On Thursday 4 April we enjoyed a decent breakfast and then visited a supermarket as we were about to spend the whole day on base. We arrived early at the airbase and check in had already started. In the 2018 edition we had to wait for a long time to get access to the base due to the visit of some high-ranking officials. During our wait near the main gate we already saw several aircraft return from their mission, they had not slept in today. We mounted three busses and headed for the southern end of the runway. From here we saw many participants take off from very close distance. The Greek had brought a couple of F-4s and Mirage 2000s as well as F-16s from every squadron in their inventory, although the Araxos units operated from their nearby home base. The foreign participants comprised USAFE F-16s from Spangdahlem, Italian Tornadoes and brand-new F-35s, exotic Mirage 2000 from the United Arab Emirates and no less than eleven F-16C/Ds from the Israeli Air & Defense Force. After some landings from this side the wind had changed and the remaining aircraft from this mission landed from the north and taxied towards us at the end of the runway.
Then it was time to get into the bus again and head for the control tower. Here we would witness the activity during the rest of the day. The control tower itself was, unlike last year, off-limits. That was very unfortunate but asking the right guy at the right moment gave us some different perspective on the aircraft taxing by in front of us. Many more missions by all participants were noted and around 19:00 it was time to exit the base. It was a long day, but we were very fortunate by what we saw as the Israeli would leave the base early next morning, before the group of photographers that had applied for that day would enter the base.
We had to drive for about 20 minutes before we reached our hotel, fresh up a bit and enjoyed a meal and drinks at the same restaurant as the day before.
