Warsaw Indiana Rocks A Great Little Airshow! (Plus Hot Air Balloon CoolPix)
Wednesday, August 20, 2014 at 07:43AM 
(click pic for hi-res) Friday night at the Warsaw Indiana Airshow (photo: Andy Kerr)
This post is really all about having the chance to share the awesome photo above captured in my hometown by local photgrapher Andy Kerr during last weekend's Warsaw Airshow. This was the second year for an airshow at the Warsaw Airport (ASW) and even more than last year's kind-of-a-surprise success, this event was awesome with great attendance! Congratulations to the organizers, volunteers, and sponsors that made it all happen. (note: I wasn't involved in any way other than to participate) - I did however help my son-in-law with the hot air balloon tethered rides on Friday evening and the Saturday morning launch. His balloon is the one in the air in the pic above, tethered late evening rides!
(click pic to enlarge) The C-54 Candy Bomber flew several times and was open to tour
I've been living in Warsaw Indiana for almost 20 years now... it's a nice, small city of about 14,000 that has a good sized airport due in part to the city being the Orthopedic Capital with major players in the industry headquartered here. While the Warsaw Airport doesn't usually show a fun side, this Friday evening and all day Saturday it was pure passion and sport aviation central! I'm thrilled to see that this is possible right here in my backyard : )
(click pic to enlarge) Great weather Friday, and nice Saturday for airplanes & people
The big features this year were the C-54 (DC-4) Candy Bomber from Berlin Airlift Histrorical Foundation, plus Dave Folk's F-4U Corsair, along with a T-33, several T-6's, and a variety of other aircraft on display. The airshow included all the big aircraft mentioned plus a Pitts, a Chipmunk, and a Super Stearman, as well as some fun runway races between cars and airplanes, and a motorcycle racing the Chipmunk as well as doing a wingtip handshake with it! There were also lots and lots of airplane rides sold both days in Waldo Wright's New Standard 4-pax biplane, along with helicopter rides, hot air balloon rides and some local 172 rides. I was very pleased to see how much business they were all doing! Great food and both live and recorded music gave it all a nice festival atmosphere too.
(click pic to enlarge) 4 passengers at at a time! 1931 New Standard biplane
None of the activities were ground-breaking... but for Warsaw Indiana it was all very impressive and very well done. The goal was for 10,000 people in overall attendance and it would seem to me there were at least that many on hand between Friday and Saturday. The big news to me is how the local community seems very interested in all this. It's a great sign to me that this town could be very sport aviation oriented if given better opportunities, and I've got some ideas to that point that I'm contemplating. I was also thrilled to see so many of the locals brought their kids with them, and the kids seemed interested in all the avgeekery. It's another good sign for future fun flying ideas that might arise in this town : )
Well done Warsaw!
(click pic to enlarge) A beautiful J-3 Cub will always attract attention!
(click pic to enlarge) Now, and then... locally based 2-seat RV-12 and 2-seat T-Craft
(click pic to enlarge) This Enstrom helicopter was quite busy selling rides
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Reader Comments (6)
Don't forget the F-100 fly bys! The sound of it punching the afterburner launched me two feet into the air! Great airshow for a little town, and I, too, loved the little pristine Cub.
Michael- Wow! I missed the F-100... I was only able to be out there for part of the day since I had some work to do. That's another impressive addition to day's activities, thanx for sharing : )
Love the picture of your son-in-law doing the balloon glow. We just got back from taking our balloon to a competition in Kentucky, and during the weekend I probably looked like a tourist snapping so many shots of everything, but it's just still exciting after being involved with balloons for 20 years.
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