The trip today was one that has been only the calendar in the study for a number of month's now. We headed down to McChord Air Base for Air Expo 2005.

We arrived reasonably early, which meant we could get a good position near the fence to photograph the day's flying.

Unfortunately, I had taken note of the security advice on the website and decided not to bring our chairs...I must learn to ignore such advice at times.

So, standing next to the fence for the next 6 hours became an interesting exercise in keeping my legs moving without straying too far and letting someone grab our spot...

I was fortunate that we had decied to drop into CompUSA to pick up a couple of extra memory cards for my camera. I filled all three that I had with me, and could have really used the fourth..which I had left in the card reader at home.

I'm really happy with how the photos have turned out - the more practice I get with shooting airshows, the better things seem to get! We were lucky to get a spot right next to the Thunderbirds control/support van, so we had a good idea of what was going on all day. It also afforded a really good view of the Thunderbirds' ground show too! There's plenty more photos in the gallery, with C-17s, F-18s, F-15s, and of course, more of the Thunderbirds' F-16s.