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What a weekend! The weather held for the entire
Friday, Saturday and Sunday event but it was HOT and windy. In a
nutshell, many of our club members arrived Thursday or Friday and began to
setup their fantastic displays. Our club represented WWII, Korea and
Vietnam in what was probably the best display of period correct uniform,
equipment and vehicles done so far in Central Texas. To add to our
club efforts, people came in from Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and further
to set up their displays as well. Both allied and axis powers were
very well represented by static displays.
Friday evenings show was interesting. The gates opened up and the
spectators mingled in and out of the static aircraft displays and vehicle
displays located on the North end of the runway. A few planes took
off and did a small show of sorts. There was a plane that had
pyrotechnics from the wings after the sun went down. There was also
a good display of fireworks and then the infamous "Wall of Fire"
put on by the Blastards. This is a truly amazing sight where
approximately 1500 feet of jet aviation fuel mixed with diesel fuel puts
up literally a wall of flame you can feel some 2500 feet away.
Saturday the crowds began to pour into the static vehicle and aircraft
displays in record numbers. When the show started, the spectators
remained on the runway side of the taxi way for the show and from what we
saw, it was a large number of airplanes. The show started out with
the usual format of Tora Tora Tora followed by the allied forces ramping
up in the trainers of WWII including the bi-planes, and T6's. It was
at this point one of the Boeing PT-17's was taking off and had an engine
malfunction not allowing maximum power. It made it off the runway
and gained a bit of altitude (40') then veered away from the runway and
over a house where it lost all power and fell into a front yard of a
home. The pilot and copilot were injured slightly and the plane was
pretty beat up. It landed in the trees of the front yard and simply
let itself down to the ground and into the homes garage. No injuries
were reported from the home as it was empty at the time. This put a
damper on the show as the fire/rescue trucks were dispatched and an
overall delay of about 2 hours. By the time the show started back
up, a significant number of spectators had left.
The show continued but on a limited scale. The planes continued
their format of ramping up the trainers and into the bombers. A
Vietnam re-enactment was scheduled but was cancelled due to time
restraints. The WWII re-enactment was held in spite of the
accident. The F15 demonstration was always welcome.
Sunday was about the same. Very hot and very windy. The
crowds appeared a bit less then Saturday and they seemed to arrive a bit
later. This time however, the FAA mandated all spectators be behind
the rope barriers on the far side of the taxi-way. At this time,
most of us took the liberty to start disassembling our static
displays. The show followed the same format as Saturday but in it's
expanded/original format. The WWII re-enactments were very good as
was the Vietnam re-enactment. A few glitches were had on both but it
was a good display anyway. The B2 bomber was magnificent to
see. At the conclusion of the airshow, most everyone had packed up
and was ready to leave.
To give you an idea of who and what was there from the club, we counted
the following:
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