The Sun ’n Fun Fly-In features all manner of winged machines. The planes will take to
the skies over Polk County this month. [Photo: Jim Froneberger] |
Almost a century after the first barnstormer buzzed the Orlando fairgrounds, the annual Sun ’n Fun Fly-In brings in more than 4,000 planes of all sizes and ages to the skies of Polk County, along with a big crew of volunteer air traffic controllers to jockey the horizon full of wings.
Between April 21-26, visitors can see monoplanes, biplanes, speedsters, garage-built ultralights, sleek private jets, vintage war birds and jet fighters. The Fly-In, now in its 35th year, is the rare air show designed as a “spring break for pilots” as well as a “wow” for awe-struck kids of all ages.
[Photo: Jim Froneberger] |
The show is a dizzying reminder of Florida’s role in aviation. Good weather and flat terrain have beckoned fliers — military, commercial and recreational — from Pensacola to Miami since 1910. Many Fly-In visitors naturally stare up at the U.S. Army’s Golden Knights parachute team, flyovers and other stunts, and visiting seaplanes also splash-land at Lake Agnes. True buffs, veterans and visiting pilots have fun walking the flight lines (watch those propellers), trading tales and admiring old Curtiss Jennies, Ford Trimotors, stubby air racers, fighter jets of every war and amazing home-builts.
The human stars this year are two combatants in a 1972 dogfight over Hanoi, during which Maj. Dan Cherry shot down a MiG-21 flown by Lt. Nguyen Hong My. They met last year and became friends.
Beyond the Fly-In
If you miss this year’s Fly-In, you can savor the past and future year-round in Polk County:
» Just off the main runway, the Florida Air Museum has a hangar packed with gyrocopters, kit-built racers and rare vintage planes, Lindberghiana and Eastern mementos telling the interconnected history of aviation and Florida. Curtiss plane makers taught early aviators (and its first customers) in Miami, Mabel Cody’s Flying Circus thrilled air shows across the state in the 1920s, and squadrons of World War II pilots got their wings in Arcadia and thousands more have learned to fly at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
» At Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, former aerobat and engineer and non-stop collector and curator Kermit Weeks has a great fleet of rarities, from a Russian Antonov and replica Gee Bee racer to a B-24 Liberator, Mustangs and a Flying Fortress you can walk through. Besides the static display, visitors can also ride along in a barnstorming biplane and fly a WWII trainer.
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