Better in the 'old days'?

[Skua]

Hopefully, as this is only my 3rd posting on this fascinating site this is correct/the right place.
I am now 70 and can remember my first air show at HMS Seahawk, Culdrose, Cornwall, UK about 65/66 years ago. It was and is a concrete ship i.e. an airfield run by the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm that now trains NATO helicopter pilots. Maybe it was then that I began to develop a long lasting interest in the 'latest' front line aircraft serving in the FAA at the time, with of course those of the RAF from one of the Coastal Command stations based on the Cornish coast; and then later shows with the wonderful Hawker Hunter plus events that began to feature NATO and even USN aircraft flown in from their Atlantic Fleet on exercise off the UK. For those who don't know the UK, Cornwall juts into the Atlantic, next stop... New York.
There was an old aircraft dump on the site and my claim to fame is that I have sat in the cockpit of a Fulmer whose controls responded to the joystick...so many German bombers fell on that day to my eagle eye. Then air shows in the '70s at RAF Greenham Common, (a USAF base) Berkshire were fantastic with a multitude of types and Lincolnshire with its multitude of RAF stations and now WW2 restored aircraft in the '80s was worth every penny of entry.
Now... we seem to see little variety.

How is it in other countries? I have been to Oshkosh- but unfortunately I missed the air show as I was on a break from work from Chicago University, does it still hold up?

Thank you all for the information and knowledge, I am now cramming for my finals - CHEERS!

 

[nuuumannn]

Now... we seem to see little variety.

Ah, something that I ponder occasionally. I used to live in the UK many years back, not as far back as your good self, but I remember the mid-1990s as being an exciting time as former USSR types were proliferating and it was great to see exotic types like Il-38 maritime patrol aircraft rubbing shoulders with the usual Nimrods and P-3s, as well as MiG-29s and Su-27s, but yes, airshows are thinning out in Europe in terms of variety, certainly modern military ones since the common aircraft type was the F-16 and Tornado and now it's the Typhoon.

Vintage aviation still surprises since there are so many types that have been and are being recreated from extinction, especially the likes of Great War vintage stuff, but the resurgence in the de Havilland Mosquito is definitely a thing to watch for as the type has been missing from UK skies since 1996. There are lots of restorations going on all the time, thankfully, there are more Hawker Hurricanes and Messerschmitt Bf 109s airworthy than there were since the late 60s, the Hurricane since they were retired from frontline service, so it's not all doom and gloom. The fighter collection has a Fiat CR.42, which should be interesting to watch next to the Gladiator.

Airshows are always a snapshot of activity at a given time and it's always worth comparing, but now is of course a bad time to do so with COVID, but yeah, things have definitely changed over the years and not always for the better. Display lines seem to be creeping so far away from the crowd line. I went to the Farnborough Airshow in 2018 and the Great War display might as well have been flying over the Western Front, the display line was so far from the crowd.