Night airshow

So this is the second year in a row that the Wednesday night airshow got affected by weather. Tonight was the worse in my mind that the EAA allowed people out in an exposed area knowing full well that there was a large thunderstorm in the area. Why would you put people at risk? That makes no sense. It would seem like you should have canceled it. I'd prefer to see it canceled/rescheduled but realize that the acts, pyro people, and fireworks people may not be able to return another night. It certainly does not make or break this for me, but it is fun to watch. Many of us won't be here Saturday night. Anyway, I usually go with the flow, but shame on you for putting people in danger. That's not right.

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For those of us that couldn't make it this year, just watching the webcams is scary enough.

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The B1B put on a nice little show on departure though. My issue was there was no real mass notification of the show cancellation. I got the storm alerts but nothing about the show. I only found out because I turned on the Air Boss frequency as I was getting ready to walk to the bus to head in. I heard him telling everyone the show was cancelled and coordinating getting the Bomber out of town.


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I thought they did cancel it. I was at a dinner party on the outdoor roof patio of the Hilton hotel at the north side of 9-27. It started to lightly drizzle about 8:15. The B-707 air tanker made a low high speed pass, then skydivers with light flares jumped and then nothing. It started to rain a little heavier and they lit the the giant wall of fire which normally ends the show(guess they had to because it was already wired). Our hosts then told us the show was cancelled at about 8:30. I was very disappointed because I had never seen the night show from this perspective we had on the roof overlooking the North 40 and almost all of Wittman, it was visually stunning.

So headed back to Appleton and 41 was IMC with driving sheets of pounding rain and flash lightening. Extremely difficult to see the road and traffic lines. As I slowly drove I thought about all the campers getting drenched and felt bad for them.

It's been rescheduled for tomorrow night.

I heard them say over frequency that they'd have to detonate the pyro since it was already set up.


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Kudos for the reschedule. But don't put people in harm's way again please!!!! If rain is imminent, please cancel.

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Dere gettin' soft I tells ya!

Back in my day we would have night air shows in 4 feet of snow. The show would still go on even when the weather was so bad the SOS balloon had a frown on it! We had to put up B-1 bombers to guide the guys in the LED powered parachutes.

I took a look at the RADAR in the area. Lots of ZZZ symbols all over.
I don't think there's a way for announcements to go out except for the speakers along the flight line. I hope they used those to let people know about the cancellation.

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Originally Posted by N3kf

Kudos for the reschedule. But don't put people in harm's way again please!!!! If rain is imminent, please cancel.

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Adults need to make their own choices. The storms were visible to the naked eye for a long time before they hit, and anyone who looked at a radar app on their phone could have seen it coming hours beforehand. Getting caught out in a storm isn't the EAA's responsibility.

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Originally Posted by Kyle Boatright

Adults need to make their own choices. The storms were visible to the naked eye for a long time before they hit, and anyone who looked at a radar app on their phone could have seen it coming hours beforehand. Getting caught out in a storm isn't the EAA's responsibility.

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If the radar app would load on their phone...service on my tmobile phone and my Verizon iPad were pretty much nil all day/night. But I get what you mean


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I'm just curious...that line of storms was visible on radar long before dark. Wonder why they just didn't cancel earlier?

This has happened two years in a row. It may not happen again next year, but it WILL happen again. Sandwich board style signs at the entrance in front of the EAA museum, Signage on the roads entering the field, Signs at the parking lots, signage at the field walk in entrances notifying the nighshow has been cancelled would help. These signs could be pre-made and ready for immediate display. I also agree with Mr. Boatright, "Adults need to make their own choices. The storms were visible to the naked eye..."

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Originally Posted by Kyle Boatright

Getting caught out in a storm isn't the EAA's responsibility.

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Courts may differ, when it's a scheduled event with hundreds of thousands of people exposed to it. It'd be very easy to paint EAA as a calloused organization more interested in profit than safety, in a situation like this.

Ron Wanttaja

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Originally Posted by N3kf

Why would you put people at risk? That makes no sense. It would seem like you should have canceled it. I'd prefer to see it canceled/rescheduled but realize that the acts, pyro people, and fireworks people may not be able to return another night. It certainly does not make or break this for me, but it is fun to watch. Many of us won't be here Saturday night. Anyway, I usually go with the flow, but shame on you for putting people in danger. That's not right.

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I was camping in Scholler in a tent......WALKED the entire way back to the tent and barely got wet from the sprinkling........All the way down to 26th btw.........I never ONCE felt at risk...and I had my wife and 2 young daughters with me.....we waited out the storm IN THE TENT. Never once felt like it was a big deal....

Maybe some people are just too risk averse and whine and cry about a little rain. Not 1 drop of water in the tent.....wind wasn't even as bad as everybody made it out to be.......A bunch of whining and crying for nothing.

I think EAA did the right thing. Try to get it squeezed in before the storm hits (since everyone is already there anyway), and when that's not possible, cancel it with PLENTY of time to get back to your vehicle/tent.

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Originally Posted by streffpilot

I was camping in Scholler in a tent......WALKED the entire way back to the tent and barely got wet from the sprinkling........All the way down to 26th btw.........I never ONCE felt at risk...and I had my wife and 2 young daughters with me.....we waited out the storm IN THE TENT. Never once felt like it was a big deal....

Maybe some people are just too risk averse and whine and cry about a little rain. Not 1 drop of water in the tent.....wind wasn't even as bad as everybody made it out to be.......A bunch of whining and crying for nothing.

I think EAA did the right thing. Try to get it squeezed in before the storm hits (since everyone is already there anyway), and when that's not possible, cancel it with PLENTY of time to get back to your vehicle/tent.

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I walked all the way to camp (28th), got my stuff together, walked to the showers, and made it back to camp again before the storm hit.

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Originally Posted by mazdaP5

I walked all the way to camp (28th), got my stuff together, walked to the showers, and made it back to camp again before the storm hit.

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Yep.....really was No big Deal....weather happens. Just deal with it.

They did announce the cancellation over the loudspeakers. They did not over the "OSHAlerts" text notifications. I agree that they waited until rather late to cancel, but to be fair, the radar was not conclusive that the storms were going to hit the field. As it was, the actual storm cell was north (and well west) of the field for a long time after the cancellation.

I personally self-canceled the Wednesday night show after looking at the cool weather radar app on my phone... And I too heard an announcement of the official show cancellation over the PA system.

We were up at Jay Honeck's HOPS party in the North 40 Wednesday night. The advantage is there's no PA up there so you don't have to listen to the inane play by play on the show. Of course I saw the skydivers go out and one blinky-light aircraft launch on 27 but then the wall of fire went off and we figured "well that's the airshow."

We spent another 45 minutes holding on to Jay's dining fly to keep it from blowing away until we got our ride back down to Vintage.

I caught only the drone show on the Thursday night show but watched nearly the entire show on Saturday. They drone act needs a lot of work (I guess it's still better than the Jet-Truck show).

They need to get rid of the alcohol sales. We had two incidents with drunks within a block of my duty station during Saturday night.

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Originally Posted by FlyingRon

They need to get rid of the alcohol sales. We had two incidents with drunks within a block of my duty station during Saturday night.

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Can you share the general nature of the problem(s)?

Sure, we had one drunk in a large pickup truck who parked illegally in the middle of the taxiway (this is an emergency vehicle lane) and was belligerent about moving it until my wife went to call security to have it towed. Even then they didn't get it out of where it shouldn't have been but at least moved it over to the edge.

Then as the show ended and people were walking out, a fist fight broke out roughly in front of the Hangar Cafe between two other drunks. There were still sheriff/security cars there 45 mins later when I buttoned up the Vintage Flight Line office.

Apparently, this wasn't the only area of the grounds that had problems that night.

I can't ever remember such a thing happening before they started selling beer.

Ron,

I responded elsewhere that there was a similar to do outside of Warbird camping. Wife said police were still engaged at 4 am so it must have been a good one.

Everybody, regarding cancellation. At the pre-show pilot briefing for the Wednesday afternoon airshow, our weather brief was by a bona fide meteorologist. He assured us that the line of TRW would not move through until after midnight. Halfway through the afternoon airshow it became obvious that my wife's weather app was more accurate than the meteorologist. (However, he did tell us in the brief: "the word meteorologist comes from the Latin word "meteos"...which means liar.") I imagine, therefore, that they did not cancel earlier because their weather experts were telling them it would hold off. Anyway, when it started lightening all choices were over. Just my own speculation, however.

I see the company that did the night drone act had a problem at a show a few weeks before our Convention. https://abc7chicago.com/lawsuit-woma...-party/4039118
I watched our night show on the web, and saw a few of the drones acting like a "left shark". I think some were brought down. At Oshkosh there was a lot of space between the people and the drones. I don't know the layout at Cesar's, but I would think it would be too tight to be using that type of newer technology.

I watched the night show in front of vintage. Didn't see the drones at all.
I did see the drone show at Arlington Fly-in two weeks before Airventure.

From what they said in an interview on EAA Radio, each drone has a kill switch, as well as a mass kill switch that will drop all of them out of the sky at once, in case of things such as, an airplane in the flight area. I know during the Saturday show, at least one was dropped from the sky during their performance. The owner said that if there was an emergency in which all of the drones would be dropped, it would be a $90,000 loss for the operator.

I watched both airshows (Thurs and Sat) from Vintage. The drones were way off to the left. The show definitely needs work but at least it was novel.