BK1 Sun-N-Fun 2006 – A
Week Flies By
The rest of the week went by so fast but here are some
highlights. The F15 was giving a flight
demo just before the P51, F15, and F22 Heritage Flight. While watching the F15 over show center
noticed more and more people looking the opposite direction and pointing up
high and behind. Afraid to get caught in
a “caught you looking” stunt, turned around and saw what they were looking
at. The F22 was doing a little show
stealing doing cobra maneuvers, back flips, and hovers. On Friday night after the Homebuilder’s
Catfish Fry they do the night air show, a spectacular like I have never
seen. Right about dusk the AeroShell T6 team performed strobes and landing lights
ablaze looking more like a formation of UFOs than anything else. Never knew the smoke systems put out about at
15 foot flame, a real wow sight in the near dark. What followed was a series of acts using all
sorts of pyrotechnics and smoke bombs to light up the sky. The finished with a grand fireworks display,
a must see for anyone who has not been to Sun-N-Fun before. If not to be outdone, Saturday night Mother
Nature provided a natural light show, thunder and rain, that seems to be a
required element of every fly in trip.
Early Saturday morning brings the Balloon Launch, a chance
to get close to another facet of aviation I know little about. Never appreciated the amount of teamwork
needed to unpack, unfold, and inflate one of these large aircraft. Even though the surface winds were light
there were reports of bad wind shear that kept the balloons on the ground. Too bad, would have liked to have seen it,
hope that it doesn’t happen next year.
The tour this morning turned out to be a group of Chinese student pilots
and the agenda changed to going out to get a close up tour of the F22 Raptors and
talk with the pilots and crew. These
volunteer assignments can really get tough sometimes, but someone has to do it. Up close a F22 looks even more Star Wars,
kind of made the F15 sitting next to it look crude and obsolete. The runway/taxi strip where they were parked
was like a parade of classic and contemporary aircraft. Something about seeing them alive and running
adds to scene and the picture.
For some reason Sunday’s air show had a particularly wide
variety of performers. There was the
pleasant quiet of the Texas T-Cart doing a dead stick aerobatic routine and a Sukoi doing the first rolling loop I have ever seen. But for me the best was Gene Soucy’s Show Cat.
The act before his was another in a long line screaming Lycomings and I noticed many people were lying down with
their eyes closed. With the first pass and the sound of
Gene’s massive radial, the same folks were sitting up and paying
attention. Its
not just the noise, but his classic routine flown low over show center instead
of out of sight back and forth, doing in this massive agricultural plane the
most precise point rolls I have ever seen.
When you are this far away from home VFR, you start checking
for the go home weather window early.
Checking weather that afternoon it looked like Monday would provide a
clear path for a trip all the way home in one day. Somewhat reluctantly the decision was made,
we depart at dawn tomorrow.
Thank, Bruce King