AirFest MacDill AFB Tampa, Florida
One of my favorite air shows and open house is the annual AirFest at MacDill AFB in Tampa. You can always be assured of having a hot sunny day in May in Tampa and hanging out with lots of people at Florida’s largest air show. It’s no easy task for MacDill’s personnel accommodating the estimated half million who attend the weekend fest, given the usual problems in handling that huge amount of attending spectators. It’s unimaginable how anyone can pull that off. But MacDill’s personnel were exceptional. Entering and leaving the base was a breeze, as was parking and traffic. And the ever unpopular security check was quick and smooth. A big Thank You to MacDill !
The U.S. SOCOM Parachute Team started out Sunday morning with their always precision smooth jumps and their almost slow motion landings. A huge C-17 Globemaster III made a few passes performing simulated air drops, followed by one of MacDill’s KC-135 Stratotankers.
A beautifully restored C-54 transport dropped candy bars in reconigition to the ‘candy drops’ over Berlin some 60 years ago. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to go retrieve a candy bar lying on the runway. Darn it! Chris Rounds performed a demo in The Red Knight T-33 along with Tom Reilly in the ‘Killer B’ B-25, Herb Baker in his T-28, Bill Leff in his T-6 and Tim Weber in the Extra 300. 
The Navy’s F-18 Super Hornet Demo Team gave us a super demo on Sunday-the best demo of a Super Hornet I’ve ever seen. Simply awesome. The F-15 Demo Team from Seymour Johnson came through also with a stunning demo.
We were given a great Heritage Flight by the F-15, Lee Lauderbach’s P51 Mustang and the best looking F-4 Phantom on the planet. A huge surprise was seeing the Starfighter Team bring all three of their F-104 Starfighters to MacDill and for only the second time all three planes performed together. A rare sight and happening for sure.
For the first time at MacDill, the Canadian Snowbirds came to perform for us, which made me quite happy since I haven’t seen them in over ten years. The Snowbirds in their CT-114’s performed flawlessly for us. A real treat for us spectators. Hope we see them again soon!
Thank you MacDill for you hospitality. See you in 2009!
By Brian Walker