Classic Fighters 2009 #5: Yakovlev Yak-52

The Yakovlev Yak-52 seems to spring up at pretty much every airshow in the country these days - not a criticism at all, and formation aerobatics are always fun to watch. The Yak 52 is a Russian designed and built ab-initio military trainer and [along with the Nanchang CJ-6] is very popular as a warbird in New Zealand - perhaps only the North American Harvard is more popular.

Here I have pictures of the various Yak-52's doing their stuff on several occasions during the day. I particularly like the interesting paint schemes - it add a bit of interest to the displays and perhaps shows some of the individuality of the owners.

The first image has the formation appearing above the wing of the RAAF Caribou, and the second... not sure where that wire came from :-( ... still the picture shows the aircraft off well enough. Enjoy the pictures!

Classic Fighters 2009 #2: RAAF Caribou

For me, one of the signature aircraft for the airshow [although not my favourite as we will see in another post] was the Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou, operated by the RAAF's No. 38 Squadron.

This is the first time I have seen a Caribou, and probably just as well I did as the RAAF is due to retire these aircraft later this year. In fact, this particular aircraft [A4-195] had a 45 years of operations logo painted on the front-left of the fuselage.

What impressed me most about the aircraft was its STOL [Short Take Off and Landing] capability... around 300 meters for takeoff, and not much more than 150 meters according to the commentary. It was also really noisy, but what Vietnam-era military aircraft isn't? :-)

Anyway, here are a whole bunch of photos of the Caribou being put though its paces at the airshow.

Classic Fighters 2009 #1: Introduction

Wow! Another airshow! This time, it was the Classic Fighters Airshow held at Omaka aerodrome this weekend. As expected it was an excellent airshow and well worth the visit... the only problem is that I took a lot of photos, and now I have to sort them out and try to decide which ones to post. To give you an idea, I took 601 photos. I have culled that down to 442 pictures by eliminating the out of focus [well, most of them!], boring and just plan rubbish :-) shots. Probably a lot more culling to occur.

The day started early enough with an 8:30am departure from Wellington with a full plane and a quick trip across the water to Omaka in Piper PA28-181 Archer, ZK-TDJ. Even with the required run ups and a short departure delay [probably around 0.2 hours], the trip across to Omaka was 0.8 hours from startup to shutdown . We had the same timing for the trip back.

Omaka is one of the aerodromes that still has a quiet "country aerodrome" feel - look in most directions and you could easily imagine it's back in the early days of aviation.

Anyway, enough talk, here are some initial photos! These are just a random selection that I quickly grabbed to give you an idea of what the airshow was like. There will be much more to come over the next week or so. Top to bottom are:

Royal Australian Airforce [RAAF] Caribou, A4-195
De Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk Mk 22, ZK-SAX
Fokker Dreidecker
Royal New Zealand Air Force [RNZAF] UH-1H Iroquois
Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX, ZK-SPI
Formation of North American Harvards
Bristol Frieghter, ZK-CPT
MXR Technologies MX2, ZK-MXT
RNZAF CT4/E Airtrainers, Red Checkers