The planning
After being on the wish list for several years after seeing
pictures and hearing stories about it ,we finally decided to go
to Taiwan.
The main reason for our visit was the diversity of aircraft
types in use in a combination of American ,French and locally
build types and the fact that the distances on the island are
short.
The plan was to go a full week to Taiwan which would give us all
the time we needed to do a full circle around the island. And so
we made a short list of the basis we wanted to visit and which
would be a bonus so we could see as many types as possible ,
some type’s like the local build and the Mirage 2000 where a
must.
On other thing that became obvious during the planning is that
the whole country is filled with wrecks & relics and trying to
visit them all was more than a week’s work alone! With the
daylight being short in the period of our visit we opted to
concentrate on the operational flying in the first place and if
the time would allow do some W&R .
In the end we decided to our way from Taipei either down the
west coast and up the east coast or the other way around
depending on the weather so we could see the RF-5 at Hualien.
The position of Hualien AFB in the top left corner of the island
put it a long way away from the other bases on the Island.
This via a comprehensive distance and travel time list including
the possible W&R on the way concentrating on the F-104
Starfighters.
But then came the word about a possible last F-4 Phantom show in
Japan at Hyakuri and the decision was made to spend the first
two days in Japan instead of Taiwan. This changed our planning
again for the Taiwan part of the trip and we opted to start at
the west side of the island as Hualien AFB would be to for from
Taipei on the first day. So we might have to miss-out on the
RF-5's at Hualien AFB during this trip.
|