Yellow Thunder

STILL SHOPPING FOR CHRISTMAS? How about some aviation action for that special person? We will also create a personalized gift certificate for you to give to that special someone. YellowThunder.ca/harvard-rides/

There’s something about round engines...

JOSEPH MOUREAU Yesterday a formation of 4 F-16 fighter planes from the #belgianairforce followed by a Supermarine Spitfire flew over the church at Strombeek-Bever to pay their last respects to 99 year old Joseph Moureau, who was the last living Belgian WW2 fighter pilot.

Mid-COVID shenanigans.

Yup! New Oil and filter for Thanksgiving.

A sad day for us. Headed to Rocky Maintain House this morning for Ken and Hannelie’s funerals. Such a fitting ‘blue sky’ day to say farewell to our friends.

My last contact with great friends Ken Fowler and Hanalie were just 7 days ago. This photo was a group shot at Villeneuve airport after our 4-plane flypast over... Edmonton for the Battle of Britain memorial. I remember all my flypasts, but this one will hold a special place in my heart --- having Ken/Hanalie and Kyle in the flight. May Ken and Hanalie rest in peace, and Ken's legacy live long within Kyle and all of us who have taken lessons instilled into us by Ken. My sincerest condolences to Kyle, Wendy and the rest of the Fowler family. I would also like to extend condolences to Hanalie's family. While not as widely popular as Ken, Hanalie was a beautiful, intelligent bundle of optimistic energy loved and respected by many - myself included. I, for one, will never forget them.

A ragtag flight, but it'll still be fun!

View from Dave's office window. These guys are already practicing formation takeoffs ... some are not even 6 months old yet!

Just hanging out - awesome day to fly!

HUGE thank you to Dave Watson with Yellow Thunder for flying in to the final event of the Harvard Airberta: A Race in History! Your support for the HHAS is so GREATLY appreciated!

Hanging out with Harvard Historical Aviation Society event today with great-nephew Julian.

In keeping with the theme of the week and in honor of the Airshow of the Cascades, here's a few pictures from Friday nights at the Airshow. #ericksonaircraftcollection #airshowofthecascades #fridaynightfireworks

It is all rainbows and warbirds on Oahu! A Grumman FM2 Wildcat. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jaimar Carson Bondurant) Michael Polle...y will pilot this Grumman FM2 Wildcat that was a carrier and land-based fighter flown by the U.S. Navy and Marines in battles such as Guadalcanal, the Coral Sea, Midway and the Solomons. #WingsOverPearl #PearlHarbor #ww2history #Grumman #Wildcat #aviation #instaplane #avgeek #avporn #aircraft #aviationismylife #planesofinstagram #mil_aviation_originals

Awesome trip back from Vanderhoof to home base - taken from 11,500 with 25kn tailwind . The big tall one is Mt Robson.

Hello Jasper. Riding the wave and getting great ground speed in Jasper.

One snap from the glorious trip this morning from Edson to Vanderhoof. The ramp shot has the beautiful Grumman Mallard we followed around BC for 2 hours - during the "Air Hug" arranged by the Vanderhoof International Airshow Society.

On our way to Vanderhoof community hug. Dorian with his new license and Dave is in the Harvard behind us

Hit the local media!

Anyone in the Prince George/Vanderhoof BC area feel like a RIDE in our Harvard? We'll be available at Vanderhoof Friday afternoon August 14. Browse to our web site at http://yellowthunder.ca/harvard-rides/ for details.

Anyone on this route should look out for a yellow Harvard! This will be a fun time for us - the next best thing to an air show!

Dave and Drew doing a high speed pass with Drew at the controls of the Harvard Mark IV.

HARVARD RIDES AVAILABLE!!! We are having ride day, July 18 & 19 at the Ponoka airport. Tour and Aerobatic flights available. Check out the link below and book your flight. Also, try your luck with the Ponoka R/C Flyers raffle, raffling off a tour flight. http://yellowthunder.ca/ponoka-r-c-raffle/

Fist flight for the completion of Harvard Ground School. 36/2250 rpm takeoff.

Our first successful ground school went off without a hitch! What a great time talking about Harvard’s, airplanes, and pilot stuff. Thanks for attending boys!

Happy Independence Day to our American friends!

HARVARD GROUND SCHOOL & FLIGHT Day one we'll learn the airplane systems, basic maintenance requirements, as well as ground and air characteristics. Day 2 will relate the theoretical into practical. July 4/5, 2020! ... sign up > http://yellowthunder.ca/harvard-seminars/

Yellow Thunder's first groundschool! Day one we'll learn the airplane systems, basic maintenance requirements, as well as ground and air characteristics. Day 2 will be a relaxing day for rides - relate the theoretical into practical. Who knows, you might get the stick! July 4/5, 2020! Click the URL for more information and sign up. #t6harvard #albertatourism #flightexperiene #YellowThunder #Warbirds http://yellowthunder.ca/harvard-seminars/

Our good friend Ken is now famous. Way to go Ken!

Dang! Them Russian airplanes are tough!

As the @WingsOverPearl P-51 is a Red Tail Mustang, this Memorial Day we honor The Tuskegee Airmen, the Red Tail Squadron, the first black pilots in U.S. history... who didn’t just excel in combat in World War IIthey also broke racial barriers. This is their story. https://www.popularmechanics.com//tuskegee-airmen-facts-hi #WingsOverPearl #PearlHarbor #ww2history #p51 #p51Mustang #p51D #lestweforget #memorialday #aviation #instaplane #aviationgeek #avgeek #avporn #planeporn #aircraft #aviationismylife #planesofinstagram #mil_aviation_originals

Tomorrow the United States marks Memorial Day. Why? The Civil War, which ended in the spring of 1865, claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history and ...required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. By the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers. It is unclear where exactly this tradition originated; numerous different communities may have independently initiated the memorial gatherings. And some records show that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemoration was organized by a group of freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. (https://www.history.com//memorial-day-civil-war-slavery-ch) Nevertheless, in 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. Did you know? Each year on Memorial Day a national moment of remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m. local time. #WingsOverPearl #lestweforget #memorialdayweekend #thankyou #freedom #veterans #military #remember #honor #neverforget #werememberthem

Our sincerest sympathies go out to the Snowbirds and they're families today. Rest in peace Jenn.

Fake! They make you put your table tray away before landing!

Formation flying in a glider!!! That's energy management right there, all you have are brakes!

OK, to shake up the Covid blues we engaged this innovative company to build us some custom Yellow Thunder shoes. If you love our logo like we do, check them out and order yourself a pair! https://iloveahangar.com/collections/mens-shoes-1 (ladies sizes too!)

Our friends in Honolulu!

It's hard not to share this one! Check out our friends in Madras.

Hard to disagree with this article!

#Repost @educational.history.memes #YellowThunder #canadianmilitary Canadian soldiers would emerge from the First World War with a reputation for winning victories that others could not. But even in a war of unparalleled ferocity, enemy and ally alike would remember the Canadians as having been particularly brutal.... British war correspondent Philip Gibbs had a front row seat on four years of Western Front fighting. He would single out the Canadians as having been particularly obsessed with killing Germans, calling their war a kind of vendetta. The Canadians fought the Germans with a long, enduring, terrible, skilful patience, he wrote after the war. Germans developed a special contempt for the Canadian Corps, seeing them as unpredictable savages. In the final weeks of the war, Canadian Fred Hamilton would describe being singled out for a beating by a German colonel after he was taken prisoner. I don’t care for the English, Scotch, French, Australians or Belgians but damn you Canadians, you take no prisoners and you kill our wounded, the colonel told him.

At the Northwest Council of Airshows (NWCAS)....and this is one awesome picture.

We were there that day!

We'll be there, and encourage all others involved in air shows to attend this very informative networking event.

Whack a mole! Dave inspecting cables in the doghouse.

Relax day with our close friends from Showline after a very successful ICAS conference. We'll start announcing shows in the weeks to come. Showline Airshows

The team pose at ICAS. One day to go and already have more shows signed than before in December. 2020 promises to be a great year!

For all the fans of It’s A Wonderful Life and Jimmy Stewart. Just months after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in The Philadelphia Story, Jim...my Stewart, one of the best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II. An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots. Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted. Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps' top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it. Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit. But his wartime service came at a high personal price. In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being flak happy, today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When he returned to the US in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming (in one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally). He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over. As one of Stewart's biographers put it, "Every decision he made [during the war] was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up. In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in It’s a Wonderful Life. The rest is history. Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on filmed for potentially millions to see. But despite Stewart's inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and loved actors in American history. When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, "This country's conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we'll have to fight. This holiday season, as many of us watch the classic Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s also a fitting time to remember the sacrifices of Jimmy Stewart and all the men who gave up so much to serve their country during wartime. We will always remember you! Postscript: While fighting in Europe, Stewart's Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him. Jimmy Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89. -- Ned Forney, Writer, Saluting America's Veterans

The NWCAS Board met this weekend to finish up planning for the 2020 conference Mar 13-14 in Vancouver see you there!

What would you name her? https://copanational.org//first-cc-295-in-rcaf-sar-colou/