Sun ‘n Fun

I finally crossed an item off my ‘bucket list’ – I finally went to the Sun ‘n Fun fly-in in Lakeland, Florida. After picking up Andrew from school, we headed west to Lakeland. We arrived at our motel, unpacked, grabbed a bite at Wendy’s, and headed for the airport. The plan for Friday was to meet some Commander owners at the campsite and watch the night air show. My first impression was, “Wow, this place is huge!” I’d never been to an aviation event this large before.

This morning, we were out of bed by 8:00 and found the included breakfast much to our liking. Then it was back to the airport. My first goal was to see the static displays. On the way, we came to the Cessna display. Andrew thoroughly enjoyed the Citation Mustang.

The static display had lots of old warbirds. Andrew was most fascinated by the landing gear. By far, his favorites were the enormous planes – the KC-135 and the C-130 - both of which were open for touring.

Before the air show started, we decided to see what was available for kids. We walked at least a mile to the west side of the field and found the education building. It contained an air traffic controller simulator, some PC-based flight simulators, a weight and balance demonstration, an aileron demonstration, and an old Taylorcraft outside for pre-flight checking.

At 4:00, the air show started with a large explosion. I couldn’t see the runway from where we were, but I imagine they were doing some mock bombing runs with the old WWII planes. We headed back towards the static displays for better view of the show and to grab something to eat. On the way, we passed through an exhibition hall and Andrew found another gadget to play with. A man was demonstrating a system for electronic trim control and he let Andrew play with all the switches.

Finally, it was time for the Thunderbirds. Unfortunately, they got off to a rough start. The number two plane had a mechanical problem, so they swapped it out for one of the media planes. Eventually, six planes roared into the sky and the show went off perfectly.