Blue Angels 70th Anniversary Show

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Having done the museum and seeing the Blue Angels practice on Thursday, we couldn't wait to get back for the show. Plus now we know the right way into the Pensacola NAS. The weather on Friday was to be a bit cloudy but dry and nice temps. Being Veteran's Day going on Friday seemed to be fitting. You are permitted to bring chairs or blankets for seating but are not permitted food and drink. We can work with that.

When we approached the west gate to the NAS, the guard was just waving everybody through - no checks whatsoever. There was a big crew of personnel out directing traffic to the areas where they wanted you to park and it moved smoothly and quickly. As we grabbed our gear to head off to the tarmac, I realized I had left my big DSLR and telephoto lens back on the couch in the motor home! Fortunately I had my Sony RX100 III along. It was far from ideal for the show but would have to do.

A large portion of the airfield was open and people were setting up chairs here and there. I'm not sure there were any bad seats other than we were not right next to the working runway, so we didn't get good views of takeoffs or landings.

The announcer was a very animated person and did a great job of explaining what was going on. Occasionally he would cut to the pilot's communication channel and have discussions with them while in flight. There were probably half a dozen "acts" before the Blue Angels took to the sky. There were a few solo planes doing tricks. One was a glider, well a glider with a jet engine strapped onto it. The engine was used to get to altitude without the typical tow plane requirement. Then the engine was put in idle and the guy did his thing to soothing music over the PA system. Then he cranked up the engine and did more aggressive stunts with more upbeat music.

Glider with Jet Engine

Planes Flew a Heart

There were a couple solo jet routines that did some impressive stunts and we were glad Chris had bought the 50¢ earplugs.

One of Two Single Jets - After Burner Glowing

Jet Fly By

The four planes from the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team were very impressive.  They seemed to have much better smoke than the earlier planes that helped make their stunts more visible against the gray skies. However with all the low flying they did over us, the whole tarmac was engulfed with the smoke by the time they landed. It was at this point the announcer explained the smoke was completely safe.  That was a relief.

The Beauty Pass

The 6 Blue Angels did about an hour long show. It was very helpful to have the announcer explain what they were doing and more importantly, where they would be coming from since they often got out of range for both sight and sound. This made it much better than the practice session we caught yesterday.

Ominous Sky and Some of the Crowd

Close Formation Fly By

Blue Angels Flying a Formation

Impressive Flying

After the show was over, most people started to head back to their cars, but we decided to walk the grounds and see some of the aircraft and displays scattered around the tarmac. It was at this point, heading mainly against the crowd of people, that the estimated crowd approaching 100,000 seemed plausible even though we never felt cramped during the show.

Spanky

Happy Jack's Go Buggy

There was a freestyle motocross team doing acrobatic jumps that we stopped to enjoy. All we can say is these guys are crazy! After they were done and we managed to get close enough to actually see the ramps they were using, I'm not positive "crazy" is a strong enough term to use.

Hang On!

We decided to head out before the nighttime show started since we were pretty tired and wanted better food than the vendors were selling. In hindsight, maybe I should have tried a jalapeño corn dog and stayed for the planes and fireworks.