Couple others- I grew up in happy valley goose bay when it was still the low level flying training zone for The CAF, RAF Luftwaffe, RNLAF, and parts of the American military.

Sonic booms were the coolest thing when I was like 10.

I got to be in the cockpit of a c130 during take off and landing in extremely low level clouds. I've been in the cockpit of a c130 for full 9 hrs flight time. Load master directed me straight up into the cockpit and I even got a headset. My name is in the paperwork. I happened to be flying out by myself (on a regular military flight) and knew the load master through my dad and the ground crew from being adorable at church(also through my dad) and once they all worked out it was me the idea of just adding me to the crew came out and they decided to make it magic for me. It was supercool.

The one thing that still is to this day fresh and cool every time is the snowbirds. i was 4 the first time I saw them at the greenwood air show. My grandfather spent a day explaining to me that he couldn't come to the next airshow to me, as he was afraid of planes (ptsd from wwii) and I remember going "grandpa, grandpa my planes will not scare you. The snowbirds aren't like other planes, they do tricks!" And then I was so confused that he immediately did not fall under the spell of the snowbirds.

I lived in comox for 4 years about 20 years after that and every spring the snowbirds work out their air show over 2 weeks of morning and afternoon practices there. I had air shows twice a day! It was glorious. I still get off center this time of year, my brain says I should be hearing jets.

When covid shut down happened, they canceled the local air show and it was going to be the snowbirds and the blue angels. I wanted(still do)to see the blue angels c130. But I was like NO SNOWBIRDS AND NO FAT ALBERT? we did end up getting a mini snowbirds show and a slightly less mini snowbirds show the next summer. But I have yet to see fat Albert.

I've seen the snowbirds, the frecce tricolori, the red arrows, and the thunderbirds. So many 1 jet demo teams.

That first air show when I was 4, I got to tour a c5. I remember it being immensely huge. 30 years later I got to walk through another one. It was still intimidatingly large and the mystic that my tiny brain had told myself was sufficiently kept.

Ok so we lived by the air field and the path we walked our dog along ran 50 feet from the fence, and directly against the fence is the take off/landing zone for this one helicopter company. On our way across they were pushing a helicopter on skids into the take off zone. When we came back they had just started the engine my kid and I decided to wait. They were 8ish. So we sit on the ground about 20 feet from the fence because we dont want to get caught up in the wind.

We wait 15, 20 min and the helicopter takes off, floating 10ish feet above the ground it copters across the take off ground until it is directly across the fence from us. Amazing to us. It popped up over the fence and the pilot bowed to us, by tipping the copter nose downwards and then it whipped towards and over us.

Been to a lot of airshow. Best one was me, my kid and that one helicopter. early 2010s wpeg, if there is a pilot on here thats ever shown off people in the same way. We both had purple hair.