Snow Birds 2015 Year in Review
 

Good Afternoon All:

A great video from the Snow Birds highlighting the 2015 season



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA9H_53By-k

A very nicely produced video, with some nice shots.

I saw the Snowbirds perform at the Springbank Airshow. This was the first time I had seen them for at least 15 years. The precision flying was spectacular, as I expected, but overall I was disappointed, because the maneuvering often took the team too far away. At one point, they were over Cochrane Hill which is at least three miles to the north.

I would have expected that they could have kept the displays much closer in. They certainly lost the attention of a large part of the crowd who were walking back to the car park during the display.

India Four Two, your observations in regards to the Snowbirds are right on, "Joe Public" simply doesnt understand the difference between a technically good performance and a pure entertaining show, noisy low passes { mind you, its hard to make a lot of noise with a Tutor!} and such things as making a loop recovery look close to the ground is what they want, simple to do by "getting it made" at the "Top Gate" and then letting it go lose on the way down. The bigger question is should the military be spending money on" entertaiment "given the present world situation where every buck should go towards beating the mad men trying to destroy everthing we hold dear? As for such teams being a recruiting tool, hardley required these days given the pay scales and benifits in the modern military. The days are long gone when we could put up almost unlimited number of teams from a vast number of squadrons and aircraft we had available l. Im sure such opinions are not too popular with many, but other countries have worked this out and either shut down their teams, or like NZ ,replaced them with small teams flying what are in fact GA aircraft.As I type this Im looking at a photo of 78 of us in formation flying over Ottawa, this was fun, but we wont ever see such sights in the future, a pity, but true Im afraid.

Clunck, my apologies for being a bit OT but I have occasionally wondered if we could have been doing the same thing around the same time. The 78 plane flypast settles my question.
According to my logbook it was 18 September 1960, (I hope the 18th is correct) as a Battle of Britain flypast over the Parliament buildings, CF-100s and F-86s.
If memory serves the full 78 only flew on the practice day as the weather for the actual flypast was a bit low and the flypast was done by 36 aircraft.

You're right when you say it will not likely happen again in Canada at least.

Can you tell me if the picture is your own or are there any possibilities of copies being available?

Innuendo,Give me a month or so, your request has prompted me to go into the many of boxes which havnt been unpacked since we moved in 45 years ago! {if a jobs worth doing, dont rush things!} When I find stuff I will see if it can be reproduced, but I notice that much of the material has faded badly, Kodacolor I think. Will PM you re flypast dates when I dig out my RCAF/RNZAF log books.