CNE DAY TWO: THE AIR SHOW AND MORE

If day one of our sojourn to the CNE was all about pogo's and acrobats, this second day was concerned with man made thunder, sunlight flaring off of wings and the "oooohs and aaaahs" of people as they crane their necks towards the sky

This was another addition of the CNE International Air Show where the US would be flying no military jets due to "budget" concerns .... or something. No matter. Jets were well represented by the well known CF-18 Hornet, a perennial visitor at this air show

Jets also came in the form of some privately owned former military jets that performed demonstrations. OK most guys during their mid life crisis may dye their hair and buy a Porshe .. but a jet? Yeh, that's a crisis of a whole new level. Like the guy who brought a former Soviet jet called the L-39 Albatross to the show

I don't know a guy named Art Nails. He's a pilot, former British military. I'm not sure how old he is or what his personal story may be. But if we are judging a man's mid life crisis by the toys he buys, Art's crisis is clearly epic. Art, you see, went and bought himself a Harrier. You know, the VTOL hover and shoot your ass over jump jet .. dude owns his own freaking Harrier. Really nothing else to say

If you are indeed suffering from some feelings of male inadequacy one of the traditional ways to work past it is to find a male who may be worse off than you and challenge him to a fight. So we had a couple of dog fights, one with two Cold War era jets that billed themselves as Red Star and the Dragon; the jets were cool, the flying impressive but honestly, do we need to dredge up some tire old natinalism to increase the entertainment value?

The story of men, during their middle age crisis competing with other men to reprove their virility (yeh I said "reprove" live with it) is not just a contemporary phenonenon, it goes back a long way. With airplanes, it goes right back to the First World War, where dudes could point to their biwing with macho pride .. until they saw the German feller with his triplane. Yeh that's right, mine is bigger than yours ...

The Air Show was  not all about flexing of muscles, though Mike Wiskus has some kind of muscle to flex; he flies a biwing too, but it's a custom built overpowered acrobatic biplane that he flies with what appears to be reckless abandon ... spinning out of high stalls, doing a front somersault, straffing the surface of Lake Ontario .. but in actuality is a display of incredible skill

More skill with prop planes was displayed by the Trojan Horsemen (and yeh, half of that name can fall into the whole "show me yours and I'll show you mine analogy but let's leave that be) who fly six T-28 Trojan, a piston-engined trainer used the American military. They did some nice close quarter formation flying as well as individual maneuvers

All these planes fly fast, they all fly high and their pilots love to make them do things that seem impossible. It must be, for the passengers, a bit scary. How else would you explain their desire to jump out of a perfectly serviceable airplane

The Tutor trainer jets flown by the Snow Birds can accomodate guests but they never do so during the air show. Even if they did, I don't think anyone is jumping out of one of these planes. Even if their stunts may want you to do so

After the show we flew back to the midway .. ok, not flew, after 4 hours sitting on our bums these old bones don't exactly fly ... for one final gander around the CNE grounds. Midway lights after dark, people zipping down the zipline, sand sculptures, the clang of the midway ...


Here's the video

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.