The anual opendays of the Royal Netherlands Airforce was held at Volkel AFB in the province of Brabant. The highlight of this years show was the appearance of the Turkish Stars with the former dutch NF5A/B aircraft painted in a special "thunderbirdslike" livery. The other demoteams present at the opendays were the boys from patrouille de France and the swiss PC7 team. The airpowerdemo which is one of the most spectacular moments of the day was cancelled on friday because one of the first  to leave suffered a birdstrike in the engine and had almost to bailout out of his aircraft. The weather was al in al not that great with frequent showers.
	The one thing you see happening at all airshows these days is the falling number of aircraft and Volkel this year was no exception. They did a camouflagetrick by parking most of the flyingdisplay aircraft on the static. In other words if they had done like allways park those aircraft on the other side of the field the static would have been empty. But look on the bright side of this those aircraft now were taxiing right before our noses which otherwise wouldnt have happened. This year the Italians were not present which seems to happen at a lot of airshows lately and also no delegation from Austria. There should have been a AW139 from Ireland but it got cancelled aswell.

Jan Eenling 2008©