The roar of jet engines over the city for the past couple days have been leading up to today’s main event, Armed Forces Day at the waterfront.

Thousands of students are taking part in the daytime show, from 10:30 am to 2 pm, which includes the Snowbirds and The Skyhawks parachute team.

Major Bassam Mnaymneh is the pilot of Snowbird 6.

He says the show will begin with nine planes flying together doing loops and rolls.

“And then we’ll be splitting up doing what’s called the integrated where you’ll see different maneuvers. There’ll be three airplanes and four airplanes and the solos and crosses. Then we’ll team up for our closer and the final split,” he says.

He says it takes a lot of cohesion to make the routines happen, but refers to the old adage ‘practice makes perfect’.

“You would come up and back down and learn to fly the aircraft under G. Once things start to progress you start doing loops. You’ll do 50 loops and each one is different. You’ll do 50 more and start to catch on,”  Mnaymneh says.

The evening show, from 6-9 pm, includes a twilight performance by the CF-18 Demonstration Team (pictured below).

Captain Brian Kilroy says he likes the varying speeds of the plane

“The high alpha pass is my slowest maneuver and instead of going by at 600 miles an hour i’m now going at 100 to 220 miles an hour. So it can go very fast and very slow you get the entire range of fighting the aircraft,” he says.

Everyone is encouraged to wear red to today’s event.

(Photos by station staff)