The flying circus airshow

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Giving mom a breather
Location: The flying circus air show

So we are heading out again. Just Emma and dad. I had heard about the flying circus air show several times. But as far as the family goes nobody had ever been there because... well it's in Bealton... or well in the middle of nowhere so how fun can it be...

Anyway it was hot air balloon weekend (not that we saw them all since you can only launch them early morning/evening). But we did finally see the air show...

What better way to start an air show with planes from WWII than this:



And given the location (US) a parachute jump bringing in the flag :-) Emma got very excited to see him landing.



Just before the show is starting up the planes are lined up along the fence (ohh yeah you can actually go way up close and see the planes before and after the show and even get a ride in one if you want to...).



Here the planes are taking off. It's pretty cool and it gets even better (well according to Emma). They are not too loud and do pretty cool tricks... yep there you have it from a four year old (the loud ones are the jets we saw at the air show at Andrews Air force base)



Despite not seeing a sea of hot air balloons we did see a different kind of balloon. Smaller ones that is... Basically the raise balloons in the air and the planes have to pop them... with the propeller on the plane that is... Sounds easy right... but those things move in the wind and it can be a bit bumpy that close to ground.



Here is a couple of fly by shots. yeah I kind of like these planes. Much better chance of getting a good shot of them ;-)



Bombing the red baron running around the landing strip.



Here is another feature I haven't seen before. One plane fly up way high and drops a roll of paper towel. While it's descending the pilot has to cut up the paper towel as many times as possible. Kind of like an extremely close dogfight...



A little twist ;-)



In the old days where the distances were big and transportation kind of slow. Mail was picked up from remote locations by plane. Not only were it picked up by plane but they sometimes couldn't land. So instead the mail bag was tied to a piece of rope which would be raised up into the air and the postal plane would catch the mail bag using a hook (kind of sounds like a computer game but ... it's for real).



The next one was really cool. Well as long as I am not the one in the plane that is... What happens when you are in a single engine plane and that one is shot off...
yep... no problem... just land without it...
The cool part is when you stand on the ground and can hear the wind as the plane cuts through it. As you can see in the photos the propeller isn't moving at all and it's not because of a fast shutter speed more since it's just not moving...



We didn't get to see this one in the air but it sure does look sleek and dare one say sporty ;-)



Of course we would have to get a photo with Emma posing in front of the plane. As you can see it was a pretty warm day and shortly after this photo we packed up our stuff and left for home. I was a little concerned that the wee one would get overheated. So we missed the last part of the show but we had fun.



Ohh yeah well even though it was far from good conditions for a hot air balloon they did want to please the crowd a little bit and the ReMax hot air balloon team did inflate their $48,000 custom balloon to show it off. And hey that was very cool and now I can see why they don't set them up mid day. It was hard to control. But here it is.



That is it from our visit. And I hope we will be back there before the end of the season and get the rest of the family with us since it's very nice down there for setting up you blanket and all to just have a good time :-)