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Air shows in the Netherlands 2005,
This years Royal Netherlands Air Force open house was organised at the Gilze Rijen airbase, home of the 301 squadron flying with the AH 64D apache. Each year there’s an open house which is organised at one of
three bigger airbases in The Netherlands. Next year it will be at Leeuwarden.
Twenthe airbase was one off the other choices but it will be closed in the near future.
Like other years the open house on the Gilze Rijen airbase was organised on two days, Friday June 17th en Saturday the 18th. The weather on the Friday was lousy but on the Saturday it was a complete different story it started with mist
following with the best spring weather you can image for an air show ! Again it was a well organised open house with lots of opportunities of photographing the local apaches.
For some years the highlight of the open house is the airpower demo and this year was extraordinary, lots of AH 64D’s an base attack with 8 F16’s and the usual Cougars unfortunately no Chinooks.
In the past the airpower demo was the finally of the day but for some years it’s around noon which is better for taking action photo’s.
Gilze Rijen is also the home of the Stichting Koninklijke Luchtmacht Historische Vlucht ( SKHV ) they are a unique flying museum with aircraft which originated from the Koninklijke Luchtmacht ( KLU ).
Because they are housed at Gilze Rijen and because it was 60 years commemorating the end of the Second World War there was a big part of the air show for the airplanes of the flying museum.
The open houses are the place for the KLU to show the people what they are doing, not only in The Netherlands but all around the world. The Apaches of 301 squadron have flown in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the shipments to those country’s
are done by the huge Antonov 124.
At the open house there was a demo of loading and unloading an Apache in a Antonov 124.
One minor point was the static part of the aircraft. It was placed on a runway which allowed people to walk in front and at the back of the aircraft. Highlight of the static part was the Egyptian Gomhouria 181 Mk.8 trainer. It was the first
static appearance of an Egyptian aircraft. Another strange bird was the New Zealand’s Hercules which was the support aircraft of the Red Arrows, unfortunately it was parked near the air control tower and lot’s of people were unable to
photograph this nice bird.
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Open house Dutch Army at Deelen may 28th 2005.
This year’s Dutch Army open house was at Deelen.
Like the year’s before there was a flying display of helicopters and
a small air power demonstration of two Apaches, two Chinooks, two Cougars and two F 16’s,
do all good things come in two ?
During the air power demo there was a hostage captured
by terrorists. After the intervention of the Dutch Red Barrettes the hostage was released out of the well known training container of the Air Mobile Brigade.
There was a small static display of helicopters including some foreign guests, consisting of a German Bo 105 ( 8712 ) and a UH1D ( 7286 ).
The smallest, but nicest, helicopter was a Dutch Allouette 3 in a new bleu colours and a
orange roundel.
Very impressive was a demo army fort which was used in Iraq, quite realistic.
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