Canadian International Air Show 2012 - Year of the Harvard

[rcaf_100]

Hi guys,

Thought you might like to see some of my shots from Labour Day Weekend.
I was fortunate enough to be the ground crew for four of the seven Harvards featured at this year's Canadian International Air Show in Toronto.
A lot of people (including some of the organizers) are unofficially referring to this year's show as 'The Year of the Harvard' as those noisy yellow beauties wowed the crowds for almost a solid hour.

Acts included:
CT-133/Harvard RCN Heritage Flight (with the Jet Aircraft Museum's 'Mako Shark' Silver Star and Dave Hewitt's RCN Harvard IIB 3039)
Harvard/Texan II Heritage Flight (with CHAA's AJ583 and Hawker Beechcraft's T-6C demonstrator N3000B)
CHAA 4-ship formation
CHAA/CHAT 7-ship formation
CHAT 3-ship aerobatics

Anyways, on to the photos:

My view of the show.
Show center was west of Ontario Place (seen in the foreground) so not much could be seen from the City Center (Toronto Island) Airport.


Since there was insufficient ramp space to keep us overnight at the Island, we had to fly to and from the Island each day out of Pearson International Airport.
This allowed for some great air-to-air photo opportunities!

On Saturday morning we were privileged to have Lieutenant-General André Deschamps, Chief of the Air Staff (ie commanding officer of the Royal Canadian Air Force) fly with us. Here he is in AJ583 over Pearson:


Leaving the Island Saturday afternoon:

(the building in the background is the original 1939 terminal/tower, which was recently moved to that spot to make room for a pedestrian tunnel project)
















Late Sunday afternoon we were asked for a smoke pass by Pearson tower....and boy did they ever get a smoke pass!
When we were finished, Canada's busiest airport was temporarily IFR...



Departing for home on Monday afternoon:


BANDITS SIX O'CLOCK!




Final farewell pass:


Overhead break over Tillsonburg:


More photos here:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.101521002
26685503.911537.546635502&type=1&l=4dbc2f45d8
(copy and paste the whole link into the address bar...this keeps the bots outta my Facebook page)
The link should work even if you don't have Facebook.

[daveymac82c]

Thank you for sharing all of those pictures! They are spectacular!

Peace,

David

[rcaf_100]

Here's a link to Eric's photos that include air-to-air of the Harvard/Texan II Heritage flight and the view from the ground of our Sunday smoke pass at Pearson:
http://www.airic.ca/html/2012cias.html

[Dave Hadfield]

Wow! Those are terrific.

Dave