Well, not today, but did it for 16 years for 4 or 5 days each at the KidVenture venue and got those and countless more. We had those and F-15, F-22, F-4, F-86, B-17, B-24, B-29, P-47 and A-10 Thunderbolts, Wildcats, Hellcats, Tigercats,C-130. C-17, antiques too numerous to mention, helicopters to really stir up the air to keep you on your toes, tri-motors and triplanes to Tri-Stars. Even got to see Jack Roush stall out on an approach and prang his nice business jet, then got his autograph out in the warbird section the next day. All you gotta do to get in on that fun is put your name in and volunteer for a shift each day. The circles are open for our use in the evening each day and there is nothing else going on, but when the had the museum open in the evenings until 9 it was a tough call! Easy to spend several days in there.
Was flying at Buder Park on Thursday, and they have a new approach to Scott Air Force Base over in Illinois near Belleville, IL that lines up with the Park now, and we had Blackhawks, a V-22 Osprey, and some others that didn't get close enough for my old eyeballs to make out, but one was a Pilatus PC-9 Texan-2 I think. I live within smelling distance of Lambert Field here in St. Louis. When traffic used to get busy like it did before all the cut backs, and the wind was out of the south, I could smell jet fuel at my house. Boeing (McDonnel-Douglas, or Mac, to us long time residents) has the F-15 lines cranked up again and turning out the new F-15s and the F-18 Super Hornets pretty regularly. The way they have the new manufacturing building situated, they have a runway right next door that used to be a taxi way. They test fly the jets in bare metal and it's neat to see those now and then, and the test again after paint. The F-15's are being made for our Air Force and for the middle eastern country Quatar. Boeing has a couple of A-4 Skyhawks that they use for chase and pace and one of those can be seen following a test F-15 on final in my area..
My memory goes back to the Demon and Voodoo days at McDonnell. I was at a bar in Kansas City one evening after an airshow that Chis McMillin and myself went to, and was wearing a T-shirt with an F-4E Wild Weasel on the front. In the dim bar with black lights on it sort of looked like it was jumping off the shirt!. One of the race pilots was there, C.J. Stevens, and he told me he liked my shirt, (he's an old F-4 driver) and he asked me if I knew what airplane that was, and I informed him I most certainly did. Then he asked, "Have you even seen one of those airplanes, son?" And I answered, "Just about everyone they ever made!!" After he put his eyeballs back in, I explained that I have lived in the shadow of McDonnell all my life! They made over 5000 of those used to crank those out every day and tested the engines in a hush house that didn't hush very much at night, and got to watch them swing the compass on them if they had one in the circus ring when I would go by there. The house I lived in as a kid was right under the approach to Runway 24/6 and only about a mile or so from the thresh hold of the runway, so they were pretty low. We had a power company right of way field with high tension lines running about 60 feet or so above the ground and lots of tall grass to crash into behind our house. We didn't understand the potential problems that could have caused then, but with only flying 1/2A on Dacron lines, we never had a problem. It wasn't wide enough for anything bigger, but we could fly small free flight models there. Life was good growing up near the airport, with all the old prop liners like Connies, and DC-6's and 7's all that sweat music on take offs and landings, even in bad weather. For the longest time, runway 24/6 was the only instrument runway at Lambert until they did the first major expansion. The engines at full rich and pitch and prop tips breaking the sound barrier would make the windows rattle, but I loved it!! Except for the F-15 and F-18 test flights, It's pretty quiet most days around the airport in this day and age. The airlines have cut way back after 9/11/2001 but have come back a little bit. Maybe they ought to look into having some air races there like they did back in Lindbergh's time?/
Nah, they wouldn't do that.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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