Since the Biplane Rally started in 2000 as part of the Geneseo Airshow, now called The Greatest Show on Turf, it has gotten bigger and better each year. The original concept started in the Millennium year as a theme for the Airshow. The idea was to get the type of airplanes that have been around for the last 100 years and give the History of Flight Airshow real meaning. Since it was biplanes that have been around in every decade of the 1900s, the Biplane Rally began as part of the 1941 Historical Aircraft Group’s traditional Warbird show.

The 1908 Curtiss “Silver Dart” was borrowed from the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY to represent the earliest decade. The Great War Flying Museum’s WWI aircraft came to cover the First World War years; and Fleets, WACO’s, Stampes, Great Lakes, Travel Airs etc. supported the Golden Age of Aviation, the 1920s and ‘30s. Since the Geneseo Airshow has always been a Warbird show, the trainers of the 1940s, both Allied and American, were featured. These were the de Havilland DH82 “Tiger Moths” used by the British and Canadians and of course the Stearmans used by the USAAF and US Navy. For the 1950s there were three Russian Antonov AN-2s on the field and more modern aerobatic planes (like the Pitts and Christian Eagles) and the EAA home-builts that took us from the 1960s to the 1990s. The Fairey Swordfish has also shown up on several occasions.

There was quite a big turnout of biplanes that year and it was good to see the return of Geneseo regulars as well as witness the formation of new friendships with pilots who were never there before. That first show got the ball rolling and since then the biplane attendance seems to increase each year. Some people have even referred to Geneseo as the Bartlesville or Galesburg of the East Coast.

By 2006 the attendance for Olde Aerodrome Days exceeded all expectations and was practically an event of its own. As part of the two-day Airshow the increasing number of biplanes attending each year gave them less time to fly during the show due to the amount of time needed to launch and recover so many aircraft during that models flight time. That, plus the fact that several regular attendees came to New York from as far away as Washington State, California, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Maine. They spent more time in the air getting to Geneseo than they did at the airshow. Something needed to be done to show thanks for all the support these pilots have given the 1941 HAG over the years.

That's when HAG President and Founder Austin Wadsworth, together with Event Coordinator Frank Schaufler, formed a special Biplane Rally Committee for the first weeklong event in 2007.

This ninth annual event will be the second year it will start a full week before Geneseo's Greatest Show on Turf, July 12-13, 2008. Officially it begins Saturday, July 5 and goes through Fridays' traditional arrival and registration day before segueing into the Airshow, although registration forms will be accepted from as early as Friday, July 4. Like last year, daily fly-outs to other member museums of the New York Aviation Alliance will take place as well as a re-enactment celebrating the 90th Anniversary of U.S. Air Mail.