Where have all the good times gone?? (Apologies to Van Halen

[corsair166b]

I was just sitting here this eve......popped in an old airshow video from my friend and videographer Ken Dawson.....maybe some of you know him....there were three airshows on the tape, Oshkosh '95, Middlesboro, KY '95 and Midland '95....could'nt BELIEVE how many of the planes and folks were no longer with us since this piece of video was shot 11 years ago...P-51 'Donald Duck' now in a museum over in England...Norm Lewis' Corsair NX240CA gone through THREE different owners and two paint schemes since then...CAF B-26 Marauder, crashed and gone.....CAF Heinkel Crashed and gone....CAF P-47 crashed and being rebuilt....Lefty's P-38, crashed, being rebuilt, and sold on...Kalamazoo Corsair (and collection) grounded and no longer flying....I could go on...so many friends who I have'nt seen in years because there are not many 'Breckenridge' style shows or gatherings any more and we just don't get together like we used to, make the pilgrimage to a mecca like Breck or Madera or any of the other 'hot' locations of the early 90's that used to draw warbird nuts from all over the country for ONE weekend of mayhem and flying and celebrating old birds.....and then later in the summer we'd convene at ANOTHER location and do it all AGAIN, because there was more than ONE place to gather and have a good time! Nowadays, it's a rare year here in Colorado when we get a major airshow, no airport wants to take on the responsibility of all those performers being in one location, paying for the insurance, setting up vendors and porta potties and concessions, and perhaps above all taking the chance that something bad could happen at their show and risking bad publicity around the country/world...
It's my impression that the 'great little warbird airshow' has gone the way of the Dodo, with possibly 2 exceptions....Midland seems to still go on thanks to the CAF, and it LOOKS to me, even tho I have never been there, like maybe Thunder over Michigan is turning into a memorable event each year....but for how long? Am I missing some good ones I don't know about? The only other one I might like to go back to these days (but it's an expensive proposition) is the Duxford show each July in England.....

Love to hear from you folks on this....

Mark

[phil65]

Sad but true,heres to the good old days

[Randy Haskin]

What about all the warbirds that ARE here currently but WERE NOT here 10 years ago?

What about all the NEW owners, pilots, mechanics, and enthusiasts that WERE not here then?

I think the warbird community is pretty dang healthy comparatively...especially given how the ownership and operations costs have gone through the roof in that same decade.

[Lynn Allen]

What about all the warbirds that ARE here currently but WERE NOT here 10 years ago?

What about all the NEW owners, pilots, mechanics, and enthusiasts that WERE not here then?

I think the warbird community is pretty dang healthy comparatively...especially given how the ownership and operations costs have gone through the roof in that same decade.

Roger that Randy, there are many new faces in the Warbird family...

Lynn

[Forgotten Field]

...but I'm having too much fun working on warbirds, flying warbirds, supporting warbirds, and chasing warbirds to stop for a wake on how it used to be.

What, you say, the warbirds community is folding? Well, let it fold if it's going to be full of people sitting on lawn chairs pissing and moaning that the warbirds community is folding. I haven't sat around waiting for somebody to fly something over my house to gawk at- I've gone out and pitched in and done the best I could to make things fly. Surprisingly, in contravention to the "dying" art of general aviation, it has worked. I have discovered why things like Gary's PBY have come to pass, why Kee Bird was trashed, why you shouldn't take a 1340 past 1500 TBO, and why other aircraft have stopped flying. In doing so, I have learned how to NOT manage my warbird, how to plan for its conservation, how to keep interest up on warbirds around my airport (and my airport is NOT small GA friendly).

Remember, when it comes down to it, all it takes is $50's and $100's, and you can be involved, too. So get out the checkbook and quit crying, because warbirds are here to stay until they stop making 100LL, and the longer you wait to play with them, the longer it's going to take you to get to where you can say,
"Yeah, I've done that..."

[Chad Veich]

There are certainly more warbirds around these days than there were just ten or fifteen years ago. Some of which I would never have thought I'd see, much less see fly. However, airshows certainly are not what they used to be. I go to Chino just about every year and even though they have more aircraft of different types the show just doesn't have the same flavor as it did back in the '80s and early/mid '90s. Good times, good times.

[RMAllnutt]

I think every generation seems to think that things are worse than they were in their own "good old days". Frankly I think every generation has a new flavor, and with respect to airshows, there are plenty of good ones to go to these days with far more variety of aircraft, and more detailed and accurate restorations. The feel may be different than ten years ago, but you'd expect that with any aspect of life. Some of the great shows out there? In no particular order...

1: Thunder Over Michigan

2: Midland

3: Geneseo

4: Flying Legends

5: Old Warden

6: MAPS

7: Reno

8: Chino

9: Oshkosh

10: Wanaka

11: Reading

12: Bealeton

13: etc.

To be honest, most of my favorite shows are the small intimate ones, where you actually get to meet and talk to many of the people and appreciate the aircraft that came... you can kind of get lost at the really big shows, and sometimes get spoiled for choice with both the aircraft in attendance, and the people who come with them. It's harder to appreciate the effort involved and beauty of a restored T-6, or an SNV when there are a stack of P-51's around, like at a big show, but when seen at a small show you can really give them the credit and time they deserve. I much prefer the pace of a small show.

Just my thoughts of course, but I bet the people who went to shows in the '50's and '60's have a similar lament for those shows in comparison to those in the 90's. I second Forgotten Fields' statements too. Ever since I became more involved with "Panchito", airshows have become far more interesting and satisfying. My advice is to get active with an aircraft support team (be it an L-4 or a B-17) if you want to get more out of airshows... it's a lot more fun on the active side of the ramp!

Cheers. Richard

[RyanShort1]

Ever since I became more involved with "Panchito", airshows have become far more interesting and satisfying. My advice is to get active with an aircraft support team (be it an L-4 or a B-17) if you want to get more out of airshows... it's a lot more fun on the active side of the ramp!

I can second that totally! After 15 or so years of attending airshows as a kid, This year I had the opportunity to wear a badge indicating that I'd brought an aircraft to the show twice... Once at Midland, and again at our local military airshow which was held this year at Lackland. It was just as good a feeling as I'd hoped it would be, I had that opportunity to talk to many veterans and other people, and really had a blast at the last show helping a lot of kids get up into the L-2's cockpit, talk to them a little about what it's like to fly a plane and what the role the L-birds played in World War Two. Even put a little spin on lessons for today on it with some of them. I really enjoyed it and felt that things had come full circle... I used to be that kid so happy to just look inside a cockpit, overjoyed to sit in one!



http://picasaweb.google.com/doolittleraiders/LacklandAFBAirfest2006

Ryan

[retroaviation]

What I want to know Ryan, is how in the heck do you cram that table, sign, and bomb in the airplane with you when you go to those airshows?

Gary

[T33driver]

Well said Richard and Forgotten Field! More folks need to get off the sidelines and get in the game, even if it's $10 in the donation jar or an occasional few hours of volunteer labor. There are a lot of folks in the warbird world besides the owner/operators and "for profit" restorers making valuable contributions. I think of all the volunteers at various CAF units, airshows and fly-ins, museums--folks that are the life-blood of those venues. One group of dedicated souls that stand out in my experience are the flightline volunteers at Oshkosh--Rhonda & company on the P-51 side, Scott and his awesome crew on the jet/T-28 side and many more that make it possible to marshall, launch and recover nearly 100 warbirds for the show. I get what some WIXers are saying as it relates to the disappearance of crowd friendly events of yesteryear and that's a good point, but there are a lot of awesome events in Richard's laundry list and then some that we can all look forward to contributing to in the near future.

[ww2John]

OK...Half Empty? Half Full?

(I know, to an engineer, in either case the glass is too big, but...)

It is amazing what happens when you ask "What can I do to help?" I don't regret for one minute the unique experiences I have enjoyed and shared with fellow volunteers, as well as veteran's, owners, pilot & mechanics, whenever I have volunteered to "help".

The biggest and most pleasant change that happened once I volunteered was that the airshows became more about the people and history and tradition than about the aircraft as "objects". Working always provides a different and more valuable experience than merely observing.

As someone once said,

"There are 3 kinds of people:

Those who make things happen.

Those who watch things happen.

Those that wonder "What Happened"?"

I work to be one of the first kind of person. What kind are you?

As far as things not being the same as they used to be...change happens. Get over it, or get on with it, or be a part of the change.

Your perspective is your choice.

[wendovertom]

Hummmm. . . . . I think (being young) I can see a bit of what Mark is saying BUT as an event organizer I beg to differ as well.

I can remember air shows that seemed to fill the ramp and sky at almost every airport all summer. Now it is much fewer and far between.

My somewhat educated guess is that insurance, fuel and cost of maintaining a vintage bird prohibit owners from saying "hey, lets go!" at the drop of a hat. I would love to get a corsair and 3 or 4 mustangs back out to wendover (we had air races in the mid 80's here) but the cost is simply (beg pardon for the pun) sky high. Interested in somehting unique we checked on the having Bob's Super Corsair come out and the 10K+ price tag just isn't within our reach. Now that is a rare bird but many other similar planes are in the ball park. I really need to convince a T-6 owners group to have a fly in the same weekend as our show - then I could work a mutually beneficial deal out and have happy pilots and happy crowd - note to you T-6 owners - those radials are loud and the crowd loves 'em!

Getting involved is important as it helps drive the cost of putting an event on for both the organizer (I know) and the owner (I assume). Our little show in Wendover is a lot of work but also a lot of fun. It is smaller so that people can mingle around and really get up close to the planes and interact. This year even with the F-16 Demo team the people could still have an almost "reach out and touch it" experience with the fighter and then the crew and pilot come over ans hand out AF goodies and shake hands.

ok - so I'll be quiet now.

Tom P.
Historic Wendover Airfield Museum

[RickH]

The F-4 is not a cheap aircraft to bring to an airshow. Recognizing that, we prefer to be parked where the airshow crowd can see the crew doing their preflight, what it takes to launch an F-4 as well as recover after the demo. The airshow gets about 45 min to 1 hour of total activity involving the aircrfat as well as a flying demo. Unfortunately most shows don't recognize that we are trying to maximize their bang for their buck.

[Obergrafeter]

Ryan, did you get a work out on that GPS going from Cannon Field to Kelly. Hope the batteries stayed charge. Maybe you were one of the kids I talked to when we took the L-birds over to Kelly years ago. (But we did it without GPS) Good seeing you out there. Keep flying safe.

[k5083]

I think some of you guys are missing Mark's point. He wasn't saying there are less warbirds or the warbird community is folding or inviting inane truisms about making things happen, he was observing that a certain TYPE of warbird gathering -- the informal, casual, guys coming over to hang out type of meet/airshow -- has just about disappeared and he was correct. Few, if any, of the airshows that others have proposed in response are what I think Mike was talking about. Now, I'm an outsider to the warbird community but I am old enough to have been a spectator at what Mike was talking about so I will try to characterize it more fully.

From my outsider's perspective, the way it used to seem to work was like this. You had a bunch of warbird owners who happened to have money and time to burn. And a fun way to burn it was to meet at the home airport of one of their number and stage a not quite impromptu, but certainly not very orchestrated airshow, have a great time, and show off the planes to the locals. It might be nice if a sponsor or the host provided fuel but nobody worried about covering their expenses overly much. A few weeks later they'd head to someone else's home field and do it again. You could be a member of this club if you had a nice warbird, a lot of money and time, and played well with others. In the 1970s and 1980s there were dozens of such shows. The bigger ones got to be famous (in part because Air Classics paid the price of entry into the club, bought a B-25 and a Tora Zeke, and covered a lot of them.) There no longer are any.

What has happened? (1) Warbird owners have changed. Some warbirds are certainly still owned by the idle rich, but more and more are in the hands of air museums and other organizations with boards and committees that take a dim view of literally burning money on these kinds of jaunts. Most of these collections originated as the personal holdings of one or a few individuals and sometimes that individual is still nominally at the helm of the collection but the aircraft are not operated with the disregard for economics that the founder used to have. (2) Airshows have become much more of a business, concerned with generating revenue, selling concessions, covering their insurance costs, etc. There are probably any number of individual warbird owners nowadays who would stage one of the old-time casual airshows at their home field if it were still as easy as it used to be, but there seem to be too many barriers, risks and expenses now to make it worthwhile. I recall watching year by year as the type of airshow that Mark is talking about slowly dropped off the calendar one by one, or else morphed into what Midland, Thunder, Reading, etc. are today, which are fine airshows but of a new and different kind, having adapted to the new environment.

So Mark, my thought is, I recall those shows, and I treasure the memories of a few of them, but they are not coming back and I guess there is no sense moaning about it. It seems to me that the fly-ins like Oshkosh and Sun 'n' Fun come closest to the old spirit, and you do see some aircraft and operators there that show up nowhere else, but generally we are stuck with a much more rationalized kind of airshow from here on -- and even those sometimes seem to be an endangered species. Luckily those shows are pretty darn good in their own way.

August