"The Most Important Rule" Tanka 6214

richwrapper

Oct 29

(October 28, 2023)

If you fly 'support'

for a "Demo Team"

do not bend 'The Bird'*

ThunderTurds are here to show

"Screw Angles" how it is done

*With a Thursday fly-in and practice and a rehearsal Friday, The U.S. Air Force (see, Connie, I did not stoop to call your birdmen a bad name like Air Farce (she was a crew chief on F-lll Aardvarks - who nicknames their warbird an nom-d-ant-eater?) here in Sanford this pre-Halloween out at the old Naval Air Station Sanford, now Orlando-Sanford International Airport. Saved $35 bucks and watched from the confines of the big empty field across from what used to be Sanford's Seminole High School, later Junior High and now middle-prison (okay, school!) at 18th Street and French Avenue (US 17-92). We even had the Canadian jet Demonstration team here with the Navy-Marine Corps' Blue Angels. This year a Seminole High grad was among the Air Force pilots. The star of the show for me as always was the cargo-transport bird (often a C-130) doing some impressive showcase work along the runway in front of the crowd. As Connie's husband Bill echoed my dad's own call when an A3-D or a RA5-C (The Whales were changed later to reconnaissance platforms too) prior to shuffling off to Tucson, Arizona to The Great Warbird Boneyard in the Dessert). The Real Tricks and Treats still rest there. Bill called the noise-making, just as my dad did everytime Art Fleming got interrupted by a Whale or a Vigilante - sometimes the A5's on afterburner at takeoff: "The Sound of Freedom." Amen, Chief, Amen, Bill. I even got a treat as a lifeguard at the officers' pool at NAS Sanford, watching Air Force B-52 Super Fortresses do Touch-And-Goes along the longer East-West runway (R-L 90-270 aksi called RL 9-27). That's all the Treat I need. Thanks to all you Birdmen! who have my permission to interrupt any television I am near just to hear - and if blessed, see) take off into the skies for America.).