Warbird Information Exchange

I guess the Lanc has used all of its flight hours for the year and will no longer be coming to the show.

_________________
Ryan Orshinsky
Windsor, ON
CH2A - Engineering
rorshinsky@ch2a.ca
http://www.ch2a.ca

Maybe it could borrow some from FM212.

August

Seriously that is a bummer. Nobody in N. America appreciates a Lanc more than Windsorites. And a lame reason to cancel a gig, in a year when it rambled all across the country; an overdraft on its annual allocated hours might have been foreseen. Still, CWH has done so many good things lately that they might be forgiven. Especially if they send the Canso in its place.

August

That would be nice but that's going to be in Waterloo that weekend. I think what we have from them is all we're going to get. Well hopefully next year it'll be able to come.

_________________
Ryan Orshinsky
Windsor, ON
CH2A - Engineering
rorshinsky@ch2a.ca
http://www.ch2a.ca

Ahh Crap, this show seems to be not worth the 6 hours of driving now.

Oh well maybe next year

Dave C

Well, 50% of the world's flying Lysanders and Fireflies is good enough for me, even without 50% of the Lancs. But I haven't been spoiled by seeing a lot of airshows in Ontario lately.

August

Today's arrivals:
Snowbirds
CF-18
4x F-15
KC-135
MH-53
UH-1N
Rick Volker
Pete Mcleod
Mike Goulian
Jackie B
Manfred Radius
Yak-52
P-51

_________________
Ryan Orshinsky
Windsor, ON
CH2A - Engineering
rorshinsky@ch2a.ca
http://www.ch2a.ca

I attended the show on Sunday. Here are a few comments and some pics.

Saturday weather was okay, I was told. Sunday was unseasonably cool and windy, and the clouds never went away. I think it was the most sparsely attended airshow I have ever been to, certainly in Windsor. There was ample real estate available in the front row even at the height of the show. Partly because of the weather, but partly because the organizers unwisely scheduled the show opposite the popular nearby Tecumseh Corn Festival, which (according to news reports) thumped the airshow by a ratio of 4 to 1 in attendance, even comparing the 2 days of the airshow to the 1 of the corn fest.

Warbird-wise, the CWH's no-shows, the Lancaster (see putative reason above in thread), Firefly (tech), and Lysander (weather in transit) were sufficient to reduce the show from pretty interesting to basically lame. The two WWII operational airplanes on the field (CWH Mitchell and Vintage Wings Mustang) did nice displays, especially the Mitchell.

Hawk One is a nice plane, but it appeared to perform most of its solo routine on Sunday for the larger crowd at the Corn Festival some miles away. I hope they enjoyed it, because it didn't do much for the airshow crowd. The heritage stuff with the Hornet and Tutor was nice. The Snowbirds were delightful as always.

There were no warbird or non-static military acts from the United States, but unfortunately they did import announcer Rob Reider. After having our eardrums assaulted within the first half-hour by "Keep 'Em Flying," that piece of musical compost normally confined to the USAF Heritage flights, and not less than two renditions of the "It's the soldier, not the ..." doggerel that has earned ridicule even here on Wix, my party discovered that the part of the crowd line west of taxiway A had no speakers and just as good a view. So we moved, and were able to enjoy the engine noise without the benefit of Mr. Reider's insights and artistic selections, much to our delight.

I certainly hope that, economically, the show was not as much of a flop as it appeared to be, because I would love to see Windsor build up a great show again. I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit, but I recognize that you would have to be both a hardcore airshow guy and not have seen many recent Ontario shows to find much of interest there. It was great to crawl through Lancaster FM212, on which the CH2A is doing some great work, and hope they enjoyed some profit from the event.






Taken from the Lancaster.








Watching Manfred Radius while waiting to depart.













August

Thanks your input August. As you know it was the first show here in many years and it was the organizers first time ever doing a show. A lot of things are going to be changed for next year, we've learned a lot from this years show. One of the main changes though is that the show is never going to be the same weekend as Cornfest again. We had a crowd of about 25,000 over the weekend while Cornfest had over 100,000.

Hawk One wasn't out at Cornfest he actually had to go hold over the lake until the SB's were up but because of the delay he came back and did his display.

With the Lanc, I found out from someone that they had said 2 months ago they weren't coming but for some reason they chose to keep it on the website as confirmed.

Next years dates are August 21 & 22. It's going to be bigger and better!

_________________
Ryan Orshinsky
Windsor, ON
CH2A - Engineering
rorshinsky@ch2a.ca
http://www.ch2a.ca

The show was really quite well run, considering that it was a rookie team. The concessions, toilets, parking, and traffic control were all very well thought out, smooth, and professional. Really, all you needed was a little better luck with the weather, planes to show up, and no scheduling conflict with the corn fest to make a success of it. Make sure that next year's dates don't conflict with the Leamington tomato fest or something! I would say that the show has a bright future.

Some more pics; these from slide film. Different look from the digitals I posted above.

August

I really like this one August. Looks a little like one of the post cards you buy at museum gift shops. Very nice!

Without a doubt, one of the coolest things I've ever done was getting the see the Gold Hawk Sabre fly under my C-17 at Abbotsford and break behind us. I was laying on the ramp and had my own private airshow!

_________________
Brad