Visitors to the 19th annual Rhode Island National Guard Air Show inspect an Air Force C-5 Galaxy, a troop and materiel transport plane.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

NORTH KINGSTOWN –– The sound stopped the DeLuca family of Newport in their tracks.

They searched the sky. And there it hung in a rip-up-the-physics-book maneuver: a fighter jet floating, not flying. The DeLucas would start walking again, stop and stare upward, then do it all over.

They got their welcome to the Rhode Island National Guard Air Show Saturday from an F-22 Raptor, the latest and greatest U.S. Air Force jet, capable of hoodwinking radar and doing a trick where the plane stands straight up on its engine nozzles and moves as if pulled by an unseen magnet or simply stops in midair like a flying saucer.

“It’s heart-stopping,” said Shannon DeLuca, as her husband, Rob, carried their son, William, and were accompanied by William’s grandmother.

And they hadn’t even gotten out of the parking lot.

Among the more than 60,000 who converged for day one of the two-day 19th annual air show at the Quonset Point base, the DeLucas and several others said they arrived during a summer when an inexpensive trip is valued. Entering the air show was free.

Each plane that rose into a luminous blue sky, whether the two propeller-powered World War II-era P-51 Mustangs in a delicate precision dance or the dive-bombing, smoke-trailing runs of the red Oracle stunt biplane, felt like a freeing moment for a region imprisoned too long by gray days.

In recent days, William went from window to window in the DeLuca home to match planes on test runs to still-distant sounds. But in person the Raptor, flown by a pilot with the call sign “Mozart,” let loose a maximum-volume symphony that hit the bass, soprano and every other note.

“But, you know, he doesn’t want to cover his ears,” his father said.

Some planes buzzed more quietly like bees. Others carried a throatier tune –– those World War II Mustangs.

All painted the sky. Some, it seemed, with cotton candy: five parachutists glided to earth trailed by pinkish-red smoke. With wisps of white smoke tracing their aerial geometry, the Navy’s Blue Angel team, flying F-18 Hornets, pulled off hair-raising maneuvers, as did Canada’s Snowbirds demonstration team.

Some planes could afford no shame. A gargantuan troop and materiel transport plane, aptly named the C-5 Galaxy, became engorged with visitors who walked up a ramp to tour its belly.

A parked F-15 Eagle fighter bearing the name “Ironmen” assumed a new protection role: from the sun’s rays. A host of families with small children and strollers sat beneath it. Among them were April and Hamit Lacka, of Cumberland, who while feeding pasta to one of their children, said the show impresses.

“This is the plane Daddy used to work on,” John Lott, an avionics technician in the 1980s from Milford, Conn., told his young son as they checked out the F-15.

Geoff “Hak” Hickman –– a former F-16 military pilot flies a L-39 plane prized among some aficionados as it was once a trainer for Soviet pilots and built in the former Czechoslovakia.

Hickman praised the fact that the show donates money to Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence.

There’s also something of a variety show at the event.

A 15-foot-tall inflatable green gecko of Geico insurance looked positively at risk to the shiny shark teeth painted on the nose of an F-14 Tomcat –– the plane of Top Gun fame –– called the “grim reaper” 30 feet away.

An endangered species, General Motors, displayed cars that push for maximum fuel economy: hybrids, electrics, bio-fuels and more. Not far away, though, many air show attendees took their fuel the old-fashioned way, choosing “World’s Best Kettle Popcorn,” “Doughboys,” or chuck-steak burgers.

At a Marine recruiter tent, several guys tried out a red pull-up bar for a crowd as music including Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” boomed through speakers.

The Navy went bigger: a climbing wall made of rope about 25 feet high.

mmckinne@projo.com