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Over the weekend of 26th and 27th of May 2019 the Red Thunder Airshow 2018 was staged at Watts Bridge Memorial Airfield, around 1.5 hours drive west of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The airshow was organised to coincide with the end of the Red Thunder TFC (Tactical Flying Clinic), a separate week-long event where owners of ex-Russian and Chinese aircraft get together to learn formation and tactical flying from experienced pilots.
I made my way to the airfield on the final day of the TFC, as I had heard there would be the chance to get some sunrise images of a couple of the early attendee aircraft. This proved to be correct, with a CAC Wirraway and T-28 Trojan left out overnight to allow some other photographers to do some astro photography with these aircraft. I had made plans to camp overnight on the weekend to attend both days of the actual airshow, the Friday was a hastily-organised extra trip when I was told of the opportunity.
The weekend included flying displays of replica WW1 aircraft, WW2 and post-WW2 era aircraft and some of the participants from the Red Thunder TFC event. Alan Kilpatrick put his Rihn DR-107 aerobatic plane through an eye-watering display each day, and McDermott Aviation performed an impressive water-bombing routine with one of their Bell 214 helicopters. The Red Radials formation team put their Nanchang CJ-6 and Yak-52 aircraft through their paces in synchronized displays.
Across the three days I shot over 3,500 images, after many hours of editing I had around 650 keepers. Due to the number of aircraft that attended and the amount of images and information I want to show, I will divide the airshow up into separate blog posts, with this article being an overview of the weekend with links to the individual articles which are listed below.
Read MoreI made my way to the airfield on the final day of the TFC, as I had heard there would be the chance to get some sunrise images of a couple of the early attendee aircraft. This proved to be correct, with a CAC Wirraway and T-28 Trojan left out overnight to allow some other photographers to do some astro photography with these aircraft. I had made plans to camp overnight on the weekend to attend both days of the actual airshow, the Friday was a hastily-organised extra trip when I was told of the opportunity.
The weekend included flying displays of replica WW1 aircraft, WW2 and post-WW2 era aircraft and some of the participants from the Red Thunder TFC event. Alan Kilpatrick put his Rihn DR-107 aerobatic plane through an eye-watering display each day, and McDermott Aviation performed an impressive water-bombing routine with one of their Bell 214 helicopters. The Red Radials formation team put their Nanchang CJ-6 and Yak-52 aircraft through their paces in synchronized displays.
Across the three days I shot over 3,500 images, after many hours of editing I had around 650 keepers. Due to the number of aircraft that attended and the amount of images and information I want to show, I will divide the airshow up into separate blog posts, with this article being an overview of the weekend with links to the individual articles which are listed below.
