C.N.E. AIR SHOW 2011

Another year, another Air Show. Traditionally, the Canadian National Exhibition marks the end of summer here in Toronto so my question is ... where the hell did the summer go? Well, some of it went to Iceland and took us along for the ride.

This year we only had one day to go the Ex and of course we picked one of the days of the Air Show. Now that is a good four hours right there and it was the last day of the Ex with everything closing down at 9 pm; after the show we had time to play a couple of days (and win Terra a new toy) buy a John Wayne coffee mug and hit the Food Building. But of course the Air Show was the star of the day.

It was grey and quite cool down by the water but I had to say, it was one of the better shows we've seen in recent years. There was a good variety of aircraft including not seen before at the show. One of these was the Osprey, a US prop driven VTOL aircraft; a combination of plane and helicopter that can change its orientation on the fly ... so to speak.

It was quite impressive to watch the engines literally change their position while the machine was in flight.

Mostly the Air Show is about airplanes but sometimes it's about what falls out of airplanes ... in this case a group of lady skyjumpers from the U.S. called the Misty Blues

Skydivers as a rule are pretty brave people. These women were brave to the point of being heroic: they voluntarily landed in Lake Ontario. Yes, you know I'm going to say it, they made quite a splash.

There were of course several aerobatic flyers, zipping around the sky in their custom made propellor planes, doing their best to stop our hearts with stunts like flying with their wing tips just over the lake or stalling their planes and letting them tumble down the sky just before kicking their power back in.

I do love watching these little prop planes flip and spin and dive, their powerful engines screaming, their pilots working stick and rudder much like their barnstorming "forefathers" from decades ago.

The Air Show is always a combination of commercial and military planes, of props and jets and this year was no exception. The U.S. Marines brought the A-10, a war jet specializing in ground defence, not the most attractive plane one will ever see but a purpose built pugnacious aircraft that has a special place in my heart. After all, it's called the Wart Hog ..

Our own Canadian forces were not be outdone was they showed off their own CF-18 Hornet. I am not one of those guys who jump up and down and clench my fists and scream "Make it loud" at the prospect of a jet flying over but there is something to be said of the sound of the Hornet, a deep profound rumble that you can feel in your bones

Something new to the show this year was a recently formed "civilian" jet team called Heavy Metal. They flew four L-39 Albotroses and a vintage looking MiG 17 all painted in eye catching Arctic camo paint

Of course, it would not be an Air Show without the Snow Birds. As always, they closed out the show. Weather had been spotty for most of the show days and our day they ended the Snow Birds performance a bit early, citing low ceiling ... this could be true of course but the team was delayed by some kind of complication with a plane and I think this transmitted to the end of the show. Still, it's the Snow Bird folks and you have to love them.

No, really you have to love them ... or CISIS will come looking for you ... of course what are the chances they'll actually find you.

So those are Collette's pics from the Air Show, my video is below. Still can't seem to embed a Hi Def video here so if you care to see the hi rez version please click here: CNE Air Show

CNE 2010 PART 2: THE AIR SHOW

We love air shows. But we all acknowledge that there is a certain amount of danger inherent in air show performances, with pilots pushing their super charged machines to the edge for our enjoyment

However at this year's air show at the CNE, the biggest danger was whether or not the planes could fly at all. Apparently some grumpy fellow called Earl was throwing a meteorological hissy feet on the east coast and we were feeling the effects here. The show usually runs Saturday, Sunday and Monday; they had to cancel the Saturday show for high winds

That left us with the decision whether to to go Sunday or Monday. The voodoo shamen witchdoctors who create weather reports were telling us that Monday would be the better of the two days. Sunday turned out to be pretty reasonable, the winds had died down and it was mostly sunny

But Monday was supposed to be even better, sunny and mid 20's Celsius. Well apparently the weather juju men hadn't been sacrificing to the right gods. Monday started out cool and very rainy. I really thought they were going to cancel the show entirely. Luckily, most of these pilots are a hearty lot and thankfully, seeing as this was the last show of the year, it was on

When I say that most of the planes came out to play, we did not see any of the big American fighter jets, like the F-16 Viper and F-22 Raptor, although they were scheduled to do so. But I guess our Canadian pilots are more macho or something, because a pair of CF-18 Hornets showed up ..

.. and a CT-114 Tudor along with a WWII Corsair as part of the Heritage fly by ..

... and of course, the Snow Birds flew, I guess this proves that Canadians really do handle inclement weather better .. or something

An although I do enjoy watching, and hearing, the jets fly, I love watching some vintage warbirds as well. We got the aforementioned Corsair ..

This WWII fighter plane was modelled after the Corsair flown in the Pacific theatre by Lt Hampton Gray, who was awarded the last Victoria Cross of the war for sacrificing his airplane and himself to destroy a Japanese battleship. The show also included WWII planes like this B-25 bomber ...

.. and of course the Harvards showed up, the planes used to train Canadian pilots in WW II. I love these planes, big clumsy things never designed as fighters but the pilots at the show display remarkable skill and dexterity as they pull them through several impressive tricks. And I love that full throated whine of their big radial engines which you will hear in the video.

My favorite part of the air show, however, has always been the aerobatic performers. This year, due to the lack of scheduled performers, we had two flyers who gave us extra long shows.

Rob Holland flies a single wing MX2 custom air show plane, and as you'll see in the video, puts on an energetic, skillful, rather breath taking show

Equally breath taking was Mike Wiskus in his souped up little biplane

The vintage look of this guy's plane certainly suits him, he is very much in the tradition of an old fashioned barn stormer. Boating is one of his hobbies and he seems to like combining that with his flying, the guy just loved to get that biplane down on the deck and buzz the police boats that patrol show center

Of course, the air show would not be the air show without the Snow Birds

We've seen the Snow Birds dozens of times probably but I never tire of them. Their little Tudor jets don't give them the awe and thunder of some other military flying teams but that's a kind of benefit; it makes them concentrate on precision team flying which is always amazing to see

The ability of these pilots to keep these tight formations, wing tip to wing tip, or to fly within yards of each other at hundreds of miles per hour never fails to impress

So weather notwithstanding, we had another totally enjoyable air show. Low skies perhaps, some rain, but the crowds were there, the planes were there, and Lake Ontario seemed to vibrate with the sound of motors and wings.

Enjoy the video

CNE Air Show 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

C.N.E: SUMMER'S LAST GASP

Jump in the wayback (though it will be a short trip) to the last weekend of August. Collette and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Canadian National Exhibition, or the C.N.E

This is always a must for us. We usually go for a couple of days, enjoying summer's last gasp as it were. Usually one day is pretty much occupied with the Air Show. It's always worth seeing, a good four hours, all kinds of planes. This year featured the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels ariel demonstration team, the first time they've been to the CNE in about twenty years.

I've never seen the Angels fly, so it was a treat. We're big fan of the Snow Bird's, Canada's demo team and the Angels routine was a lot like that .. only way faster.

You have to admire the skill of the pilots, hurtling these jets around the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, passing so close to one another that you'd swear that they can count each other's blackheads.

I know that these planes are flying guns, but watching the demo, these skilled pilots made these huge, roaring, complex machines into something graceful and perhaps even organic.

So, that's the Blue Angels .. cool, cool. I liked watching these planes, there is a beauty to their design and an undeniable skill to the pilots who fly them. Still, these jets were designed to be weapons. They are, in fact, flying guns. And that brings us to something completely different. This, is the Raptor.

This may be the scariest plane I have ever seen. The Raptor is not a flying gun, the Raptor is Flying Armageddon. This plane does things no airplane should be able to do. It hovers, it floats around like a leaf, it stands on its tail and flies backwards ... all, loaded with enough firepower to turn your favorite nation (and all its peoples) into a puddle of hydrocarbons.

The young Air Force officer who did the Raptor's play by play was quite enthusiastic; when he went on about how the Raptor was the deadliest single thing ever conceived or created by man or any other creature, I swear I could hear him drool. The Raptor is an amazing thing to watch fly, it really is, but I just can't help get a little queasy watching it, and realizing that if the pilot decided he hated Canada, he could have wiped out my city in the blink of an eye. Yup. Scary.

But the C.N.E. is not all about supersonic jets and world-destroying potential. It is, after all, a fair. A big ass fair, but a fair nonetheless. Like most fairs in North America, this one started off as an agricultural exhibition. You can still find those roots in the horse shows and Farm building .. though it ain't no barn. It's a sparkling clean convention hall. With critters. Here's a pic of sheep; this is for my two dogs. This is basically border collie porn.

Besides critters, another thing fairs are known for, are "attractions" The one thing the Ex has been doing in the last few years is bringing back some of the old fashioned carnival attractions. Last year (they returned this year as well) they brought in an escape artist. This year, they brought in a stunt man and his "wheel of thrills"

So what this is, is a huge wheel on the end of a gigantic lever, that when pushed, swings him 60 feet up in the air. The wheel itself spins, and homeboy tosses himself around on it.

The guy was a true showman, wobbling and gasping and making us feel that at any minute he could plunge to the earth. I think that most of this was artifice. But hey, the man was 60 feet in the air, no net, no air mattress.

OK, so we have airplanes, sheep, guys jumping on big ass wheels, what else does the CNE have? Well, food of course, but we don't have pics nor video of that. But it does have shopping. We like the International Pavilion, with booths representing countries from all over the world.

The Canadian Armed Forces had a display as well, lots of hardware and shiny guns and big broad shouldered guys in uniforms.

They had a pretty cool mountain rescue demo where they rigged lines about 80 feet up and traversed a stretcher with attendant down it, as well as a suspicious flying polar bear.

The other attraction we saw, was this cool portable wave machine, that you could pay 25 bucks to ride on with surf boards or wake boards.. or perhaps try to ride is a more apt description. Luckily, they brought a couple of pro riders to give us an idea of what you can actually do on the wave. Check out the video for their demo.

Before we get to the video, I want to comment on the pics here. Collette took them. Collette takes the majority of the pics that appear on this blog and I don't often credit her for them. You want to see weak ass pics, check out this post with myself as the photographer. All the good pics Collette takes and they definitely improve whatever sad quality this blog may have.

Now to the video. Highlights of the Air Show, couple shots of the midway, the Canadian Forces display the wave riding machine. Hidden within, is a clue to a future gift of a special friend of ours. A couple of songs here, including Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits, appropriate to the subject matter and a nice reminder of the Making Movies CD, one of my favorite recordings of all time, and something I haven't listened to in years.

CNE 2009 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.