It was a very nice Air Show and the weather was perfect.
Arrived at Mather around 11:30, it was fairly quick and easy to get inside.
Took Jackson Rd to Excelsior( Kiefer is closed for construction ) and Excelsior goes through some residential areas, then turns into Mather Blvd. The route along Excelsior was easy, with very little traffic. Along Mather Blvd, there were plenty of "free" spots to park and watch the Air Show. Lots of nooks to park and hang out if you're into that. Didn't hit any stop and go traffic until we were actually inside the Airport.
Inside the Airport parking was directed and pretty straight forward. We parked at the East end of all the lots within the Airport ( not too far from the DHL and UPS planes ) and it was a short walk to an entrace. At the entrance, things were kinda chaotic. Not really chaotic but kinda unorganized. It would have been VERY EASY to just walk past the ticket takers. But I had complimentary tickets and still gave up my ticket.
The planes are set up well, spread apart but not too far apart. The vendors were also spread throughout the length of the field, along with the port-a-potties.
Short list of some of the aircraft.
U2
BlackHawk Choppers
Bell Huey
C-130
Coast Guard chopper and boats
Apache
B-52
C-5
Sheriff Helicopter
CHP Helicopters
F-16
A-4
F-18
(missing and wishing was there)
F-14
F-117
F-111
F-4
Global Hawk (maybe at beale this summer)
SR-71 (maybe at beale this summer)
I didn't hear any radio traffic on fed freqs, TSA, CAP, etc
Most of the radio traffic in area was AirBoss, doing flight cordination.
Occassional traffic between performers and Air Boss, music feeds, PA feeds and ATC
I didn't find any or hear anything absolutely exciting and new, but the best freq by far was the Air Boss freq of 284.2500. It was used during the Blue Angels performance. I found myself only occassionally listening to my scanner, leaving my Close Call feature running on my 396T. I didn't register a single hit. Oh well. We met up with fellow scannerist MKEWMAN, I was able to nerd out with him a couple times. He did a whole lot more monitoring than I did, so maybe he grabbed something good. ( BTW it was cool finally meeting you MKEWMAN )
Prior to the Blue Angels flying, there was a lot of talk and some confusion about the wind speeds. Also some communications about aircraft within so many miles. Safety stuff. Nothing dramatic, but it was interesting.
The CA Cap Air Show now has a mirror site to accomodate the amount of website traffic. Pretty impressive.
http://www.californiacapitalairshow.com/
Around 2:30 the A-10 flew around and that was my favorite part of the afternoon. Truly an awesome aircraft. The Blue Angels came on a bit after 3:00.
During the Blue Angels performance, the mass exodus begain. People streaming out of the fenced off Air Show grounds. After the performance the majority of the remaining guests made their way to their vehicles. Then the chaos began....for some.
If you've ever been to Six Flags or Cal Expo State Fair at closing, it's pretty much a free for all to get out of the park. People flying through the parking lot, jockey'n their way to the "best" exit. Making 2 lanes into 3 lanes and creating their own gridlock. My wife and I sat in our car for about 45 mins before "thinking" about leaving. We watched people sit in line for 30 mins without moving an inch. After a while the traffic thinned out a bit. So instead of leaving we drove back closer to the Air Show grounds. The aircraft were still there and a few people were hanging out checking out the planes and choppers. They were the smart ones. We drove along the perimeter of the air show finally making our way out the EAST side of the base.
The EAST side was apparently the E-ticket. I got text messages from friends who were at the show and they were in gridlock. To give you an idea of how bad the gridlock was via the main exit/entrance ( west and center side of airport) my wife and I made it to Sunrise & Fair Oaks by the time my friends ( who left 45mins earlier than we did ) even got out of the Airport.
There were just too many cars and too little road space for such an event. If it draws that many people sunday, they could have easily made this a 3 day venue. Even the lines for the vendors were insane. I heard one person talking about being in line for almost 2 hours for a burrito!! There were NOT enough food vendors and VERY LITTLE soda/drink vendors. Every lemonade stand that I saw was empty. Exhausted supplies. I'll be very interested to see how Beale AFB does in a few months. Thankfully that's only about 6 miles from my house.
RolnCode3 and kma371, sorry I didn't get to meet up with ya there. kma371, sorry I didn't get your phone call until after the show. Between the blowing wind and aircraft, I never heard my phone ring! ACK!
b52hbuff said:
We got to Mather ~10am when the gates opened. It took us forever to get to the parking areas. I'm too tired to give a complete report. First, take a look at previous frequencies for airboss & discretes. They were in use today.
While waiting for the flying, I played with Close Call and Searching. I found the following airshow utility frequencies:
464.725/229.1Hz (Repeated)
457.500/023 (Simplex)
457.700/023 (Simplex)
464.550/245 (Simplex) Concessions
451.725/265 (Simplex)
464.625/210.7Hz (Repeatered?)
151.820/97.4Hz (Airboss?)
457.550/023 (Simplex)
Also picked up a new Blue Angel frequency.
142.6125 / Comm Cart
Lot's of commcart activity. The blues seemed to be very worried about surrounding air traffic. They kept saying it was 6 or 7 miles out, so it was close to the 5mi TFR, but still outside of BA control.
