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The Dawn Patrol Rendezvous

Al's Backgrounder...

I had the pleasure of working at the third appearance of the Great War Aeroplanes Association (GWAA) at the USAF Museum's "Dawn Patrol Rendezvous" this year (September 29,30 & October 1, 2000.) The next appearance of the GWAA in Dayton will be in 2003 for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first flight at the AF Museum.

If you have been keeping up on your reading, you'll remember that the Dawn Patrol Rendezvous will be a centerpiece of our next reunion in 2003. I am scheduling our reunion activities to coincide with the next GWAA visit September 11 - 14, 2003. I thought by working at this year's event I could gain insight into the inner workings of setting up and running the Rendezvous thus being able to better integrate our reunion activities into the Rendezvous. It was well worth the effort  plus I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The GWAA is a national organization of ow ners/builders/pilots of aircraft of the WWI era. They support several flyins across the country every year. Not every pilot/aircraft makes every show but we are expecting an allout effort by many of them to be in Dayton in 2003. These guys are a terrific bunch of dedicated hobbyists/enthusiasts who contribute their time and money to support the USAF Museum at their Rendezvous.

Each aircraft, vehicle and costume represents hundreds of hours of work driven by a dedication to the preservation of an era almost lost to living memory.

We had 34 WWI aircraft here this year including two Fokker DR1 triwings. We expect 80 aircraft in 2003. There were about 75 WWI reenactors in period uniforms or costumes, old tents, guns, medical corp, etc. We also had about 40 large scale WWI model aircraft (wing span of 712 feet) and 25 gorgeous restored autos from the 19101920 period. (I never saw a better collection of autos from this era.) We also had several canopies with vendors of WWI period stuff, antique and new books, large scale model kits etc. It was a great show!!

On the following pages I have reproduced information from the airshow program for Rendezvous 2000. From the schedules you can see that something was going on in the air all the time on all three days. As many as a dozen a/c in the air at one time. Lots of very low passes before the crowd. It was a terrific show. 2003 will be even better!

Hope you enjoy this peek at this year's Rendezvous and that it creates an uncontrollable urge to be here in Dayton in 2003. It's gonna be a blast!!!

-- Al

Dawn Patrol