Local Talent Dives In at Point Mugu : Aviation: Attendance drops at annual air show as big military flight acts are missing from lineup. But Navy squadrons see it as their ‘moment to shine.’

Thousands of aviation fans turned out for some old-fashioned, seat-of-your-pants aerobatics Saturday at the 32nd annual presentation of the Point Mugu Air Show.

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With the absence this year of the big military flight-demonstration teams such as the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds, the air show’s producers relied on a mix of local Navy squadrons and nationally known civilian aerobatic acts to fill the gap.

Local Navy Point Mugu aviators said they relished their moment out from under the wings of the big acts, even though attendance--estimated at 30,000 by air-show organizers--was down dramatically from last year’s first-day crowd of about 100,000 people. The show at Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station continues today.

“This was our moment to shine,” said Capt. Daniel R. McCourt, commander of the VX-9 Detachment at Point Mugu, a Navy unit that flies and tests F-14D Tomcats and their weapons systems. “It’s kind of nice to be able to show the local folks and our families what we do when we come to work.”

During their performance, squadron members wowed the crowd while demonstrating classic Navy-style dog-fighting, strafing and bombing runs that shocked the audience with loud, percussive explosions and sent fireballs into the skies over the infield on the base’s main runway.

Navy Lt. Max Duggan, one of the squadron’s pilots who flew Saturday, said demonstrating his F/A-18 Hornet’s capabilities before a hometown crowd was a blast.

“We kind of like being the center of attention,” said the 31-year-old Duggan, a Camarillo resident. “Not only do our friends and family get to see us fly, so do our maintenance crews--they’re the ones that do all hard work that make us look good out there.”

On the squadron’s last bombing run, a pair of F-14 Tomcats simulated the release of four 1,000-pound bombs over the infield. Immediately after the explosion, ground crews intentionally set a portion of the field on fire.

That provided a perfect entree for a C-130E Hercules from the Channel Islands Air National Guard, which swooped in moments later and extinguished the blaze. The big green military transport demonstrated the guard’s most recent high-profile mission: fighting forest fires.

The show formally started at noon with World War II-era fighters from the Southern California Wing of the Confederate Air Force, which performed the famed “missing man” flyby.

The Camarillo-based squadron was followed by the presentation of a 1,200-square-foot American flag by a member of the all-female Misty Blues Parachute Team, who unfurled the banner as she jumped from a helicopter.

Before the modern Navy squadrons took to the skies, a rare Grumman F8-F2 Bearcat fighter, which saw service at the close of World War II, joined up for a wingtip-to-wingtip flyby with its modern-day counterpart, a Grumman F-14D Tomcat--showing off more than 50 years of Navy fighter aircraft.

The show also highlighted the skills of several civilian aerobatic specialists, who flipped, rolled, dived and twisted through the skies over the sprawling base.

One pilot brought an international flair to the show with his Russian-made Sukhoi-29 high-performance monoplane.

Walnut Creek-based pilot John Piggott waited two years and paid $175,000 for the specialized Russian plane--designed with high-tech composite materials specifically for the Russian National Aerobatic Team.

“They designed and built this aircraft specifically to beat Western pilots in air shows,” Piggott said. “It has no military history to it and it wasn’t a trainer. They built it to win medals.”

During his performance, Piggott maneuvered the gleaming plane from horizontal to vertical, so that it glided nose-up across the sky, a stunt that caused the crowd to roar in amazement.

“My whole thing is to try and get the audience to say, ‘Airplanes aren’t suppose to do that,’ ” Piggott said. “That’s the kind of act I’m trying to develop.”

* MORE AIR SHOW IMAGES: B2