Memory Lane - 1979 Dayton Air Fair w/ Pics

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
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Hi everyone. I came across these old photos a couple of nights ago. These are from the 1979 Dayton Air Fair (maybe it was called “Air Show” by then?). The photos were taken with a Kodak “point-and-shoot” 110, so they’re not very high quality, and I didn’t attempt to re-size or crop, I scanned them in as they are.

I was 10 in 1979, my big brother took me to the airshow. I can remember these air shows like they were yesterday, I have fond memories of my brother telling me all he knew about the airplanes. He watched the Blue Angels when they flew the F-11’s, but I digress. Hope you enjoy the pics.

How many of you remember this airplane?

Here’s a tip of the hat to BlackWolf, he’s been putting quite a few F-14 pics up lately…

Darwin, this one’s for you, an F-4E on static display. Wow, look at how visible all the stenciling is.

And lastly, we have yours truly, at 10 years of age, in an A-7D…

I believe that A-7D to be from the Ohio ANG in Springfield, but I don’t know for sure. I know that in the 1980’s when they did the “mock assaults”, the local ANG send a few aircraft to participate. The yellow lettering reads “TSGT C.K. SUMMERS”, that would have been the crew chief. It looks as if the pilot has a single silver bar on his flight hat, making him a 1st Lt.

Wow…26 years ago…I’m too young to be getting nostalgic!

EDIT

The pics are small, so here are the first three, cropped.

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Is the first one an Avro Vulcan? To bad you can’t enlarge them anymore.

Bryan

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Thanks for the pics, and yes falcon39 that is a Vulcan. We moved to the Dayton area in 1977 and I went to several shows before I went into the service. Back in those days the show used to get a lot more planes from foreign air forces than they do today. The Blue Angels were still flying A-4s, but I can’t remember if the Thunderbirds had switched to the F-16 at that time. One year they had an RF-4 do a slow fly over and take pictures. They had prints availble for sale at the end of the show. Those were the good olde days. Thanks again Ma Cooke [:D][:D][:D][:D][:D][tup][tup][tup][tup][tup]

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F8fan: I went to the first or second Dayton Air Fair in 1975 (I think the 1st one was in '74). I remember the Brits sent the Hawker Harrier and the Avro Vulcan. The Vulcan was absolutely amazing. The RCAF sent a 2-seat F-101 Voodoo (would that be a B model?), they did that for several years…I remember the Voodoo as late as 1981. Very loud jet.

And in 1981, an SR-71 did four fly-bys, the last pass was just under Mach 1, he pulled straight up, lit the burners, and disappeared into the sky. His ETA from Dayton to Beale AFB in California was around 40 minutes, including re-fueling over St. Louis. Wow. When he lit the burners, it was the loudest noise I can ever remember, it rattled fillings in my teeth.

The Thunderbirds were still flying the T-38 Talon, they didn’t switch to the F-16 until '82 or 83, I can’t remember exactly which year. I was in the Civil Air Patrol and worked the Dayton Air Show the first year that the 'Birds flew the F-16. I got lucky and got to pull duty in the office where all the pilots had to file flight plans…I met all the T-Bird pilots and got their autographs. To a pimpy-faced 13 year-old geek, that was a total thrill!

The T-Birds switched to the F-16 after the crash in Nevada that killed either 4 or 6 of their pilots, they were doing a line-abreast loop and they all just augered in, boom-boom-boom-boom. They didn’t replace the T-38’s after that crash, that was in December or January.

I went to every Dayton Air Fair (show) from 1975 until 1994, then I slacked off a bit.

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Really neat pics. I was fortunate enough to be at the 100th anniversary of flight air show a few years back in Dayton. THey had the Thunderbirds, Snow Birds and Blue Angles performing. What a thrill.

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Mitch,
Thanks for the pictures. The F4 is pretty high up on my list of favorite airplanes with the SR-71 obviously being #1, (Ichi Ban). The manueverability of the Avro Vulcan is very impressive for such a large airplane.

Darwin, O.F. [alien]

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Darwin:

Just recently the F-14 overtook the F-4 as my favorite. I know, you’re thinking I’m a heretic right about now… [(-D]

I’ve always loved watching the F-14 (and the F-15 for that matter) fly. I was always amazed to see how tight a F-14 could turn with wings fully forward, the “minimum radius turn” as they called it…just a tad bid larger than that of an F-16 if I remember correctly. Couldn’t they both turn within a 1400 ft diameter circle? DIAMETER, not radius.

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MA Cooke: I should have remembered the T-Birds had not switched yet, One year I went they had a then new F-16A (I believe) cordoned off so you could not get too close. One of the test pilots was handing out photos of the plane and was signing each one whoever wanted one. I don’t remember the voodoo thou. I also remember the brits sending over a Nimrod a couple of times. [8D]