Last Saturday Ysterplaat Airbsase held their annual airshow; it wasn’t on the same epic scale as last year’s AAD but was still loads of fun.

The programme opened with a police cavalcade and included all the usual things you’d expect at an airshow – big planes (Dakota, flybys from commercial airliners), little planes (RVs, Pitts Special), jets (L39s, Jet Provost), helicopters (Lynx, Oryx, Agusta) fighter jets (Gripen, Hawk) and pretty displays complete with smoke from the Silver Falcons (and the L39s).

There were also cars, both on display and doing a rally and gymkhana – I didn’t really check them out though apart from the ones that came out on the runway and some of the ones in the hangars…

There really weren’t a lot of people compared to what I was expecting (and compared to AAD last year), and the announcements/commentary were only audible to one area of the crowd which was unfortunate. Luckily I happened to be in said area when they introduced the group of Swedish Gripen pilots who were down for a conference and were watching our Gripen fly.

I get stupidly excited anytime I’m in the vaguest proximity to anything Swedish, so when the flock of Swedish fighter pilots walked past us after the show, it was almost too much for me to bear…

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Airshows are my mom’s area of expertise – check out her photos over here.

My photos are up on facebook over here.