NATO Day

[upnorth]

I was going to go to Prague today and visit Eduard's E-Day thing, but until late Friday it seemed my schedule wouldn't permit it, however things changed in my schedule too late for me to get a good bus ticket to Prague for today.

So instead, today I went up to the north east corner of the country to see the annual NATO Day exhibition at the airport in Ostrava.

Lots of tanks and planes to poke about in, mock battles and an airshow all in one. The problem was that today the weather was quite uncooperative with the airshow segment and a few performances were cancelled and others were abreviated. However, the bad weather (lots of mud from rain) complemented the land mock battles very well.

Had it been just an airshow it would have been mostly disappointing, but the tanks made up for what the aircraft could not manage today. (Watching a T-72 tank crush an old Socialist era Skoda is remarkably theraputic!)

Here's a few pics for you until I can get the rest diddled with and uploaded to photobucket:

Edited September 20, 2008 by upnorth

[upnorth]

So here's a bit more of the NATO Day function from yesterday, both from the static park and what little actually went airborne:

First up: The RAF brought in, amoung other things, their special painted Hawk trainer and a pair of Eurofighter Typhoons.

France chipped in with a Mirage 2000D

Poland brought along a Viper and a couple of transports

Illyushin Il-76 courtesy of the Ukrainian air force

Belgian based U.S. Army Blackhawk

Czech air force Mi-171 Hip and Mi-24 Hind

Spanish air force CASA 295 revving up

[upnorth]

A bit more for you here:

Luftwaffe Tornado and C-160 Transall

Royal Netherlands Air Force Apache and Chinook

RAF E-3D Sentry

Antonov An-124 Ruslan

RAF E-3D Sentry kicking up water on take off

Czech Mi-17 going low over some AFVs

Spain provided this year's aerobatics team. A much abreviated performance, but still enjoyable

Here's a link to a few more aircraft shots and some of the AFV display:

http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e59/canc...202008/?start=0

[Mike]

Good pics, weather looked a bit pants though

I've also merged the 3 topics down, to keep them together

[upnorth]

Thanks Mike. I would have put them all in one post, but the photo per post limit got in the way.

And yes, the weather was complete crap.

[Seamus]

Looks like a nice varied line-up, that Ukranian Il'76 is certainly a rare bird.

I do like the static shots of the Hip and Hind, both look rather menacing