Did you get your money’s worth at AirFest 2009?

22 comments August 24th, 2009

So, a good time was had by many on Saturday and Sunday at Chicago Rockford International Airport, according to accounts of Rockford AirFest 2009 goers, me and my family members included.

We went Sunday but didn’t stay for the headlining F-22 Raptors performance. Even with all the kids’ activities — Lego-building tents and inflatable slides among them — it was hard for us to keep an antsy 6-year-old entertained for more than four hours.

But we liked what we saw in the air. The wingwalker, plane after plane twirling and diving nose-first, a fighter zooming by seconds ahead of its sound. The lines to get in to a jet on the ground to check it out were too long for us about 2:30 p.m. So we ditched doing that.

(SCOTT MORGAN | ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR
Vapor trails form as an F/A-18C Hornet performs a tight turn Saturday during AirFest 2009 at the Chicago Rockford International Airport in Rockford.)

We got onto the airport grounds fairly quickly about 11 a.m. , and only spent maybe 10 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We came as directed from from South Main Street. I heard stories of traffic troubles from other routes.

With 160,000 people attending the two-day air show, there are bound to be things that those who attended would like to be changed for next year. Please share those thoughts here in the comments section.

But I do have one question I’d like you to answer:

I remember the time acrobatic pilot Dacy of Harvard took me flying

Add comment July 15th, 2009

This story today about the final lineup for the Rockford AirFest reminded me of the time Dave Dacy took me up in an open-cockpit plane. Dacy of Harvard and his Wing Walkers are part of the show.

It was maybe 15 years ago, and I lived in Harvard. I was using my Nikon camera with a long lens to take pictures of  cornfields from Hebron to Lake Geneva, Wis. My then-husband was thinking about getting cheaper electricity from Wisconsin to fuel a plant he worked at in Hebron, and he wanted aerials of the landscape.

Well, I’d eaten pizza an hour or so before. And the motion of the zooming in and out of the lens and Dacy banking to this side and that so I could get better pictures did me in. Anyway, I hurled into a coat I was carrying with me. Dacy was polite and tried to make me not feel too embarrassed. But I was.

Every time I hear about Dacy and his Wingwalkers making appearances at the Rockford air show or at the one in Janesville, Wis., I get dizzy all over again just thinking about the stunts they’re pulling.

Dave Dacy and the Wingwalkers