So I woke up this morning, and as is the case twice a week, my AvWebFlash was waiting for my in my lovely little electronic mailbox. First story on the list was that Virgin Galactic has released the final designs of the vehicle that will, in the near future, take paying tourists on suborbital space flights. Now this is something that I’ve been following with a fair amount if interest ever since SpaceShipOne made its historical flight back in 2004.

Well, it is the off-season, and it’s not like I’ve got lots of upcoming or imminent or recently past shows to babble on about, so I’ll have to settle for sharing cool content I’ve found. This video comes to us courtesy of AirShowBuzz, where pilot Rob Holland happens to be a member and regular visitor, along with many other big names like “Max” Moga of the F-22 Raptor demo team, and lots of other current and past performers. In this video, Rob slapped a helmet cam on and recorded his entire demo from start to finish, and tossed in some good music to kick it up a notch- as if Rob’s aerobatics needed to be kicked up any more.

So, this past Monday, the "Big Three" of North American teams released their 2008 show schedules.  This is enough for me to go ahead and start thinking about where I wanna go in 2008.  To a certain extent, I’m in a worse situation now than I was the last few years.  I moved here to Chattanooga about five months ago, and it’s not quite the central location for big shows that Raleigh was.  In Raleigh, I had Langley and Oceana both about three and a half hours away, Cherry Point about two hours away, and Seymour Johnson and Pope AFB/Fort Bragg within an hour.  Add in the on-again, off-again Coastal Carolina Airshow in Wilmington, (~2 hours) and I was in a good spot.  Not so much here. 

Well, it’s been a long journey, taking over two years, but this past weekend Art Nalls took his privately-owned Sea Harrier for its first flight. Unfortunately, the second day of flying saw a partial hydraulic failure and ended in a partial gear-up landing. The good thing is that it’s a Harrier, so landing vertically is a pretty good solution for this situation. The aircraft suffered fairly minor damage, but it’s still another setback.

So it was October 14, about 3 PM, and the Great Georgia Airshow had concluded. The crowds were moving en masse towards the buses that would take them back to the parking area. I, however, was not part of this mass exodus, as my day wasn’t over yet. Jim Buckley, of the CAF’s Dixie Wing, was going to be taking me up for a hop in his SNJ. As much as I love to watch air shows and take lots of photos, under the enjoyment of my day had been the anticipation of this flight. But first there was still some waiting for me- there were a few people ahead of me for flights.

Attending the Great Georgia Airshow (GGA) was a fairly spur-of-the-moment thing for me.  Being a holder of a job whose business happens mostly on weekends, I had used up a fair amount of leniency to travel to Oceana for that delightful event, and I figured it would be my last show of this season.  But lo and behold, I found myself with a free Sunday, coincidentally on the second day of GGA.  And so it came to pass that at 6 AM on the 14^th of October, I found myself astride my motorcycle on the southeast side of Chattanooga, merging onto I-75 for a three-hour journey to Peachtree City.  Did I mention that it was in the upper 40s at that time of day, and that an 80MPH wind chill is not insubstantial?  But I digress… presumably you’re here to read about the show, not about my two-wheeled exploits, so let me move on forward.