Thursday 13th April

The boys didn't sleep in despite having gone to bed later than usual.

We spent the morning doing the grocery shopping & walking along the waterfront. The supermarket was packed & the packer said it had been busy since 8am. All the while there were a few planes buzzing around & an Iriquois helicopter flew low overhead of us at one stage. We had lunch & then tried to get the boys to have a rest because they were both very grumpy. It didn't work because not 1/4 of an hour into rest time than a jet came flying over top of us. What a noise, & from then on any rest was out of the window.

I suggested to Scott that maybe we should just take a leisurely trip to the airfield because obviously a few planes would be taking off and landing. What a brillant idea, even if I do say so myself! We got to park inside the airfield fence right up only meters away from the landing strip! and the planes! OMG they were all out either getting parked in their spots for Friday or they were in the air practising. We got to be inches away from this Kittyhawk & in fact if we had wanted we could've touched it.The first plane that we saw was this Orion which absolutely buzzed us. What a thrill. We watched it go through it's show routine (which I can now tell you is exactly what it did on the show days). We then saw the Seasprites do their routine. All this time we were able to stand mere meters away & watch it.We then went & looked at the static displays & there was hardly anyone there looking. Most of the onlookers were actually those driving in to Wanaka & stopping on the road side of the airport fence to look.We just couldn't believe our luck. We saw nearly every plane that was to be on display that day. The only things we missed out on seeing that day was the F111 which wasn't going to land anyway, the Belriot X1 & the Fastest Indian replica.

Oh & did I tell you how much we had to pay for this? It was FREEEEEEEEEE! Scott was so impressed he said he really didn't mind if he never got to see the airshow proper because he saw so much & with so few people around