It was my first time to the Sanicole International Airshow, held july 20th at Hechtel, Belgium. In short I can say I enjoyed myself.

The Sanicole airshow was held for the 32nd time and is organised by a team of people, the airshow director is Geoffrey Buekenberghs and he flew himself at the airshow, but i'll come to that later.

Bare in mind that this is an airshow organised by "ordinary" civilians and they manage to get even big teams like the Red Arrows to fly at this show.

The parking facilities are top notch, as its very close to the small airport itself, which makes for a short walk.

On to the show, the day started cloudy and the Red Bull Parapente was able to do his show, with a few flypasts. After that, the rain started, bigtime, in front of me an Alouette 3 of the Belgian Navy took off for a short demo. After that there was a towing demonstration by a Piper Cub and a Yak-18 gave a demonstration, a nice looking plane, a real shame it had to fly in the rain.

Geoffrey Buekenberghs gave a demonstration in the SF-260 Marchetti, a great aerobatics plane, but as you might have guessed, he had to fly in the rain as well, which must have been a shame for him. The Mirage F-1 had the same problem, flying in the rain and cloudy circumstances.

What was supposed to be one of the highlights of the show, became a small fiasco. The Red Arrows, which were unfortunately only able to do some flypasts in formation, this was because of the low clouds and bad weather. It was a real shame as it was one of the things I was looking forward to. The Douglas DC-3 was a bit more fortunate, this wasn't because it was clear as day, but because of being dry. Very good to see one of the old WW-2 era planes do a nice fly by. A nice touch on this DC-3 is that both sides have different liveries. One side has that of the KLM and the other of Air France.

General aviation was well represented by the Victor Formation Team, showing what can be done in Piper Warrior 3 planes. Close formation flying and at the end a nice break. The Royal Air Force was well represented at Sanicole with a Grob Tutor and a Tucano, showing what these training planes can do. The Grob Tutor is one of those planes, that, when you see it doesn't make you go, wow, this will be spectacular. But Flt. Lt. Andy Preece, showed what this plane can do. I was amazed.

As for being well represented, the Yaks were at the show in plenty, Team Iacarii was one of my favourites at this show, showing some good aerobatic flying. They were pretty lucky to give a show in clear skies and plenty of smoke. The Italian Pioneer team was less fortunate, as clouds started to gather again, nonetheless they gave a good show despite the bad weather, with nice breaks and tight formation flying.

The interception demo was great to see, a Boeing 737-800 came flying over the airfield and was intercepted by several F-16s showing what is normally done when an airliner gets in restricted airspace or when radio contact is lost.

The Breitling Jet Team is one of the more familiar teams, just like the Red Arrows. I especially liked the coloring on the L-39's They gave a good show, with high speed passes and good formation flying. The last thing I saw, cause I had to leave early was the demo of the RNLAF F-16 Demoteam, which gave a great show, they were lucky to show us the high show, a shame they are not allowed to use flares in Belgium.

All in all, I had a great time at Sanicole and it has a good atmosphere. The english comentator is one to keep for next year, he gave us good commentary and some good English humor.

For next year, here is a link to the Sanicole site: www.sanicole.com. Next year will be a special one as it's close to the Tiger Meet.