Every year, NAS Oceana puts on a fantastic show which includes an evening airshow on Friday, providing the most spectacular backgrounds for aviation photography. This year's show (Friday and Saturday) provided optimal conditions for a show. Clear blue skies!

  This year, the airshow took on a different flavor. Long gone are the beautiful, fast, and powerful F-14 Tomcats, replaced with the more maneuverable F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. The fleet flyover (one of my favorites of Oceana) just didn't seem right without the big cats leading the way. Hornets, however, were there in force! Ten Legacy and Super Hornets flew in formation across show center in their fleet flyover, and both the Legacy and Super Hornets were featured as Tactical Demo's. In addition, the Blue Angles performed in their shiny blue and yellow A-model Hornets.

  All this fun didn't come without a price, as the airshow community lost another member over the weekend. During the final maneuver of Friday's practice run, #6 of the GEICO Skytypers nosed over and crashed, killing the pilot. It was moving to see the Skytypers team depart back to New York on Saturday morning.