The 40th annual Wings & Wheels event will return to the Sedona Airport on Saturday, Oct. 14, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission and parking will be free for this longstanding Verde Valley fall tradition featuring static display aircraft, a car show by the Sedona Car Club and a variety of food trucks.
“We’re going to have some state-of the-art military equipment for folks to get up close and personal with. I’m sure they have not had those opportunities in the past,” airport manager Ed Rose said. “We’ve got food, we’ve got cars, some of OHVs promoting their availability. I want folks to walk [out of] this event and say, ‘Oh, this is what Sedona is all about in a nutshell … We also have a number of super-cool aircraft that we invite for static display to promote aviation and its benefits to the community and to the state’s economy.”
The display aircraft will include a Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor and a pair of Marine F-35B Lightning II joint strike fighters.
“[We’ll also have] some other rotorcraft,” Rose said. “West Wind Aviation is going to bring a caravan up, they run tours out of the valley up to the Grand Canyon and they do make a stop in Sedona. They’lll be having a static display of craft and promoting themselves. Then we’ve got 10 different craft vendors that are going to be present. You’ve got snakes, we’ve got veterans, we’ve got the Red Cross, we’ve got Zeus Transportation, Embry Riddle … and UFO Mike [Higgins who] does the Sedona UFO tours … We’re supposed to have in [the] neighborhood of 20 Lamborghinis show up to just sit outside the show and Guidance Aviation will be doing some helicopter flights.”
In celebration of the “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse that will take place on the morning of the event, the Sedona Airport will also be handing out complimentary eclipse viewing glasses while supplies last.
No aerial flights are currently scheduled to be for sale at this year’s event.
The car show will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with this year’s show celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Chevrolet Corvette. The club’s goal is to have around 90 cars on display.
Proceeds from the event will go toward an annual scholarship that the club awards to a student starting a career somewhere in the automotive industry. Club president Dave Lombardi said that they typically raise around $2,500 for the fund across all of their events.
“The car show has 12 classes of cars, and we give a prize for first and second place in that class,” Lombardi said. “The classes range from cars going back to the early 1900s and to newer cars, and then trucks mainly to Detroit pickups, and cars that are pure sports cars, like Triumphs and Austin-Healeys. Then we have a class for exotic cars, which would be Lamborghinis and Ferraris and things of that nature. Then we have three special awards that are given. One to the participant’s favorite car of the year. In other words, all the people who entered a car, they get to pick their favorite car out of the entries. Then the mayor of Sedona gives an award and the presidents of our car club give an award.”
““Also [Wednesday, Oct. 25] we’ve got the Paint Out with the Sedona Arts Council happening up here,” Rose said. “That was a good time last year. It’s exciting to see artists in action, painting some of our scenery and having it judged and for sale that evening.”
For more information, visit sedonaairport.org or call (928) 282-4487.
