Avalon

Another year, another airshow. And boy did they deliver.

I went to the last Avalon Airshow two years ago, somewhat on a whim, having heard about it and thinking it would be cool. And we were impressed. So of course I immediately left myself a mental marker to come straight back.

There didn't appear to be so many large historic aircraft flying this year, only smaller historic stuff, though that didn't mean that they shied away from showing of flying something that looked more like a whale rather than something that should stay airborne.

And as opposed to last year, they actually flew the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter this time. I read up on this thing two years ago as well, where they showed it a prototype as a static exhibition, and it seemed like a joke. And it proved itself this year to be such.
They took off 4 fighter jets in a row, starting with the F-35A, trying to put on a show taking off with afterburner. Two F/A-18's consequently took off, comfortably keeping up with the same take off speed and same climbing angle, but without the afterburner. At this point I already got a little bit pessimistic with: 'does that F35 need the afterburner to even get airborne?'. At which point the last plane took off. The F-22 also elected to take off with afterburner, but it put on more of a show for it. Roughly 10 metre altitude, roughly the same speed as the previous three planes put together, while flying sideways.
The only thing that I can think of is that they really don't want people to know the capabilities of the thing …

That doesn't mean that any of the jets were much lacking in the noise department. They call the F-35A a stealth fighter, but it's only one because by the time you hear the thing, you can start checking whether you know the pilot. They all certainly have plenty of straight line speed (the words "sport car of the skies" were used a lot), and the speed of sound becomes very real with those things.

Other than that there were gliders, old rotary engines (through out the entire there always seemed to be one or another engine backfiring on the ground or in the air), jaw-droppingly precise formating flying, headache inducing stunt planes, and the occasional pyrotechnic show.

:-)