I made a last minute decision to go on Wed late, managed to snag some cheap fares, well $860 return from Perth via CBR, biggest problem was accomodation. i.e. none in Mel.
Managed to snag a spare bed with an old mate there with a large US aircraft manufacturer.
Definitely International and
very professionally done by them including the Airservices, CASA and Vic and QLD Govt stands.
The locals need to spend a bit more time and money if they want to be noticed amongst the seriously good professionallly done displays.
There is a lesson to be learned by the OEMs who
didn't display aircraft in the message they sent to their prospective clients.
If it is OK for Gulfstream (the beautiful G550 & G200 big iron) Bombardier (Global Express and Lear 60), Dassault (Falcon 900), Raytheon (Horizon, 800 and King Air) and the Defense guys at Boeing (C17, B757, Defender), EADS, BAE, etc etc a dozen assorted military helicopter, to bring their big iron stuff for us to clamber over and gawk at why not for them.
The latest Diamond, Cirrus, Airvan and many new GA types and so on.
Old home week really, caught up with many old OEM and Regulatory friends and made a whole bunch of new ones. Wall to wall uniforms, including PRC, Korea, Indon, Vietnam, Tom Clanct would have had a ball.
Well done. so far.
Flying Display ??
The trade day Thurs was either not enough aircraft or too spread out. 5-10 minutes at a time with nothing happening in front of the crowd is really boring.
Worse on Friday with the night spectacular running late with some of the displays running twice as long as they needed.
There were some seriously spectacular displays, Jurgy the Lithuanian and seriously mad aerobatic guy rewriting the laws of Physics in his 400 HP Sukhoi Unlimited was worth the whole $860 the F15-16-18 and C17 were a bonus and my fave of all time the F111 never disappoints.
I could have sworn the F111 guys were younger than my children.
Overall great show but needed IMHO some serious tightening up of the flying display.
My 2 bob says, run the display time to the number of displays not try to fill 3 hours by stretching out what was
maybe 2 hours of display material.
How many times do you need to watch a bunch of parachuters with Aussie flags.
An ultralight thing after a thunder and lightning fast jet doesn't do the former justice.
I've seen much better with much less spectacular equipment.
The ingredients were there but Mr Barnum was on holidays.