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December 15, 2003
After Saturday's cold and Sunday's rain we were very ready for some good weather today, and boy did we get it! The sky was perfectly blue without a trace of a cloud, and the wind wasn't as strong as it had been the last couple days ("only" 15-25 mph gusts according to the Weather Channel). We loaded up our tripods and cameras and found a great spot at the corner of the original memorial building to shoot footage.
This was a busy day with dozens of flybys, several military demonstrations, and an Aaron Tippin concert. The end of one of the singer's songs was immediately followed by a flyover from a pair of F-15 Strike Eagles. The sound was deafening and you could clearly see the contrails as the planes went vertical directly over the park. A ton of fighter formations followed:
F-18s:
F-14 Tomcat:
Heritage Planes - P-51, F-15, two A-10 Warthogs:
Video of four F-15 Strike Eagle formation flyby
The Coast Guard performed an excellent search and rescue demonstration with a C-130 cargo plane and a helicopter (this is for you Pavehawk!):
We ate a quick lunch between flybys (we brought sandwiches since there was no "lunch break" timeframe and we didn't want to miss anything). We kept finding ourselves scrambling to get the cameras ready every time we heard a plane coming from behind us - this was the first show I've been in where the planes were coming from multiple directions. Several flew two or three passes over the crowd, which really helped in getting "that perfect shot."
A real crowd pleaser was the tanker that flew by while mock refueling a couple planes:
An Air Force Twin Otter took off from the Wright Brothers airfield and within minutes dumped out a load of skydivers
If you look closely in this photo you can see the Twin Otter passing overhead (towards the lower left):
The skydivers all landed a short distance from the Wright Brothers Monument, which made for some nice photos and video:
One of the highlights of the afternoon was an Osprey that flew overhead with rotors in forward position then circled back and hovered over the airfield. This being the first time I had seen an Osprey in flight I was really surprised at its size - this thing is a beast! It's forward speed was quite impressive too, and it only took a few seconds for it to switch between helicopter mode and airplane mode. We got some great video of the Osprey in action, and will be posting it at some point in the near future...
While the morning had been mainly a fighter show, the afternoon was filled with helicopter and bomber flybys. A pair of B1B bombers flew in close to the deck under full afterburner then turned skyward above the field - quite impressive to say the least. It was so fast that the still photos we tried to take didn't turn out. However, I think the video was good and once we've processed the nearly 3 hours of video we captured today we'll likely be posting it for you
The other bomber definitely worth posting a picture of was the 8-engine B52:
The last flyby of the day was by Buzz Aldrin (second man to walk on the moon) in a Gulfstream G2 flying by after completing a flight from Los Angeles, California to Kitty Hawk in 3 hours 20 minutes, setting a record for the shortest time according to the announcer (?!).
Tickets for the festivities tomorrow and Wednesday have been sold out (35,000), so we're anticipating an exciting couple of days. The event narrator today told the crowd that several "surprises" were awaiting us, so we'll be finding a parking space early and keeping our cameras ready for anything they throw our way.
Until tomorrow....
Brad and Jon
Kitty Hawk
so I couldn't download the video. But I don't have the thing you need to download it so I could only listen it. I'll have to get that later on tonight 
Very nice job guys.
