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Air show fans find that practice is perfect

Forget the traffic jams and overpriced vendors; the Blue Angels put on great free shows all the time if you know where and when to look.

PENSACOLA - Air show spectators often cope with huge crowds, heavy traffic and long treks from distant parking lots to see the Navy's Blue Angels perform their aerial artistry. But that's not the case for Billy Colburn.

The 56-year-old chemical worker drives from nearby Gulf Shores, Ala., nearly every week during the show season - March through early November - to join small but enthusiastic crowds of tourists and locals who watch the precision flying team practice.

"The practice is equal to the show," Colburn said. "That's what I tell my friends. I say, "You can come right in, you don't have to have the big lines and all, the big wait, the traffic jams.' "

While some big-city air shows boast crowds of 1-million or more, the 8:30 a.m. practices draw anywhere from 600 to 7,500 spectators on most Tuesdays and Wednesdays at Pensacola Naval Air Station, the team's home base.

Public viewing is allowed from an area along the runway just behind the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

Dan Hubert, 38, an engineer from Waukesha, Wis., brought his family to see the Blue Angels practice while vacationing in the Florida Panhandle.

"It gives you a more closeup feeling," Hubert said.

The practices have become a tourist attraction in themselves for Blue Angels fans, said Nathaniel Robinson, marketing director for the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, the museum's fundraising and public relations arm.

"Most people can't get to one of their annual shows, so they plan their vacations around these practices," Robinson said.

The Blue Angels treat the practices with the same focus as regular air shows, said Lt. Cmdr. Max McCoy of Orlando, who flies the No. 4 jet.

"When the canopy comes down we're not thinking about the people watching us," McCoy said. "There is no difference whether there are a million people watching you or one person."

Bleachers in the viewing area can accommodate up to 900 people. Spectators also can bring lawn chairs for the sessions that last about a half hour to 45 minutes. A tram ferries disabled visitors from the museum's parking lot to the viewing area.

Admission to the practices and the museum is free. So is parking. Blue Angels T-shirts and other souvenirs are on sale in the viewing area and at the museum's gift shop.

After Wednesday practices, the pilots also sign autographs in the museum's Blue Angels Atrium, where four of the team's old A-4 Skyhawk jets hang in a diamond formation.

[Last modified May 8, 2005, 00:45:19]