An exception until a few years ago, but now an annual event is the photo day during the NATO Tiger Meet. This was also the case this year during the NTM 2019, which was organised at Mont-de-Marsan in France. Despite the fact that the list of participating units was slightly shorter than recent editions at Poznan-Krzesiny and Zaragoza, the interest among the die-hard Tiger Meet enthusiasts did not dwindle. The trip this year was fully booked in no time and on Wednesday 15 May 2019 we travelled to this base in the South of France with no fewer than 50 participants. Fortunately this happened via the air and with our own KLM. With 43 participants on the same flight, the 4Aviation group was a substantial part of the total load of the plane.
At the airport of Bordeaux a further three travellers joined the group and because we were in Bordeaux quite early and the afternoon wave of the NTM would not leave until quite late, it was decided to travel to Mont-de-Marsan that same afternoon. This was a 1.5 hour trip by bus. Beforehand there were some reservations about the possibilities around Mont-de-Marsan, especially with an easterly wind that was the case on this day. However, these concerns turned out to be completely unjustified, because on arrival it turned out that you could position yourself very well near this Rafale base with easterly winds. Mont-de-Marsan is home to no fewer than two NTM members (ECE 01.030 ‘Côte d’Argent’ and EC 03.030 ‘Lorraine’). Well before the afternoon mission left, we had found a nice spot and at the end of the afternoon the returning second wave of the day with around 36 aircraft could be photographed beautifully. Around half past five we travelled the 45 minutes to our hotel in Dax by bus, where the rest of the group joined us and we could already look back at a successful afternoon.
