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2017 Airshows

Wingnuts Flying Circus Airshow Warbird Photo Review
Warbirds at the Tarkio, MO Airport - July 8, 2017

The 2017 Best Little Airshow in the Middle of Nowhere!!

How do you define "nowhere?"  Try Tarkio, MO in northwest Missouri, with a population of 1,583 persons.  It is located in Atchison County with a population of 5,685.  Omaha, NE is the nearest large city 85 miles to the north.  Between Tarkio and Kansas City, MO 118 miles to the south are corn and soy bean fields, and cow pastures.  The parking lot for the show is a cow pasture where one needed to watch where they stepped.

And yet, the Wingnuts Flying Circus Airshow had this!

A B-2 fly-by.

And this!

Four P-51 Mustangs.

And this!

A P-40 and P-63.

And this!

An A-10 fly-by.

How does such a show at a small town airport pull in such acts?  Some of it is the work of Congressman Sam Graves, seen here waiting on the runway for Kent Pietsch to stop the aircraft just as the propeller touches the congressman's hand.  Congressman Graves started his aviation career by washing airplanes at this same airport, and earlier in the day he had flown the CAF P-40 for the crowd.  Over the years, I have seen references to this small airshow in western Missouri put on by the local congressman, which is done on an every other year basis.  The Wingnuts Flying Circus Airshow is sponsored by EAA Chapter 1405, which it calls it the "Greatest Little Airshow."  All of the members of EAA Chapter 1405 need to be commended for their work on the show while congressman is away in Washington.  Airshows take a team effort to put on.

I really enjoyed getting off the interstate and driving the state highways to get to the airport.  This is a very pretty area, with many hills and a multitude of green fields filled with crops.  It looks like a very nice area to live and raise a family.

 
Did I mention that Team Aeroshell also was present and performed?  Here Alan Henley stands up after the team did its end of show "burnout."

I could watch them every weekend.

My day at the show started with the Aeroshell Team.  Just as I arrived at 8am they left were taking off on VIP rides.  I took this photo from the parking lot.

P-51 "Cripes A Mighty" was being pulled out of the hangar first thing in the morning.  Also visible is the crowd line which ran from where I am standing to the far side of the last hangar.  The crowd watched the show from between the orange pylons and the hangars.  One spectator has already picked out a spot to watch the show from.  The open hangar doors gave some shade and relief from the heat until about noon time.

Mike Wiskus was there doing an inverted ribbon cut.

Congressman Graves gave us several nice high speed low passes in the P-40.

He also included three passes doing rolls.

He finished up his routine with a nice photo pass.

Jim Pietz was there in his aerobatic Beech Bonanza.  I had never seen this act before.

No self respecting airshow is going to consider itself complete without the classic Stearman.  In this case it was Gary Rowman in his Super Stearman.

A very nice feature of the show is that the pilots could taxi in front of the crowd after their acts.

Bobby Younkin was there with his 1943 Twin Beech doing his normal great performance.

The warbird segment of the show lasted 40 minutes from start to finish.  This included three formation fly-bys from the four Mustangs and the P-40/P-63 combination.  Then there were a multitude of low passes down the runway, followed by the P-40 demonstration, and finishing with a demo by the P-51 'Gunfighter."

Normally P-51s don't do a dirty pass during aerobatic demos, but "Gunfighter" did.  Note that the canopy is cracked open a little to give the pilot some fresh air in the 90 degree heat.

I will finish where I started; in the parking lot.  This was my last photo of the day.  The B-2 photos were taken from the parking lot as I was executing an early departure from the show.  It was 260 miles to my hotel for the evening, and I did not need to be delayed. 

The show was three hours in length, and had a first class lineup of warbirds and civilian aerobatic acts.  This show was as good or better than many of the larger shows I have been to.  It was a great day at the Tarkio Airshow!