Luchtmacht Dagen 19 June 2009 (present on that day)

Fri, 19th June, windy with relatively good sunny weather and a short drizzle in the afternoon: We started off early on Friday as the event begins at 9:30am however when we got to the neighbourhood of Volkel airbase, we were stuck in a long queue going into the parking area. On the other hand, we were pretty lucky with the route that we took to Volkel as my brother-in-law and family were stuck for hours before arriving in Volkel to join us!

Finally we had arrived at the entrance - met up with the parents-in-law, set up our chairs and enjoy the rest of the show :) The place was huge...filled with throngs of people! Sun deck chairs, portable stools, tents, snack kiosks, sponsors and military's tents littered the whole place. It was like as if a quarter of the whole Holland's population took a day off/medical leave to attend this event.

Watching numerous air force teams from international and local performing in their fighter jets with their stunning demos and team formation in the air was absolutely out of this world! The sound of the powerful roar of all the fighter jets' engines was deafening! Ear plugs were a definitely must-wear on that day without damaging too much of your eardrums ;)

Friday's programme was the best as the crowd's favourite team, Patrouille de France (France Air Force) and Red Arrows (British Royal Air Force) were present as both teams will be departing from the Netherlands after the event.Patrouille de France team (pic above) Red Arrows (pic above)

I've never been a big fan of airplanes but my Hubs grew up with it as my father-in-law and perhaps the whole family were a big fan of airplanes :) They recognised planes on sight and the teams while I was busy doing other things..... like gaping at the planes and hopefully can catch a few glimpse of some pilot cuties hahaha ;) (but unfortunately no suck luck :P).

I must say, Patrouille de France and the Red Arrows performance were absolutely fantastic and flawless! Seeing them performed on that day was so exciting and you can see all the cameras were busy clicking away during their performance ;)

The rest of the participating teams were equally good in their performance and style. Turkish Stars, Turkey Air Force was not too bad themselves ;)
There were also several solo displays of F-16 and a dummy airport attack demo which was definitely an eye-opener! We stayed till the event ended at 5pm and walked down the field to view some planes parked at the hangar. At the end of the day, My Hubs and I were quite tanned and let's say for my Hubs, he's quite 'well-done'. Right now he stood out with his bright red face and boy he's going peel later on :P. Poor babe! Despite the changing of our skin colour, it was a great day!

PS: The 2-days event attracted 220,000 people. On Saturday itself, a weekend, there were 145,000 people at Volkel and it was recorded that the traffic was horrendous.