QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show

[enits]

I'm really excited about this.  Too bad my spouse will be missing out.  Now I have an extra ticket!  Anyway, my son and I are still planning on going.  He's really young (3) and the noise level of the planes may be a bit too much for him so I have to get something for his ears before we head out there. 

[Patrick]

We are going to try and get there by 9:30.  I know the last fly-by by the B2 is 3:55 - is it supposed to make a few passes?

[Patrick]

Besides traffic being HORRIFIC, the show was absolutely amazing. Exited 169 at 46th St. at 9:30 and parked about 45 minutes later. Stayed until 2pm and had to leave to run an errand.  Am about to head back and park off Mingo to catch the B-2 and rumored B-52.

[sgrizzle]

Unfortunately I couldn't leave home until about 9:30 and had to be back by 3. Thanks to the nearly 5 hours in traffic I only got to spend an hour at the show. Got to see the racing pylon demo, wing walker, acrobats, and two rocket planes so it was still very good.

I posted some of the better pictures on flickr. You can even see Dewey and Tasha Does Tulsa.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgrizzle/sets/72157623923978210/

[Hoss]

Unfortunately I couldn't leave home until about 9:30 and had to be back by 3. Thanks to the nearly 5 hours in traffic I only got to spend an hour at the show. Got to see the racing pylon demo, wing walker, acrobats, and two rocket planes so it was still very good.

I posted some of the better pictures on flickr. You can even see Dewey and Tasha Does Tulsa.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgrizzle/sets/72157623923978210/

SAid I was going to go but after hearing about the nightmare traffic, I'm glad I didn't actually wind up buying the advance tickets.  Everyone I talked to said traffic and the distance you had to park away from the event almost made it not worth it.

I wound up going to the south observation area (on Memorial just across from Fine Airport Parking) to watch the B52 and B2.  That was really all I cared about at that point.  Got some decent photos of both; will post them and link to them on Flickr as soon as I can.

[OSU]

One of the worst organized events I have ever attended. Woefully inadequate facilities for bathroom and food, worst of all though was the pacing and schedule of the airshow. I was also disappointed by the fact that the f-15 and b-25 were no shows  .

[DolfanBob]

Wow ! and I don't mean in a good way. First off, I'm watching 2 news Saturday morning and the event organizer says to take 169 North to 46th st and head West.
I left the house a little to late, around 9:15 A.M. Holy snap ! construction on 169 and 244 and then the traffic at 46th st North........We parked at 11:55 A.M.
And then the show was the most mixed up un-organized thing I have ever seen.
At least a Hour between anything happening. I will give them this, When planes actually got in the air. It was a good show. And as for Rocket racing. Well lets just say they have a long way to go before that ever transpires. Two planes went up and circled around and then landed. Two and a half hours later. They try again to as they say, Rocket race. Two planes go up, and a few minutes later. Off go the burners and they land without racing.
I took some good pics of the planes on the ground on display. But really guy's, not a real good first time experience. We pack up and are ready to leave at 4:00 P.M.
And good Gawd ! 5:15 P.M. we finally hit pavement. Got home to Broken Arrow around 6 P.M. Lets just hope the organizers have learned a valuable lesson. And try to make it a little less of a hassle to attend and to enjoy.

[sgrizzle]

There were 3 either F15's or F-18 (I wasn't close enough to see) but they left around 11.

There were tons of port-a-pottys on their side in the parking areas but very few on the grounds.

My parking spot was fine and so were all the others as best as I can tell. They obviously had way more in attendance than they expected and other than a couple of things, seemed to go pretty smoothly.

I only had two complaints based on my experience at other airshows

1. Traffic management horrible. You CANNOT move that many people with a single lane for entry and a single lane for exit. Not possible. Not sure why port road into the area was closed off but they should've added another entry/exit point, if only temporary. This was like having the BOK center off a one-lane road in the middle of nowhere.

2. It's called a schedule. If you have to adjust it for weather or technical difficulties, fine but these people are used to working 15 minute shows. Just say 10am-11am we will have acts A,B,C and D then 11-12 we will have acts E,F,G and H with other flybys.

And a minor one. Most airshows so like the Tulsa one did which is have the static displays separate from the performing displays. Oshkosh does not separate and its a lot cooler if you can actually view the same planes that are flying and not just one or the other.

The rocket racing was cool but they needed to have it more together and.. well.. how hard would it be to have a rocket plane in the static display area?

[OSU]

Sgrizzle, those were F-18s and I wouldn't say they were really part of the show, maybe they were getting gas at the Guard Base. I had a great parking spot because I got there at 9:15, but when I was leaving at like 5 I passed quite a few people walking to their cars that had to be at least a mile away from the air show. The rocket racing portion was poorly managed and there was an hour of dead time on either side of the races, there was literally two solid hours of nothing aside from a that king air flying around.

[fotd]

One of the worst organized events I have ever attended. Woefully inadequate facilities for bathroom and food, worst of all though was the pacing and schedule of the airshow. I was also disappointed by the fact that the f-15 and b-25 were no shows  .

Sounds like.....the New Tulsa!

[Nik]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/rocket-racers-are-go-two-aircraft-put-on-a-show-in-tulsa

Engadget is one of the biggest tech blogs. Pretty cool to get publicity on the site. I read it everyday so I was a little surprised to see this pop up in my RSS feed.

[custosnox]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100428_11_0_hrimgs454759&rss_lnk=11