By Stuart Yeo, EAA 1403206, EAA Chapter 1098 Vice President, Newsletter Editor
The Tinker Air Force Base Air Show was held on Saturday, July 1, and Sunday, July 2. The air show hit their 100,000 people capacity crowd both days. This was the first air show Tinker has held in four years due to COVID. Tinker Air Force Base is a huge part of the Oklahoma City community, being the largest single employer with more than 26,000 military and civilian employees. The air base covers more than 4,000 acres and is home to the Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC), 72nd Air Base Wing, 448th Supply Chain Management Wing, 552nd Air Control Wing, 507th Air Refueling Wing, and the Navy’s Strategic Communications Wing.
The depot-level maintenance and supply chain facility routinely provide overhaul facilities for KC-135, B-1B, B-52, and E-3B aircraft. The facility includes Building 3001 which covers 62 acres and stretches seven tenths of a mile in length. The base also has gas turbine engine overhaul facilities for most of the USAF power plants.
Oklahoma City has three EAA chapters in the metro area. To the east is Chapter 1098 at Shawnee, to the south is Chapter 1612 at Goldsby, and to the northwest is Chapter 24 at Sundance. Many of our EAA members work or have worked on the Air Force base, giving our chapter members a huge depth of knowledge in aviation, both flying as well as avionics, airframe and power plant construction, and modification.
We had a great time at the air show. We battled the heat but made it. The weekend started off on Friday with some thunderstorms to spice up the experience! We were invited to bring six airplanes to the show; we had three members bring their airplanes. Several exhibitors did not show because of the changeable weather. Our EAA pilots were given arrival slots around 5:30 p.m. on Friday night. Kyle Rausch flew in his RV-6 and got to land after the F-22 Raptor, which made his weekend. The F-22 did a complete lap of the pattern and landed between being at 5 mile final and 3 mile final. Troy and Tracy Chaddon flew in with their Long-EZ and had a special treat, getting to hang with the B-2 stealth bomber as it arrived, which was a first for them.
The weekend was a great success made possible by members from all three Oklahoma City chapters (EAA 1098, 24, and 1612) attending our static display to do a shift of handing out leaflets and answering questions about EAA. Our purpose was to raise awareness of EAA, advertise the three local Oklahoma City chapters as we always want to expand our membership, as well as highlight EAA benefits and opportunities for prospective builders and pilots. We got to meet many EAA members that were not actively associated with a chapter and gave them information related to prospective local chapters they could join. We met new prospective Young Eagles and Eagles that were unaware of the EAA organization and those that were members looking for additional information on sport pilot, tech counselors, etc.
We had three great airplanes on our static display, and this helped immensely with attracting traffic to our tent. These included Troy Chaddon with his Long-EZ, Kyle Rausch with his RV-6, and Jim Putnam with his RV-10.
Kyle Rausch brought his Vans RV-6 experimental airplane. Kyle is a retired flight engineer on the E-6B Mercury and was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. Flying into the airport in his own airplane brought back lots of great memories. He also got to meet up with some old friends while on the EAA static display from his former Navy career.
The air show was very entertaining. We got to see displays from the Tora Tora Tora group and their Pearl Harbor re-enactment team. The Blue Angels always put on a great show, and this included a display from their C-130 Fat Albert. We also got to see some flying from an E-3 AWACS and E-6B, KC-135 tanker, C-17 Globemaster, along with smaller aircraft like the Interstate Cadet ‘Jelly Belly’ stunt airplane. If you haven’t seen the Jelly Belly Cadet, it’s quite the show; it even loses an aileron mid-show and continues its aerobatics just fine!
I think this note and image from Kyle sums up the event:
“It all starts with a dream.”