THUNDER OVER MICHIGAN 2012

[Xray]

Coast Guard chopper apparently had mechanical issues and had to abort flight, anyone know what the deal was with that ?

Great show, nice to see all those warbirds in action, kudos to the organizers and everyone involved.

[Steve Nelson]

Batten down the hatches everybody! There's a line of severe storms moving into southern Michigan...should hit Willow Run in a couple of hours.

SN

[WIXerGreg]

Just looked at the weather map - not good! The little storm that just came through knocked out power in my hotel twice.

[ktst97]

The little storm that just came through knocked out power in my hotel twice.

DITTO !

[chico]

Are there any webcams

Steve

Sadly, no. I've wanted to do just that every year since I started with the museum, but the logistics have just never worked out. One day.....one day.

Getting any kind of affordable bandwidth on that side of the field is just a nightmare.

[ZRoesch1]

From what I could make out on the scanner, the Dolphin wasn't able to hover. It actually made a rolling landing on 23R. Last I heard was that they were waiting on a mechanic.

[Thomas_Mac]

Weather at the show was`nt to bad at all, just a few rain drops. First time to Thunder, defiantly be back next year!

[Boeing666]

The really bad line of storms seemed to break up and stay south and north of Willow Run it seems. Although there were a couple strong little cells earlier around 7pm.

[Steve Nelson]

I'm in Battle Creek, about 75 mi. west of Willow Run, and aa mentioned earlier most of the heavy weather dissapated before getting into Michigan, although it looked like northern Indiana and Ohio got some pretty good storms.

Hope the weather is nice for the show tomorrow..looks like it's supposed to be a good bit cooler (it got up to 95 here,,I assume Willow Run was the about the same.)

The wife and I both had to work this weekend, so had to give Thunder a miss this year..we'll make up for it by visiting Fantasy of Flight later this week.

SN

[Avnut]

Another great show. The A-36 was good to see, a beauty. Too bad she didn't fly. Fifi's low level flybys were spectacular. It was good getting up close to USA Jet's DC-9 and National's DC-8. Something different to see. DC-8's are one of my favorites. My car is thankful that Ecorse is getting fixed at the 275 exit.

The only complaint, the museum should have been open to 5. I haven't seen the new building yet. I figured I would hit the museum after the show to kill some time till about 5 for traffic to thin out. I wasn't the only who one wanted to see the museum, because I saw many walk towards the entrance and find it closed. After the show, the announcer said to stay, see some of the booths and planes to allow for traffic to clear. A missed opportunity for Yankee.

[Boeing666]

I loved seeing the National DC-8 too, DC-8 is my favorite airliner and that National color scheme is one of the best out there on a DC-8. A guy on Friday during arrivals day told me the National 747-400 came in on Wednesday. If you went to the west ramp you could see a National DC-8 60 series parked (easy shot thru the fence), colors weren't as nice as the 71 thought

I found out what happened to the F-18Cs that never showed up from the west coast from a friend. Last I heard they were at Cedar Rapids Iowa. One of the F-18s when it landed found it was missing a missile rail from its wing, no idea where it came off. They canceled their flight plan to YIP after that.

[Avnut]

National's color scheme is nicely done, it works well. The blue and silver are paired nicely together. I would've loved to have seen the cockpit. Oh well. It was good seeing one up close.

Glad the pilot landed safely. Hopefully no one or no thing was hurt on the ground. It does make for one of those, "There I was..." stories.

[Boeing666]

Glad the pilot landed safely. Hopefully no one or no thing was hurt on the ground. It does make for one of those, "There I was..." stories.

Those are always great to see with that kind of ending - ie an Alert II, where the aircraft lands safely with no damage to the aircraft or passengers on board. Part of my job description is to respond to Alert IIs and just pray they don't become Alert IIIs

[mlenoch]

My best memory of ToM: a very frail gentleman in a wheelchair........he had 4 victories in P-47s, at Boxted (sp), England.
VL

[Chappie]

My best memory of ToM: a very frail gentleman in a wheelchair........he had 4 victories in P-47s, at Boxted (sp), England.
VL

Wow, you can't beat that. An older gentlemen at the local Home Depot helped my wife and find some stuff once turned out he was a 4-kill P-47/P-38 pilot in the South Pacific.


Chappie