2015 Rhode Island Air Show
North Kingstown Rhode Island was celebrating its 25th Anniversary of hosting at Quonset State airport. This is one of the premier shows in the North East not only for its line up, but also the lighting and how close the taxiway and runway is to the show line.
The weather Gods were very nice to us on Fri and Sat, beautiful blue skies and warm temps were so much better than the hazy/cloudy skies we had just 2 weeks again in Westover MA. This air show was loaded with 3 main demo teams and two of them not being from the US military.
Since there was no jump team this year Sean Tucker opened the show with a nice teaser, Sean is always a stable at the New England air shows. C-130J’s from the 143rd AW at Quonset and 3 UH-60’s did a small demo. It wasn’t the Combined Arms that we used to be blown away with, but it was a nice show of local power.
Next up was a first for me, Ace Maker is a T-33 flown by Gregory Coyler. What’s so cool is this plane has been sitting at my local airport, Pease International, for years and is now flying air shows. Another new act I’ve never seen was the Breitling Jet Team. This 6 ship team of L-39’s is from Europe but is on its American tour.
The Geico Skytypers went up next in their T-6 Texan’s performing WWII maneuvers to help them evade enemies in the sky. Mark Murphy took off next in this P-51 Mustang “Never Miss” followed by the Canadian Snowbirds. Even though I just saw the Snowbirds 2 weeks ago in Westover, the show at Rhode Island was so much nice because they were able to perform closer to the crowd line.
John Klatt went up next followed by The Screamin’ Sasquatch Jet Waco flown by Jeff Boerboon. It’s still difficult to get used to hearing a jet engine under a prop biplane. Up next was one of two passes made by Les Shockley’s Jet truck. You can feel the percussion when he’s pumping the fuel in 100 ft away from you.
The F-16 Demo is back this year and Rhode Island was luckily enough to also get this act. This year’s pilot is Capt. Craig “Rocket” Baker. After his afterburner loaded demo, he was joined up with a P-51 Mustang for the Heritage Flight. What was so special about this is that John Klatt took off with a WWII vet who was there at Normandy. They were able to watch the Viper and Heritage show from high above.
Sean Tucker went back up for this full show followed by the CF-18 Demo; the CF-18’s paint scheme was to Battle of Britain 75th Anniversary paint scheme. This is just a gorgeous air craft to shoot in blue skies.
Fat Albert and the Blue Angels closed out the day to a perfect show. You couldn’t ask for a better day.
I would like to thank the PAO of the 143rd AW for their generous hospitality, they added a media pit to show north which was perfect for viewing.