Up In The Airfest 2010-Part 1

I guess it's time to start sharing some of my pictures from Macdill Airfest 2010 with you. As some of you may remember, Airfest is an open house & airshow at Macdill Air Force Base here in Tampa, Florida. Almost every year, they throw open the normally secure gates of this base and let in 100,000 curious folks per day for a weekend of airplane fun. Since I've been going to this, they've always opened the show with a jump from some paratroopers, usually the SOCOM Parachute Team. The playing of the National Anthem is accompanied by the first jumper and the American flag.

After the flag, seven guys jump out of a perfectly good aircraft. They spend a few seconds doing a neat little ring trick, then they spread out and slowly drift to the ground.

I think it's pretty col how the trail smoke and spin through the air, taking their time and no doubt enjoying the view.

This was the first member of the group to make it to the ground.

Two of the seven you saw making the ring earlier formed an arrangement where they linked together in tandem, making a sort of bi-wing configuration.

I only got good pictures of the guys close to the ground who happened to land at the end of the airfield where were standing. They stretched their landing zone all up and down the flight line so that everyone was close to someone.

I like the shots where I can catch more than one thing going on at the same time. :)

The tandem team come down on our end, so I got a good series of shots of them separating.


These guys make it look easy. If I were to do this, I'd get tangled up and die.

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, but landing where you literally land on your feet and walk away is an especially good one. And look, the Blue Angels are there behind him. I wonder if we'll see more of them later?