The airshow itself was great, but you haven't seen fireworks until you've seen them at Louisville. They have the largest fireworks display in North America. It is quite a sight. Unfortunately; other fireworks displays just aren't as impressive anymore.
Here's a few photos from the evening.
The rest of the photos can be viewed here.
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| Thunder Over Louisville 2009 Fireworks |
This airshow was April 18th and was, so far, the best I've seen. While there was no USN Blue Angels or USAF Thunderbirds, it did have the F-22 Raptor. This was my second time seeing the F-22. My first was in Dayton last year. It is truly an amazing aircraft. It can do things other planes cannot and it has stealth technology. The most impressive thing about it is they don't have a dedicated plane. Every F-22 used in a demo is a full-combat ready plane. They take one from the nearest base that houses them. Unfortunately, this plane is nearly on the chopping block. I'm not going to get into politics here, so I'll leave it at that.
We left at 4am and arrived in Louisville at 12pm. I had already been up for 24hrs straight (my work schedule didn't allow me to sleep before we left). We went straight to the river to watch practice. It started with 4 Apache's and 2 Chinooks. The pilot of the Apache with the tiger mouth decided to show a little for us since we were the only ones there. He kept moving toward us until he was so close, the rotor wash was blowing water on us. It was pretty awesome.
This was our first time here and it has now become a must go to every year show.
Here is the list of performers:
Kentucky Air National Guard Special Tactical Parachute Team
Lima Lima Flight Team
L-39 Albatross
Red Bull BO-105
Mike Wiskus & the Lucas Oil Pitts
F-15 Eagle Four Ship Fly-by
F-16 Viper
F-18 Hornet
C-130 Hercules
B-52 Stratofortress
B-1 Lancer
A-10 Warthog
F-22 Raptor
USAF Heritage Flight: P-51, F-22, F-16, F-4
P-51 Mustang
F-4 Phantom II
Miss Geico Racing Team
CH-46 Sea Knight
AH-64D Apache Longbow
CH-47 Chinook
KC-10 Extender
T-38 Talon
German Luftwaffe Tornado
AC-130 Spectre
MV-22 Osprey
I had almost forgot about adding the random photo that is completely unrelated to the airshow.
A Mallard duck in the river.
All the photo's from the airshow can be found here.
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| Thunder Over Louisville 2009 |
...I take too many photos and have been working way to much lately to keep this currently updated. I still have Louisville, USAF Museum, and Wright-Patterson AFB Military Tattoo posts to do. I hope to get these done in the next week and half. All of the photos are processed now except for about half of the Military Tattoo photos. Then there will be another lapse after two airshows July 18 & 19.
