The 2017 Radom Air Show was a show that was announced, cancelled, announced, cancelled and announced again. When finally announced 4Aviation decided to ask if enough people would be interested to go. And so it happened that we ended up having 13 people gathering at Schiphol on Wednesday 23 August 2017. They were joined on the same flight to Warsaw by a large group of 4Aviation travellers that were heading for Moscow (the ARMY 2017 tour). After arriving at Warsaw three additional participants joined the group. The first stop was Dęblin. We were guessing that the rehearsal scheme for the Polish Air Force opening parade would be somewhat similar to previous editions. It more or less was the same, albeit that only one aircraft of each type was participating in the rehearsals today. Nevertheless we enjoyed ourselves a lot at the Dęblin museum. From Dęblin we drove to Radom (on our way to the hotel) to see if we could capture some arrivals/rehearsals there. We were lucky to catch the Polish Navy choppers arriving. After that we drove to our regular hotel south of Radom and ended up being served great food in the evening.
On Thursday (24 August) the group was to split up, with the majority spending a day in the approach of Radom for rehearsals and arrivals and the smaller part heading for Krakow to visit the museum there. Each group had fun, in bright sunshine, and the ‘museum group’ ended up in the approach of Radom during the afternoon as well, hoping that the Ukrainian Flankers would arrive late Thursday afternoon. That was not the case so when the light was gone we drove back to our hotel for another evening of great food and lots of socialising.
The Polish Air Force kindly allowed our group to visit Mińsk Mazowiecki on Friday 25 August. Knowing that are guide on base was a 4Aviation customer we were very much looking forward to the visit. A very early breakfast was followed by the drive to EPMM. We spent the majority of the day enjoying the sights and sounds of MiG-29s and Su-22s. Being allowed a various locations on base we were able to get awesome shots. Furthermore; the sun was playing ball all day! Besides the flights to practice the opening formation for the Radom show (including 6 MiG-29s and 6 Su-22s) we were treated to some additional flights. All in all a great day and the atmosphere in the group was as good as it can get.
The actual show at Radom was taking place on Saturday and Sunday (26 and 27 August). The Saturday therefore started with a very early breakfast again. We wanted to make sure that we got to Radom early, so we could park where we wanted to park. The gates opened at 0800 and we were in very soon after that. We had a look at that static park and exhibitions for a couple of hours before meeting at the entrance again in order to walk to the other side of the base. From 1130 we spent the rest of the day there. We could witness the opening fly past and all displays that continued until 1900. The location is great for photography! Since the show was only confirmed at the last moment the number of international participants was limited, but still interesting. The star foreign performer was the Ukrainian Su-27. The days of the MiG-21 in Romania are numbered, so it was nice to see this one display as well. We eventually ended up in a fast-food restaurant later in the evening before returning to our hotel for our final night.
On Sunday 27 August we could sleep in a little. The group preferred to go to Dęblin instead of returning to Radom for the air show. At Dęblin we were hoping for the opportunity to capture the transport aircraft and helicopters taking part in the flypast. We succeeded in that and were able to shoot the aircraft in take-off and landing. The weather was not as good as the previous days, but all in all a good addition to the shots that we had already made. After all flying stuff had landed we were ready to return to Warsaw and so we did. We had a relaxed journey to the airport and everything else we pretty relaxed as well. One of the participants decided to take the option to ‘step aside’ (for money and a night in a hotel) when LOT announced that the flight to Amsterdam was overbooked and that there were looking for volunteers to give up their seat and fly home the next day. Having said goodbye to four people in Warsaw (3 plus the one that decided to stay) the remaining dozen flew to Amsterdam in the evening. Despite being a last-minute addition to the tour schedule the tour was great, especially thanks to the great base visit at Mińsk Mazowiecki!
