The beginning of April, April 5 till 9 to be exact, the start of spring, flowers popping up, birds singing.....and the sound of the Yak-52 radial engine in the morning!! Yes, it was time once again for the Dutch Thunder Yaks Display Team to start their airshow season training. And what a good week it was.

First let me give an overview of the team members.

First up is Thunder 1, Robert "Redyak" de Vries and Chris "Clogs" van den Broek, after which we have Thunder 2, Hans "Contact" Hollink and Erik "Navy" van der Pluym. Thunder 3 is Willem "Pencil" Doorduin, Thunder 4 is Stephen "Kiwi" van Dijck. After that we have Thunder 5, Dick "Einstein" Algra and last but not least, Thunder 6, Spencer "Yorky" Bennett.

The team is active for a couple of years now, Thunder 1 does the solo part in the display, consisting of Lomchevacs (tumbles), loops, barrel rolls and more, the other 3, together with Thunder 1 do formation flying. In a week like this there are numerous things that are practiced, if the weather is good, 3 sorties will be flown per day. Every sortie starts with a briefing, such a briefing is very thorough, not only the maneuvers are talked through here, but also emergencies, who is lead, frequencies, what kind of take-off they will do, etc.

Once everyone is briefed, everyone suits up and head for the Yak-52's, a pre-flight inspection is done, things like, oil, fuel, control surfaces are checked. Engines are started and they taxi to the runway. When they get back, a debrief follows. Despite the fact that they all landed safe does not mean a debrief is unneccesary. Every error, but also everything that went fine is discussed in detail, to see how they can avoid an error in the next flight.

This is in brief what a typical sortie looks like.

I have had the luck to go on a flight, not with the team, but close to the team. A Piper Archer flew us to about 5000 feet for a special photoflight. Once up there you see clearly how the wiggle of Thunder 1 is translated onto Thunder 2, 3 and 4. It might all seem like fun, but it's pretty hard work up there, not only do you have each other to "worry" about, but also weather circumstances. In the air different formations are practiced and how to transition from one formation to another.

I must say that their formation flying is getting tighter and tighter and the practice does show. Soon the first airshow is up and you as an audience will have a chance to go see the Dutch Thunder Yaks. Please go see them, if not for the sights, do it for the sound as any aviation enthusiast will confirm that the sound of that radial engine sounds like music. On top of that you have the WW2 look and feel (the Yak-52 isn't a WW2 fighter, but is used as a military trainer by many airforces in Eastern Europe).

A fairly short report on the training week, for more info on the Yak-52 or the Dutch Thunder Yaks, please visit http://www.dutchthunderyaks.nl.

A big thanks to the Dutch Thunder Yaks team for inviting me to their training and to Martin Schoonderbeek for allowing me to take a ride with him to 5000 feet.

Don't forget to see the small video in the videos section and the full photo gallery in the airshow aviation galleries section.