The 2011 Rockford AirFest was held the first weekend in June. This year’s theme was “Celebrating 100 Years of Naval Aviation” A subject near and dear to my heart. Unfortunately, due to a little incident, the Blue Angels had to cancel and go into a safety stand-down. But as they say; “on with the show”
One of the highlights of the airshow for me was getting to see Sean Tucker fly again. I’m not sure what I like more, the skill of his flying or the beautiful little biplane he flies. The Oracle Challenger III is a fairly new plane for him, but very similar in color and size to some of his past aircraft. I was particularly happy that I was able to capture a perfectly focused image of him passing through one of his target gates during the show. I missed it a couple of years ago.
The brand new Heavy Metal Air Team was able to fill in on Sunday only. This team put on an outstanding show flying the L-39 Albatros adorned in an Arctic camouflage paint scheme.
I spent eight hours out on the tarmac Sunday photographing both static displays and the airshow. All told, I made 1400 images. These are just two images that initially caught my eye. I still have a lot of editing and post-production to do yet. When all done, I will put a link here for a slide show of all my good images.