The preparations for the Air Review had been going on all week, even the static had been in place from Monday according to the local spotters. A quick visit around the field gave the possibility to take some pictures of the F-15’s parked at the for end. Sadly no sight of the local (RF) Phantoms. Very soon the men in black with their white Toyota where back, this time no questions: they just followed us around from spot to spot.

Hyakuri is a field with great photo opportunities all around. During the rehearsal every part of the show is covered, even the soldiers are to resemble the ‘audience’ part, they really leave nothing to chance. On the static almost every type of aircraft from the JASDF, JMSDF and JGSDF are represented, with the exception of some of the larger aircraft.  They even changed static aircraft around during the week. The Air Review started with a mass take-off of F-15’s that would take part in the missing man formation. The review was one continuous flypast of over 40 aircraft from the different Air elements of the Japanese Defence Forces and in the flypast was our second US-1A as well.

We were interviewed by Military Security for the first time, the senior officer giving the junior rank the opportunity to work down his list of prepared questions. The younger man was surprised by us offering prepared copies of our passports, but we declined an explanation on how we knew about his questions and already had copies prepared. We leave it to next encounters with European spotters for him to discover “we know about them”.

After the fly past, a scramble, air drop and air to ground demonstrations followed. The ground attack was nice with Phantoms filling the sky and anti-aircraft units ‘responding’. After the F-15’s returned everything went quiet. We studied the famous ‘Hyakuri spiders’ for a while. They live in the thick bamboo forest close to the spotting area. We went through some photo books with local spotters who advised us to go to Kasumigaura because there would not be any flying for the rest of the day. Also, the weather started to deteriorate. On our way to Kasumigaura the men in black were still following. However, they missed our quick stop at the 7-eleven and by the time they had turned around we were on our way again. The same happened at the Post Office, where we stopped to get some money, there being only one parking space they had to drive on and lost us forever, which was too bad for them.

At Kasumigaura the last flying of the day was going on, we had some nice shots of AH-1 and OH-6. But with another thunderstorm approaching, most of the choppers were being put inside and flying ended abruptly.