Even though we live 45 minutes from MacDill, we usually don't go because of where the sun is always at. But, since the Snowbirds were in town and today is my son's 9th birthday we decided to go. We are still really bummed that the Air & Sea Show was cancelled. At least MacDill changed the date to get the Snowbirds.
We decided to sit all the way on the right side of the tarmac which turned out to be a great spot to view the planes taxiing out. Got a few nice blasts of jet wash which sent people's hats and chairs flying!
The show was really good!! The F-18 demo was the best I have seen doing tail-whip rolls. The Snowbirds were fantastic with a changed up show with new maneuvers that we didn't see 2 years ago in Ft. Lauderdale. Their formation flying was exceptionally tight. The coolest maneuver was with 2 groups of planes flying toward the crowd with a single weaving in between. For North American demo teams, I now rate 1. Blue Angels 2. Snowbirds 3. Thunderbirds. We also got to meet and get autographs from all 11 pilots.
We also got to see some planes we haven't before like the beautiful Red Dragon T-33 and the formation of 3 F-104s was awesome!
And for fun, we had a family competion to see how many photos we could get with a plane intersecting the light pole across the tarmac in front of us. Jets got 2 points since they are faster. Think Jenny won with 13. I had 9.