One thing that definitely can be blamed on someone (I'm not sure who) is that during the Navy segment with a planned five aircraft, three of them never got the signal to start and thus didn't fly. I don't understand how that wasn't taken care of. If there is more to the story I'd love to hear it because as far as I'm aware this is something that was entirely within control and just plain dropped. Inexcusable and very frustrating since it was one of the rare opportunities to actually FLY.
Ride aircraft and military departures (lots!) kept things so crowded that the two Navy planes that did fly got cut short after just two passes. The Corsair flew some acro before declaring an emergency with fuel in the cockpit and rolling the trucks. Meanwhile, the E-2 Hawkeye that had been tugged out to depart got pushed into the grass and stuck, so they had to defuel it and get it back onto the pavement.
The afternoon battle was good (all the battles were good, and the taller brush helped. Well done re-enactors!) but the aircraft were more limited on passes than yesterday. Texas Raiders called in with a problem before starting so they scrubbed. The P-47 and P-63 took off but departed instead of flying any passes. Only time they got in the air all weekend. The F-15s ended up waiting on the ground so long that they had to cut one of their passes, and they flew over the runway instead of anywhere close to the crowd, so they were actually pretty lame. Nothing like the departure at Oshkosh.
Props to the Thunderbirds for mixing their maneuvers up throughout the show. I don't think I've ever seen a flat show start with a loop on takeoff, but I was disappointed that #6 did the Split-S instead of the sneak pass on takeoff like yesterday. That was awesome. We did get 3 sneaks with the low show routine though so that's good.
Overall I'm a big fan of the changed layout; lots of space for people and a much better view. Takeoffs were quite far but at least they were visible this time. I also liked the intermission schedule (since there's a morning battle anyway) but the ride aircraft coming and going really interrupted the flow of the flying.
My biggest annoyance with the day was the super loud music blasting all morning. Why do airshows think that people want that??? Don't pay a DJ to play for hours when everyone would be happier with silence and being able to hold conversations!!!
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)