Hope for humidity! That's when you see the big vapor! OTOH, high humidity sometimes means cloud cover, which makes pictures suck.
I have the good fortune to live in north Florida, and I'm just a couple of hours from their home base. I see them at least once a year, sometime 3 times! If I make the beach show in July, this year will be 3.
I don't know if you're familiar with the show, but start looking for the sneak plane when the diamond exits to the right, and the narrator starts something about how you should watch while the leader maneuvers for the turnaround. If you hear the words "Now watch," and haven't found the sneak plane, you're probably not going to!
Also, if you're close enough to the front to see the runway, the solo takeoffs are worth trying to shoot. They run together, which they didn't used to do, so it's difficult to get the both, but #5 lifts off
hard and rolls with the gear extended. When he lifts the tailcones nearly scrape! Then #6 does a low transition (raises the gear almost while he's still rolling on it) and maintains that 10-foot altitude the length of the field, then yanks the stick at the end, again nearly scraping tailcones.
And don't forget, the Blue Angels do 2 sneaks, the one from the left (at 50 feet!) followed immediately by one from behind the crowd, and he pulls up
hard just as he crosses the crowd line.
Some of the sneaks I've gotten over the years, some not so good:
Very cloudy, but very humid day, scanned and seriously cropped from print:
Very clear, very dry day, digital SLR:
Look how many people have no clue! Film again:
The lowest one I've ever seen. Also film.
And don't forget to find the second one almost immediately:
They do a couple of shows each year over water. Second weekend of July at Pensacola Beach, and sometime during the year in San Francisco. There may be others, but when they do a show over water you don't get the takeoff runs, but depending on the structures and beach slope, you can be
above the aircraft for part of the show!
I see on the web site for the show that there will be a number of WWII era aircraft flying. That's really cool. And an F100 Super Sabre! I've never seen one of those in flight (unless you count an air show my dad has 8mm movies of from when I was 3!)
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