos showing off the aircraft's performance envelope. The "European" style is epitomized by just about everyone else, including the Snowbirds. They use jet trainers in formations of up to nine or ten aircraft, using many different formations and emphasizing grace and beauty. I remember seeing the Patrouille de France at Abbotsford '86, and it seemed they were in a different formation on every pass. I appreciate both approaches and the fact that both of them are represented in North America. Both the Blues and the Snowbirds will be appearing here in Marietta in October, and I will be glad to see them both at the same show.
