ILA 2006

Got up yesterday at 0430 for a 400km drive across Germany heading Berlin - it's ILA time.





Surprsingly, there was a static display of a USAF B-1 this year. Although this aircraft is already some decades old, it was one of the highlights, because the airframe is simply beautiful. The photo does not give a good sense for the size of this beast.






The main reason to visit this year's ILA is the A380 of course. What a beauty. More on the A380 later.





Red Bull had a huge airpark. Between all those well known Red Bull aircrafts such as the B-25, I found this Cobra helicopter in Red Bull livery quite remarkable.






The C-17 is a regular ILA visitor for years. It's always thrilling to stand in front of this giant, imagining it flying. This thing does 20000 feet-per-minute descends with reverse-thrust, according to the legend.








Also lots of russion aviation technology this year. Besides the regular heavy metal, there was also some ground effect "plane". Nice little toy.











Some classic airframes, such as Messerschmidt 108 and 262 (the first jet plane), Spitfire and Corsair. The maneuvers of the ME-262 were simple,but the jet sound was just amazing.









Next was some German metal (I'll leave the Kruppstahl-jokes up to the reader). The Eurocopter Tiger did some loopings and stuff, what is quite spectecular for a helicopter. You simply have to believe, that I did not rotate the image.
The joint presentation of German Air Force and German Army was the radiculous part of the day. First, some special forces roped down the helicopter (just took minutes) to get Mr. Ward Ambassador out of the German embassy in country XYZ.
Then, the first C-160 Transall did a flyby, and the second one did a "Sarajevo" combat approach, which was definitly not 12° steep according to the photo. I guess they didn't want to take a risk, because the wind was quite strong this day.
While the ambassador was getting inside the C-160 on the runway, the helicopters did some woozy maneuvers to confuse the enemy.
Then, the C-160 took off in formation with the helicopters, while 80's synthesizer music played in the background. No comment ... oh, too late.



















This was followed by the so called Airbus Parade, consisting of A318, A340 and A380. All three did some circling and a low-speed flyby.
Most shocking was the lowspeed flyby of the A380 - this giant nearly stood still in the air with an amazing angle of attack.
And it's true - the A380 is really silent.






Meanwhile, the Sentry took of. Note the elevator asymmetrie - did some visitor mess around with the roll trim in the cockpit?








Junkers Ju-52 taking off - strange light: absolutely dark in the background, but sunny in the foreground.









The Mig-29 was the highlight of the day, of course. This one's lining up and powers the engines up and goes back to idle three times - too arrogant, but so lovely ;), the crowd went mad, everyone was excited. The maneuvers were as breathtaking as usual - unbelieveable, how they incorporate the spins into their flightpath.








The last show for me was the formation flying of the Patrouille Suisse. Altough I found it becoming boring after the fifth formation flyby. Nevertheless great skills.