Trident Posted July 7, 2005 Posted July 7, 2005 Anyone else been there this year? I was, for the first time! I've been to some smaller airbase open-house events and the ILA in Berlin before, but le Bourget really is in a class of its own :) A few friends and I managed to get professional visitor's tickets for free via university, so we booked some cheap hotel rooms, got into a car (yep, all 5 of us in one car all the way from Stuttgart to Paris, lol) and were off to have a great time. And boy, did we have a great time, too! Here's an incomplete list of what we saw: - A380! - Boeing 777-200LR - A340-600 - F/A-18F Super Hornet - Dassault Rafale B - Eurofighter Typhoon - and yes, we saw IT. We saw the Su-27SKM in the flesh :D Where to start... well, the first day (thursday, closed to the public but not to us, hehe) left us with mixed feelings. The weather was great but gave each of us heavy sunburn. The displays were very nice aswell (particularly the Mirage2000, which flew pretty much the same breathtaking display from the video that was posted here some time ago), however for some unknown reason you weren't allowed to get close to the runway at all. This made photography even with a decent telephoto-lens very tricky and as if that wasn't enough there was a constant stream of VIP cars that drove by right infront of the crowd - including the odd 2 metre high van :( OTOH, we got to talk with all those representatives from various companies for as long as we wanted to and some of us even got to sit in a few helos (one even in an AH-64D Apache!). The best thing was however that we found out that our tickets, being sponsored by EADS, gave us access to the latter's VIP lounge, including free drinks and (excellent!) meals :D :D This was god-send since the prices for even a simple baguette snack or a coke were mind-boggling (even by the standards that are commonly found at such events). Friday was a public day and the show was consequently crowded. However people were finally allowed closer to the flightline which meant that some of our better photos were shot that day, inspite of a slight overcast. We actually stood no more than about 30 metres from the A380's wing tip when it started its engines, which was awesome to behold! The real highlight of the day was the Su-27 though, which for some reason did not perform on thursday. To cut a long story short, the display was fantastic and included a half-loop right off the ground, lot's of (excruiciatingly) noisy hard turning aswell as both a cobra and tail-slide! Due to the overcast we didn't get to see most of the tail-slide, the Flanker disappeared into the clouds and when its engine noise suddenly subsided the 'insiders' all knew what was happening. A few seconds later it then reappeared, falling backwards out of the cloudlayer :) :) The Cobra was amazing too, especially the reaction of many onlookers who broke into ohh's and aahh's, just wicked :D Another unforgettable moment was when the Su-27, breaking back through the overcast as it descended from the peak of a loop, actually punched a hole into the clouds that remained visible for several minutes! Other than that, I was pretty impressed by the F/A-18F which actually flew its display routine loaded with AMRAAMs and Sidewinders, seemingly without loosing nose-authority at low speeds at all! The Typhoon, Rafale and F-16 were nice too, but as I'd already seen the Typhoon and the Falcon they didn't provide any surprises (the Typhoon and Rafale don't just look similar, they seem to fly very much alike too). To round such a great trip off we spent saturday (the early morning :D and the late afternoon) in Paris itself before driving back home on sunday. Here are some pics (hopefully):
Trident Posted July 9, 2005 Author Posted July 9, 2005 Just a few more pics, I guess the second and third pictures need no introduction :) The first shows the elegant lines of the Rafale, the last one is the Boeing 777-200LR, a very nice looking aircraft in Dreamliner colours. Unfortunately it did not fly, but atleast this meant that it kept providing some precious shade which we were very grateful for. Those GE90s are HUGE!
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