CAWS 2014 Saturday Report
I want to say a very special, huge note of; "THANK YOU!!!" to Fred, Marvin, Jeff, Ric, Craig and his wife, Andre, Lorraine, John, to all of our new friends and to our regular surrounding audience and air show support specialists. We had a tremendous show day from dawn to dusk at the Fullerton Point and it would have been no where near as much fun without all of the help and camaraderie. THANK YOU!
Hat's off to Rudi, Herb and the platform team for pulling off a tremendous show under challenging ATC conditions that would have stopped any other air show controllers I know dead in their tracks. You guys are amazing!
Frequencies;
123.300 Platform VHF
239.300 Platform UHF (very little use)
122.125 Show discrete
126.800 Tracon
125.600 Gary Tower
123.475 Golden Knights
123.150 Sean Tucker / Team Oracle discrete
376.025 Air Combat Command F22 Raptor team
135.650 F22/P51 Vlado Lenoch Heritage Flight air to air (gorgeous Mustang!)
128.200 ARTCC Arv/Dep for those not returning to Gary
284.250 Blue Angels in the show box
275.350 Blue Angels Diamond outside of the show box
237.800 Blue Angles solos outside of the box
139.8125 (67.0) Blue Angels Ground Support at the oasis primary
142.6125 (67.0) Blue Angels Ground Support at the oasis secondary
145.7700 (151.4) CARMA command post control station
458.0750 (210.7) Chgo Park District Lifeguard Service - outstanding as always
460.2500 (162.2) CPD Citywide 6
460.3500 (97.4) CPD Citywide 5
460.5250 (179.9) CPD Five unit to unit
460.3000 (131.8) Traffic Management Aides
462.9750 (156.7) EMS Command
I had close call hits on Friday at North Avenue on 461.0375 and 469.2625 but I think these were both used by the Castaways restaurant and food staff. Everybody was carrying a Com Direct rental UHF radio but the show went so smoothly that we never saw anyone actually talking on them. A ton of staff from the Mayor's Office of Special Events also carrying radios, but same deal. OEMC had a huge presence but didn't catch them, either. I had a close call hit Friday on 156.930, no clue who that was.
We weren't really concentrating on the limited water show but we got a close call hit from the Coast Guard on 157.075. Marine Channel 10 had a very interesting and busy marine towing service crew operating there. Outstanding marine band monitoring during and after the show on Saturday. CPD Marine Units totally rocked the house on the CPD TRS. Hat's off to you guys. We ended up dedicating a 396 just to them on Saturday, amazing team work to listen to.
Special thanks to the CPD foot patrols at the Fullerton Point. I saw them doing a lot of community outreach work especially with the out of towner guests and tourists, outstanding work by Chicago's finest. Zero, and I mean Zero trouble, they were quickly helping every confused tourist and really worked hard to make this a much happier event. Great work people! Amazing use of smart phone technology by our detail to improve the operation. Go CPD! You Rock!
Traffic? Parking? ROTFL. When the city rebuilt the east end on Fullerton they decided it would be a good idea the remove the sidewalk from the south side of the street. Yeah, um, not so much. The TMA kept up the good fight until they were inevitably crushed like snails. Dedication...
New crew at the LPZ lot weren't hip to the usual 4 am opening. They opened at 6 am. 40 bucks for the day, actually cheaper than expected. Quite a scene at the north entrance at 6 am but Fred and I got the very first spot. First in and Marv and I were the last out - too cool. Don't ask Fred about Ted's left turn off Fullerton.
Some of our recon people got to our site at 4:30 am (no jive) and they reported the really prime set up spots were already taken. Sort of cool though as those folks set up the most amazing food prep station I've ever seen at any special event. I'm talking barbecues, deep fryers and a gas powered Wok. Thanks to those guys for the bacon breakfast, burgers, brats and paper towels! Hooray!
You see a lot of pretty amazing things at the show. How about a custom made Blue Angels cargo wagon? Thanks out to our new Swami snake handler friend for letting us play with the Python. Getting married at the show? Hooray!
So thanks again to everyone who work so hard to make this such an outstanding event. We'll see you next year!
Happy Scanning! - The CARMA Air Show Crew with a little more Pull
