Hamilton Airshow

Its been 10 years since they held a full airshow at the Hamilton International Airport. I remember going to one airshow there, years before, when one of the stars of the show was the relatively brand new Stealth Fighter.
The Canadian Warplane Heritage Musuem will be celebrating 40 years next year, and they plan on having a big airshow. To test out the idea, they held a small, 3 hour airshow over the Fathers Day Weekend.

There were definately some problems in running the show, the most glaring being the transportation from the parking area.

Once arriving at the parking area, you ended up in a long line of people waiting for a bus. The problem was that the buses were in the same road that the cars coming into the lot were in, so they got bogged down.

Once on the bus, they drove right to the gate of the Museum, only to drop you off again. Another line up to pay, then another line up to get into another bus, to be driven to the field! That was stupid, and I believe part of the way through they decided to allow people to walk the distance, as eventually the line thinned out, which was good since it was nearly 2, the start of the show.

Once the show began, the airshow was generally good. But as with every event I've attended at CWH, there were problems with the show. Many of the promised formation flights never happened. The ones that they did were simply just passes, not real formations. I would have loved to see both B17's flying with the Lanc, but only the b17's went up at the same time, band simply did once pass each before landing!

Some of the planes included Chuckie,





Memphis Belle (movie version)



Nine harvards,



B25,



WW1 planes



and a formation of fighters including the mustang, corsair, warhawk, spitfire and hurricaine.





Some of the static aircarft included a C-130 hercules,





a CAF rescue Griffon,





A Sea King,



as well as CWH aircraft





Here are some of the other aircraft flying saturday.

Canadian Warplane Heritage Fly Fest

The Canadian Warplane Heritage museum at the John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport has an amazing collection of both static and flying aircraft, with both prop and jet versions. They are most famous for having one of only a few flying Avro Lancaster bombers, done up to honour Pilot Officer Andrew Charles Mynarski, VC, of 419 (Moose) Squadron, 6 (RCAF) Group.







Every year they have a Fly Fest, which is a small airshow, but really an opportunity for memeber to have a flight on one of the many aircraft.

On hand were some Harvards;





A few biplane Stearmans;






Two C-47 Dakota's were onhand, with one from the Warplane museum, while the other was from the 1941 Historical Aircraft Group. Both flew in formation.













another aircraft offering rides was the Beech C-45 Expeditor;



along with the B25 Mitchell bomber;





Being towed across the airport property (followed for some reason by a Aiport Fire Truck), was the beast of a plane, the Consolidated's PBY 5A Canso. This is a very large float plane, which was used for recon.








On the grounds, many of the static aircraft were also on display. The Golden Hawks Sabre was finished with some platstic covers to replace the skin of the aircraft, giving people a view of the interior of the aircraft.



The Vintage Wings of Canada also brought along the Curtiss P-4ON Warhawk




With a wide angle lens, it may be hard to figure out what this aircraft is;



But from the side, its a very distinct, rocket like CF 104, done up in a Tiger Meet colour scheme.



In fact, its so much like a rocket that a group has converted one to attempt the land speed record for a car, the North American Eagle, a combination canadian/american team effort.