Monday, June 22, 2009

Quad City Air Show 2009

Here are a few (actually quite a few) quick images and movies from this year's air show. I went on Sunday, which involved both getting rain poured on us and then later getting sunburned.

This was easily the most impressive part of the show for me. A stuntman who had earlier performed as a wingwalker on top of the Stearman biplane actually climbed from the plane onto the skid of the "Otto" helicopter while in midair. He tried it a few times and finally made it on his third attempt. Here's a movie of the stunt:





Instead of Shockwave the jet truck, this year we got to see a jet school bus. There was also a jet outhouse, believe it or not. The helicopter on the right was the one used in the midair transfer stunt, and was otherwise directed towards the kids. If you click on the image you can see that the canopy has a face painted on it.


Attendance wasn't too bad, considering the weather. I also heard that Saturday's show was packed. On the right is an AV8B Harrier, which hadn't flown here since one crashed in 1992.


The A-10 Warthog, and a Stearman WW2 training biplane, which was used in the midair transfer.


And of course, the Blue Angels.

Here are a couple videos of the harrier. The first one shows it flying backwards, and the second video shows the aircraft making a vertical takeoff.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Air Show was great! Saturday was packed! We'll be back but will come in from the west next time. The show grounds needs better signage and traffic control. The parking/ticket process was confusing Saturday. At one point, traffic was backed up onto 61. I know people who were waved into the lot without paying to park, and even though they had admission tickets, no one asked to see them. We helped push several cars out of the mud on the way out. Also heard folks who left after the Blue Angels were done waited an hour or more to get out of the lot.

QuadCityImages said...

It must have been a heck of a lot busier Saturday, because we just drove right down Blackhawk Trail without hitting any traffic until Slopertown Road. Of course, it was raining pretty good at the time...

I suspect that Sunday's attendance also suffered from it being Father's Day, and Ride the River. You would think that there are some people who could only go to a Sunday event, and this year they had to choose between the two, which is unfortunate.

Anonymous said...

It would take some wrangling and you may not get the official shirt, but you could do both.

It is good that there are choices of things to do on a weekend day.

Nitrous55