Written by Deuce Ruby, age 11
Ever since I was 6 I dreamed of being a pilot, so I was thrilled when I heard I was going to the air show. It was great that one of the Dayton Air Show staff members told me that there was going to be a Navy flight simulator. I was so excited at the thought of riding in that!
Finally, the day came, it was time to go to the air show. It was packed… I looked and looked for the Navy stand, so that I could ride the flight simulator. They had a few different activities set up, like a football throw (you had to throw the ball through the hole). I thought to myself that this was simple enough so I tried it and on my first throw I got the ball through the hole. Then at the Navy stand next to the football throw, they had cool posters and bumper stickers. My favorite Navy bumper sticker said, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it.” I thought those were cool.
Then I saw it, the flight simulator – the moment I had been waiting for. I was so excited but the line was so long, it felt like forever that we waited. In reality, it was only 10 minutes. It was finally my turn to get in it, so I climbed aboard with my little brother. Oh my gosh! It was so awesome. They played a movie about a bombing. What happened was that the Navy submarine was sunk and then the officers swam to the surface and sent the coordinates to the Naval Aviators, so that they could bomb the enemy base. The jet took off and flew faster than the speed of sound and then dropped a bomb on the enemy base and then there was a huge explosion. The entire time that the movie played, the simulator moved up and down, side to side, and shook us up. This made the movie seem real to me. Now I really wanted to join the Navy – I mean, man that was so cool!
So we went back to our seats (we were right near the runway). We had great seats compared to last year. We were way back in the crowd last year, so far that we could not even see the runway. But this year we could even see the Blue Angels, right in front of us on the runway. They looked great with their slick blue paint jobs, complete with yellow on the tip of the wings. It reminded me of lightning. The Blue Angels go faster than the speed of sound. Before the Blue Angels took to the air, I got to see their support plane, Fat Albert. It is a huge plane and had great abilities to move and turn fast, even though it was huge and looked like it would be clumsy. It was awesome to see, but what was really cool was that my mom got to ride in it, so she was part of the air show. When I heard that the plane had periods of zero gravity (and people flew up into the air), I wished I could have gone too. Towards the end of the Blue Angels flight, it started to rain so we headed to our van. I had so much fun at the Dayton Air Show, and cannot wait to go again next year.
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