Air Show Report : Radom Air Show 2015

Polish International Air Show 2015

Photo report by Helmut Richter from Poland's International Air Show 2015 held at Radom on August 22-23.

The bi-annual Polish International Air Show has established itself as one of the major European air shows. Since 2000 the air show is held at Radom-Sadkow air base (42.BLSz), home of the PZL-130 training aircraft of the Polish Air Force.

The drawback of Radom Sadkow is the location of the air show grounds on the north side of the runway. Therefore, in order to avoid backlight conditions for photography, many enthusiasts move to the south side outside of the air base for the displays.

As in previous years, the Polish International Air Show in 2015 provided a comprehensive participation of Polish Air Force, Army and Navy aircraft types as well as some very interesting foreign visitors.

International highlights of the static display were two Lithuanian transports, a C-27J and an L-410, as well as an Israeli C-130H. Out of the Polish types in the static display, my favourites were the SH-2G and the Mi-14PL of the Polish Navy, in particular, as the Polish Navy did not participate in the flying activities.

One of my personal highlights of the show was the impressive fly-past by formations of all major Air Force and Army types. After having watched the fly-past twice already, I took the opportunity on my way back to the airport on Sunday for a stop at Minsk-Masowiecky to take some landing shots of the Su-22s and MiG-29s returning from the fly-past.

The long flying programme had a good mix of solo and formation displays. Because it only started at noon, the last displays after 7 pm already had quite low light. In addition to less than perfect weather conditions, this produced some quite challenging conditions for photography. Of the many highlights in the flying programme, my favourites were the Romanian MiG-21 display and the Polish Army Mi-24 pair. The large number of fast jet solo displays resulted in a competitive situation, in particular between the French Rafale and the Italian Typhoon displays, which - not only in my view - was won by the Tifone.

Overall, the show at Radom was certainly one of this year’s air show season highlights.