Chicago Air and Water Show

Aug 17 (Sat) North Avenue Beach, Chicago, IL

Weather: Forecast for both Sat and Sun of the air show were full of rain and overcast skies. So, we took a chance and went on Saturday. The forecast proved correct which put a damper on the air show with poor visibility, rain showers and some unpredicatalbe wind. Turned out Sunday was probably even worse.

We headed out early and parked at the Millennium Parking Garage that has shuttle busses to North Avenue Beach. This was convenient but a bit of a hassle. We queued up in a huge line waiting for the school bus shuttles. Once they started running, it was pretty fast as there were lots of busses. The shuttle to the beach was slow in a bunch of traffic but, we got there in plenty of time before the start of the show and found a good vantage point on the tiny amount of beach that was not under water (Lake Michigan water was really high).

Crowds in general are about 1M people a day for the water show, although with the poor weather, this years crowds were down some. Still, it was a good call to shuttle from Millenium Park instead of trying to find parking near the beach.

We packed chairs, water, snacks and a lunch for the day. The weather was, as predicted, overcast and stormy. The air show was pretty limited and was stopped for over an hour due to heavier rains. At one point, they shuffled all of us off the beach due to high winds and waves. In spite of the weather, we still enjoyed the day and saw some cool planes in the show.

Picture taking was problematic with all the moisture and haze in the air. But, I decided to publish what I had anyway.

North Avenue Beach

Acrobats

MV-22 Osprey

There were two of them. They were AWESOME. Their huge propellars can rotate from horizontal for forward flight or all the way to vertical (seen in the pictures) that allow them to hover over the water. A really cool site. You can see the water spray in a couple of the pictures.

A10 Thunderbolt Worthog and F16

Another really cool airplane. It boasts a gattling gun/cannon that holds 1350 30mm rounds in the nose and it's design allows it for tight turns. It is known as the ground troops best friend and a tank buster. Note: I have some really good pictures of the A10 in the Oshkosh Air Show Blog.

Only had one halfway decent picture of the F16 fighter. The F16 is a single engine supersonic multi-use fighter developed by General Dynamics.

F22 Raptor

Awesome stealth fighter. Single-seat, twin engine, all weather tactical fighter. More pictures in the Oshkosh Air Show entry.

Red Arrows - BAE Hawk II, Royal Air Force (RAF)

This was a special treat fro the air show. These are the RAF equivalent of the US Thunderbirds. They had not been to the Chicago air show for ten years. As you can see, they had really cool red, white and blue smoke in their performance.

Blue Angels - F/A-18 Navy

Should have been the grand finale. Everyone loves the blue angels and their tight flying formations. Unfortunately, they had a very abbreviated performance only taking a few passes over the crowd before heading back to the Gary, Indiana airfield (which all the show planes originate from). I guess it was the poor weather. Still fun to watch.

Summary

The Chicago Air and Water Show is a fantastic event, put on for free by the city of Chicago. Stars ****

The weather did not cooperate this year but, what can you do.

I was a little intimidated with crowds expecting to be 1M but, using the shuttle from Millenium Park avoided the biggest hassle of finding parking and dealing with the massive traffic jam.

The aerobatics shows were very limited or eliminated due to the weather.

The Ospreys and the Fighters are my favorite.

There was no water show, not sure if ther usually is and was just cancelled due to weather. We plan to come back in the next year or two.