Airshows

Back when I lived in Bozeman, Montana, there was an airshow that came around every year and that might have been my first introduction to aviation. I remember seeing the Blue Angels flying; impressive but completely beyond my comprehension as a child how complex and difficult formation flight like that must be... well, sure, it still is! There were old bi-planes and Cubs and Warbirds, but what they looked like didn't matter to me... I was just in awe of the fact that they could fly.

Since then my interest in airshows diminished. One summer I was hired to hand out fliers for the local airshow, trudging all around town to ask shop owners and clerks for permission to tape them up in their windows. But I didn't go to that one. I wanted to fly them myself, not watch people fly them from a set of bleachers. I was never one for sitting in bleachers.

But more recently, in the last couple years, I've begun making a better connection to the aviation community. This is in part because I'm older and I can finally afford to, but also because I've started to find more ways to connect with people who share my passion, and who can share their passion with me. Largely this has been through online media, including Podcasts from pilots who broadcast their Hangar Flying discussions to the world.

I'd heard of Oshkosh and Sun 'n' Fun from my first flight instructors, but it took the vivid and compelling descriptions from my beloved internet aviation personalities to finally get my interest. I've begun to understand that it's not just airplanes, it's a whole mess of different kinds of aircraft, and that it's not just people, it's a whole lot of really nice people who share the same passion for flying that I do (and many of my friends look at me strangely for). And now, despite being on the complete wrong end of the country for these, the two biggest airshows in the world, I'm intent on getting to them soon.

And so in that spirit, I looked up what would be in my area and I discovered, lo and behold, my own familiar Camarillo Airport just happens to host EAA's biggest west-coast airshow (they claim), titled Wings over Camarillo. So I marked it on my calendar and as it approached, got some more info. At first I was disappointed by the description on their website... was this just a bunch of locals showing off their Warbirds? That's not my thing - would I drive two hours for that?

Well, I was working on Saturday so that wasn't going to be the day anyway, but I ended up going out to Camarillo on Sunday anyway to fly the R22, and so I got to catch the tail end of the festivities... and boy, was I impressed!

Right from the entrance I saw large military planes, new

helicopters, and old classics taxiing around that I hadn't expected to see. And the thing was, some of the planes I didn't think I'd care about were still really cool to walk up to in person. I found myself snapping pictures left and right with my dusty camera I'd thrown in the bag just in case. This was cool! And I was just walking around the ramp, I'd missed the show.

Yes it would have been better to have come earlier in the morning (though difficult since I worked until 5 am the night before), but I still get the feeling that I don't know what I'm missing. It's not an amusement park or circus act, and I'm not interested in it for that so it's hard to know how much I'd love walking around the place in the heat of the afternoon. But I expect there's much more waiting for me to discover, much more that I will find I love. Because it's a happy, inspiring exposition that lays it all out for you and says, "This is aviation. Come see what you like."

Already the biggest feeling I got from seeing the end of the Wings Over Camarillo airshow was that I wished I was more involved in this community. And that, it would seem, is a good first step.