2019 Quad City Airshow

After a hiatus of a couple of years, the Quad City Airshow rebooted this year, so we went and checked it out. It was a hot day; the temperature was 95º with a heat index of 107º, but there was a breeze and we brought our own shade. There were lots of cool static displays to check out: 

This is the first time they've had a C-17 Globemaster at the QC show. This monster can haul military trucks and still has enough power leftover to be able to takeoff/land on very short runways. The cargo bay can handle 170,000 lbs. of equipment and the overall length of the plane is half a football field. It was cavernous inside:

It was really difficult to capture the whole plane in a single picture. I even tried taking a panoramic shot on my phone:

It's too tall:

Cynthia tried it, too:

The After Shock jet-powered fire truck was on display before the show started. It reaches speeds of around 400 mph:

I liked the wooden prop on this old plane from the 1930s:

People were allowed to walk through/climb inside a lot of the static displays:

The rest of my airshow photos are posted here: Quad City Airshow album

The umbrellas kept us from melting on a very hot day:

Also, the gyros at the airshow were awesome. There are always a lot of food trucks to choose from, but that one is always the right choice.

Come What May

Wow, I missed the May update completely. Too much going on to try to recall all of it, but here are the highlights from May...

I designed book covers for a couple self-published authors I know. One for Casey:

And one for Jolene:

I'm also finalizing the design of 15 flavors of granola for O'Brien's Own, which will be sold in Hy-Vee grocery stores and numerous other grocery stores throughout Iowa. It's been a huge task designing 15 different products, but it'll be cool to see them on the store shelves! Not too long ago I shot senior pictures of their son and mentioned that I also am a graphic designer, so they asked me to take a shot at designing their new packaging and it turned out great.

The Quad City Air Show is normally later in the summer, but this year it was early and we had a perfect day for it. Cynthia, my dad, my brother and his wife all went with me and we had a blast! Got lots of good shots. Some of my best so far of the Blue Angels:

I'll add more air show photos in a separate post later.

We celebrated Cynthia's birthday and invited friends and family. The weather was awesome, so we set up in the garage and I grilled out.

I got her a really cool banjo for her birthday, too!

In May we went to the Bicycle Rodeo in Hiawatha and the girls both got new helmets. I bought Emily another bike (since she has outgrown her old one) and Rose is riding without training wheels now!

After a lot of waiting and anticipation, Cynthia and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road the night it opened. It was a blast! OH WHAT A DAY, WHAT A LOVELY DAY! So much fun and it exceeded my expectations. They've been filming it for years and I've been following the news and waiting for it to be released in theaters, so it was pretty exciting to finally see it. It did not disappoint.

The girls' both had artwork that was on display in May at the Cherry building in NewBo. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the pics prematurely from my phone and only have one remaining:

In May we spent time in the backyard around the fire roasting marshmallows:

I saw these little dudes when I went for a walk during lunch one day – a baby snapping turtle and a toad:

Before school was out, we attended Garfield Elementary's 100th anniversary celebration:

We also went to the girls' outdoor school concert during the last week of school and sang our butts off. Actually, they sang and we did parent stuff like taking pictures and complaining about hearing all the same songs for the 3rd straight year, haha.

Quad City Air Show, Part 2

Finally getting around to posting some more photos from the air show. The past couple weeks have been super busy, but here we go...

The Flash Fire Jet Truck. It's a truck built around a jet afterburner and it tops out at 375 mph!

A P-51 Mustang and a P4U Corsair sitting on the tarmac before the show...

And the Corsair in flight.

The University of Iowa Engineering jets in flight. These are reconditioned Cold War-era jet trainers that carry an impressive array of equipment. These jets are not very fast, but they are LOUD.

The Lucas Oil pilot pulled off some crazy aerobatics including deliberately stalling the plane and causing it to tumble out of the sky in free fall before regaining control and pulling up just above the ground. He also cut through a ribbon that was about 10 or 12 feet off the ground. You can see the yellow ribbon trailing from the wing in the photo below.

Next was a small plane that did some of the same stunts as the Lucas Oil pilot, but she also raced against the Flash Fire truck.

The Aeroshell Aerobatic team flies WWII T-6 Texans and they fly in tight formation for most of their performance. Their flying was very precise and it was fun to watch. Their planes were so close together for much of the time that they appeared to be only inches apart.

A P-51 Mustang and a Japanese Zero flew a mock dogfight and even fired blanks from the machine guns for realism. This Zero was also in the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora."

The Flash Fire truck raced against Otto the helicopter. This part was kinda meh, but it was mostly geared towards the kids.

The headliner of the show was the F-22 Raptor which is that U.S. Air Force's newest fighter jet. It could do some really bizarre maneuvers like doing a backflip in the air to pivot 180º and return to target. The F-22 is partly stealth, so it carries all of its missiles internally. The pilot opened the missile doors as it flew over at one point in the demonstration.

The air show concluded with the F-22 flying in formation with the WWII era P-51. That was cool to see the contrast between old and new.

Usually getting out of the air show is an ordeal because when thousands of cars try to leave all at once it creates an instant traffic jam that can last for an hour or more. Luckily the state fair was going on at the same time as the air show this year (which seems like really poor planning), so there weren't quite as many people and we got out without killing anybody.

It's been a while since I've been to an air show and it was a blast!