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Two shows in one day,
On 15 and 16 June 2007, the Royal Netherlands Air Force Open Days Where held at Volkel Air Base. This annual event is one of the largest happenings taking place in The Netherlands each year. In the span of
two days, the Armed Forces, and more specifically, the Royal Netherlands Air Force, present themselves to the general public by providing an informative look inside and demonstrations to match the information.
Last years show whit the Bleu Angels was hard to bead.
The show at Volkel was at the same days as the one at Geilenkirchen so there was some competition in getting attendees to the show. On the static side the highlight where the Polish SU-22 and Hungarian JAS39. It was nice to see the addition
to the Dutch heritage in the form of a Hunter trainer in the colures of the Dutch air force.
The highlight of this years show was the appearance of the Turkish Stars with the former Dutch NF5A/B. A other demo team present at the open days were Swiss PC7 team who stated there demo together with a Swiss Air Force F-18.
A trend that has been obvious in the last few years is the falling number of aircraft participating in air show because of smaller budgets and deployments and Volkel this year was no exception. Combining the static white the flight line gave
the impression of a bigger show and the possibility to see aircraft taxing from close by
The airpower demo which is one of the most spectacular moments of the day was to late for us on the schedule because we had a other show to attend at Gielenkirchen
Geilenkirchen
The 25th anniversary of the NATO E-3A Component represents 25 years of successful cooperation, in which the members of the world’s only multinational operational flying unit pursue a common goal: safeguarding the airspace worldwide. They do
this not only in crisis regions (as people generally know) but also at major public events, most recently during the football World Cup in 2006, where the AWACS aircraft were a notable presence, thereby making a major contribution to
security.
On the static where over forty aircraft. on the previous air show the static was hopeless the aircraft where positioned around and in between tents. This time around the situation was better although the first part of the static with the
Turkeys F-4's and spang A-10's was really bad.
The second part of the static including: the Greeks A-7's, Polish Su-22, Norwegian F-16's was no problem to photograph. One of the stars of the static was a Greece A-7 in Tiger marking . Other special aircraft where two Norwegian F-16’s , a
Greek C-27 and a specially marked Italian Tornado.
The E-3 was on of the dominant aircraft on the static with examples present from NATO France and the United Kingdom. Other interesting aircraft where a E-6, A cougar Horizon and the Hungarian JAS39
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