"Such a Perfect Day" as Lou Reed once sang. The 31th of May and the 1st of June I attended a Stearman fly-in and an airshow at Oostwold Airport. Oostwold is close to the city of Groningen which is in the north of the Netherlands.

Hans Nordsiek and Tom van der Meulen organised the fly-in, with which i'm gonna start first. The weather for the fly-in was perfect. Clear blue skies and ofcourse plenty of Stearmans. For those who don't know the Stearman, the Stearman is a biplane which was built in the 30s and 40s and served as the primary trainer for the USAAF(United States Airforce). It's capable of doing aerobatics and according to pilots is a joy to fly.

Besides all the Stearmans, other participants landed as well. A particular nice fly-by before landing was done by the Yaks over Holland team, based at Lelystad airport. The formation involved box, line astern and echelon formation done by 4 Yak-52's. It's pilots are Steve van Dijck, Robert de Vries, Hans Hollink and Willem Doorduin. After that the organisers kindly asked the crowd that watched to leave as they had more preparations to do.

Now onto the airshow. The airshowday on June 1st was perfect. Great weather (great sunburn).

I will try to describe the participants in chronological order. The paras were the ones to open the show by falling down from the skies and landing safely below. After that silent moment, the L-39 Albatros by Skyline Aviation entered the arena. This plane is used by the RNLAF as a trainer jet, for different purposes. P-51 Mustangs were present in plenty, three were present of which two did a show. The first one was the Big Beautiful Doll, with a great color scheme, it gave a good show of what this bird can do.

The Seagull team is based in Hoogeveen and their show consists of four Piaggio Focke Wulf 149D's. Despite being old planes, They always perform great, with a famous bomb-burst ending their display.

Robert "Redyak" de Vries, as always giving a great show and once again he could do a high-show, just like he did at Volkel in de Wolken. The tumbles he does are especially nice. At the end of his show the canopy opens his hand comes out and waves to the crowd. People were cheering from my side and waving back. Split Image did a nice show as well, with two Pitts biplanes. Some good formation flying and lots of smoke was involved. It was time for a moment of silence with Christian Moulec. It's weird how you see him fly with the birds. It's fairly quiet, not spectacular, not alot of action, but it never gets boring. I can't help but always being fascinated.

Next up were the Captens team from France. The team consists of a married couple, Marianne and Adam Shaw, both are aerobatic champions and know their stuff when it comes to aerobatics. The planes used are 2 Cap-10b planes, hence the name Captens. With a great color scheme, nice blue and white, with great stars. The show, well...it's flown very tightly, the formation is tight, the passes and breaks are too. I had the chance to see them practice at the fly-in. Every step is walked through before taking flight. We will see them again this year here in the Netherlands.

Another "brand" of planes were Yaks, they were very present. The Yak-11 was one of those planes I've never seen. This plane can fly...fast. Despite being an old WW-2 fighter it's capable of great flying. The Fouga is an old vintage plane as well. Too bad it couldn't take off from the grass strip, for a nice low take-off.

The Guinot team was one of the participants I've never seen. All I can say is, WOW, what a show. The full team consists of five pilots and five wingwalkers. Two of them were present at Oostwold. The planes themself did loops, passes and breaks, but on top of that the Wingwalker girls did different poses on top of the wing. The most spectacular bit being unstrapping from the harness and climbing in the cockpit. Brave girls, I certainly wouldn't dare. Flying is one thing, but wing-walking? If you've missed them, there is a chance to see them again at the Heldair show, this September.

The Fokker Four team did their usual bit. The yellow sparked up nicely in the sun. Robert van Zwieten and Frank Versteegh were the next two participants. Doing the same thing, aerobatics, in a totally different way. Frank can show unlimited aerobatics in his Extra-300 and Robbert showed some nice aerobatics in his Saab Safir. More Yaks, as the Yakovlevs team did their show, another participant I've never seen. They gave an excellent show. Tight formation flying, great breaks and passes. The team consists of 3 Yak-50's and one Yak-52. The team is based in England and again am amazed at why we don't see this team here more often. Suddenly I saw Red, it was Red Sensation's turn to show their stuff. The two F.22c Frati's were completely repainted and it showed. Red 1, Rob Grotendorst gave a nice intro speech to their show. The crowd responded by giving a big applause to the team. Clover leafs, loops and barrel rolls were done, all in tight formation. Both pilots are ex-airforce.

I'll group the next four participants together. The Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DC-2 and P-51 Mustang "Old Crow". The displays of all was great, which might be because I love warbirds (The DC-2 being older). The sights and sounds, almost made you feel like you were at Duxford. It's good to see these old birds still flying.

To close the show a formation flight was done by the Yaks Over Holland team and the Yakovlevs. A great sight. Seeing the 4 Yaks of Yaks Over Holland do the formation flying, makes you want more. It would be great to see a Dutch aerobatic team, consisting of Yak-52s.

All in all, Tom and Hans and everyone else involved in the organisation of this fly-in and airshow did a great job. I will most certainly be there in 2011 when the next Oostwold Airport Airshow will be held.