Arts by Dylan: Wings over Solano 2024 F-24 Raptor #2 Canvas

Airshows are a lot of fun and free ones on active military bases tend to be more of a pain in the but to get to and see, but are way fun.

Although, they are not quite as insane as the first airshow I went to which was back in the early 1990's at March Airforce Base in Riverside California. I was visiting my family in Riverside, my grandfather was stationed at March multiple times during his carreer. The base was one of those that closed during the early 1990's base closure re-organization plans. Along with Mare Island and many others, March AFB was somewhat reduntent considering Edwards was nearby and CA still had Vandenberg and San Diego as active military bases.

Any way, that air show as a kid featured the Thunderbirds which I remember, but it also features a somewhat insane event that I'm not even sure was legal back in the 1990's but it was awesome and they did it anyway. The grand finale was not the Thunderbirds like every other airshow, it was something they called "Ring of Fire" because somebody was a Johnny Cash fan.

My assumption is that March AFB had some leftover nepalm from the Vietnam era or something, and the easiest way to dispose of it was to set it on fire, which was probably some kind of thing they were doing out in the desert somewhere. But probably some guy had the idea that it would kind of awesome to finish the airshow by setting off some nepalm along the flightline. Somehow it got an okay from somebody, or they just did it without asking anyone because they could.

Anyway I remember standing about 500 yards away, seeing a plane fly off the side a little and do a pass, and then feeling a massive amount of heat for a second which was followed by a 50-100 foot wall of fire go off along the runway. I thought it was one of the coolest things I ever saw, so did my uncles, but while we were returning to the car I do remember hearing a lot of pissed off moms complaining, but they did warn us about what was going to happen. When we returned to my grandparents house, my grandfather was unimpressed because he saw nepalm go off plenty of times in Veitnam.

Any way, they don't do that at airshows anymore. But they are still pretty awesome to go to and are a lot of fun.