Need for Speed Festival

Every summer in Seattle, there is the Seafair Festival.  This is a week long set of events culminating in unlimited hydroplane races which include a Navy Blue Angels air show over the race course.

The Blues fly out of Boeing Field which happens to have the Museum of Flight next to the flight line.  The museum also participates by having several fly-in exhibits in addition to their usual fare.  They also have a presentation of fast cars and hydroplanes.

I took my 330 GT as one of the cars on exhibit.

The museum is world class, containing more than 150 exhibits starting from the earliest days of flight to modern aircraft such as a SR71 Blackbird, Concord and Air Force One.

       

The latest exhibit being assembled is the Space Shuttle Flight Trainer.  This is a full sized mockup of the shuttle that the astronauts used for training for the shuttle missions.  It is being disassembled in Houston with each piece being flown to Seattle in NASA's Super Guppy.  Two of the sections have already been delivered.

   

So, if you have any interest in aircraft, a visit to Seattle needs to include a stop at the Museum of Flight.

Anyway, back to Festival.  The fly-in exhibits had several from Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection, including a Republic P-47D Thunderbolt and a North American P-51D Mustang.

   

The cap to the day's events was the Blue Angels show.  The show itself is over the hydroplane course, which is a hill away from the airfield, so we couldn't see that.  However, they did take off and land on the runway next to where we were.

   

Planes 1 through 4 made smoke as they took off together, immediately followed by 5 and 6.  If you look closely, you can just make out the last two planes in the smoke.

The Blue Angels support airplane, Fat Albert, a Lockheed Martin C-130 was also there.

In addition to the Blues, the VFA-122 Super Hornet Demonstration Team was present.  They fly the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, the latest in Navy aircraft.

For the ultimate picture, there was a static display of an earlier Blue Angel's aircraft, an A-4F Skyhawk where we could get a picture with our cars.