(Radio Iowa) – Iowans are among the thousands expected to attend this weekend’s Wingnuts Flying Circus airshow in the northwest Missouri town of Tarkio. Airshow Manager Brooks Hurst says the one-day event Saturday (July 8th) is dedicated to celebrating aviation and freedom. “A lot of people like seeing the general aviation planes as well. I mean, you know not only the performers in their fancy planes during the show, but you know, you get a lot of just plane old Cessnas and Pipers that the people like to see.”

The show starts at noon at the Gould Peterson Municipal Airport, which is located one mile east of Tarkio. The event that draws about five-thousand people from across the Midwest, and includes around 200 general aviation planes. “This airshow has several purposes. One of them is to get the general public interested in aviation, get kids flying. There’s nothing better than, you know, seeing a kid get his license and his first solo and, we love to get kids interested in aviation,” he says. “But then the other purpose that we try to do is to pay honor to our veterans for the sacrifices they’ve made.”

He says they hold it the second weekend of the month because that’s National Guard weekend.“So, a lot of times, when your neighbors and friends are doing their guard duty, they’re flying their Apaches out of Whiteman (Air Force Base) or B-2s or whatever, they do that on the second Saturday so it’s real easy for us to get them to come in. It’s real easy on the guard weekend for them to do that so that we can pay honor to our veterans and to our servicemen.”

Tarkio is in the far northwest corner of Missouri and is about a half hour south of Shenandoah.