NATO Day in Ostrava, Czech Republic. (part 1, Heavies and fighters

[upnorth]

Hello all, some of you who frequent the ARC and Britmodeler forums may have seen these, for those who don't, enjoy:

Yesterday, I went up to Ostrava, in the north east of the Czech Republic, to check out the annual NATO Day event. NATO Day is a large exhibition of of military, police and emergency services equipment and skills that lasts for about a week. The last two days of it are a large public air and ground show at Ostrava's airport.

Despite this site's leaning toward aircraft, I'll be posting some of the ground stuff so you can get a better feel for the spirit of the event.

The weather was gorgeous (I have the sunburn to proove it), but for large sections of the day, the sun conspired against reliable photo taking.

So, without further delay, here's Nato Day, starting with the aircraft:

Some big stuff was brought in, so lets start there

The Czech presidential A 319


A privelage to finally see a VC-10, knowing that there won't be too many more opportunities left.




Both the RAF and NATO brought E-3s



A rare sight in Europe, the B-52. Despite the early hour that I arrived, the static park was swarming with visitors. This was the best B-52 pic I could manage.


The venerable An-26 was well represented by three examples in the static park: Czech, Hungarian and Romanian. Normally I'm not keen on so much repetiton of a type in the static park, but in the case of an aircraft that is in the twilight of it's service, I'll gladly make an exception:






One of The An-26's replacement types, the Casa 295, was also on hand in the statics:

The Czechs took on their first 295 at the begining of this year. I'm glad to see they're keeping the camo style:



The Polish also brought one:

[upnorth]

A few other transport types on hand:

A bit on the fuzzy side, but the this Yak-40 Codling came in during the show:


Fortunately there was also one in the static park:



There's always a Let 410 Turbolet around somewhere at Czech airshows:


These guys weren't really part of the show proper, but nice to see:

A Swedish air force something or other:


A RAF HS-125 (I think its and HS-125 anyway)

[upnorth]

Of course, the fighter types were there. Unfortunately the cockpit tours on some of them just wouldn't stop, so I couldn't get as many overall shots of some of them as I wanted to (Pay no mind to the balding guy in shades with the Hungarian Gripen  :wave: ) :