Koksijde Airshow 3/4 September 2005

Words and photographs Remco Donselaar

The Koksijde Air Show or 'Open Door' is organised almost every year in June or July. The decision to cancel the show due to defence cuts this year was turned back so the show was on! It was held later in the season because of the 'Defensiedagen' in Zeebrugge, the second week of July.  Two major events in such a short period was too much, so the Koksijde Air Show had to move to September.

Koksijde airbase is situated at the coast of Belgium. At October 30th, 1974 the 40th 'Smaldeel' was set up here. First flying with the Sikorsky HSS-1 but soon replaced by the Westland Sea King MK.48. The main tasks are search and rescue of wounds and missing pilots at sea. The Sea Kings are at their end of life time and will be replaced before 2008. Also based are 3 Alouette IIIs, part of the Navyflight for support flights for the Navy.

Both days started around noon with a historical formation of a DH82a Tigermoth, a Morane Saulnier MS.317a and a Stampe & Vertongen SV-4d of the Flying Legends, based at Kortrijk. Also a S-2 Pitts joined the formation later. The other historical contributions came from the United Kingdom. A well know sight were the F-86A Sabre and T-33A Silver Star from Golden Apple Operations which only flew on the Sunday. A rare sight was the Hawker Siddeley Gnat T.1. This aircraft was painted in a fresh new mainly red color scheme. It was almost the same color scheme as used by the Red Arrows, when they were flying the Gnat in their early years.

As the show started around noon, there were some five hours for the flying displays. At the Saturday it sometimes took more ten 15 minutes before a new display started. This really was a disadvantage of the show, including the fact there were only a few foreign display teams.

About one third of the military displays were showed by the Belgium Air Component itself. The Belgium Air Component has an excellent F-16AM display. This season is the last one for the display pilot John Vandebosch. More F-16 power was shown by 2 examples from Kleine Brogel with some kind of base attack. It turned out to be not more then some passes and turns with the afterburner on. Two other displays were the Sea King SAR demo and the Fouga Magister. Both teams will be history soon because of withdrawn from use of both types.

A remarkable display was given by the not often seen Falcon 20E. Some high speed passes and g-turns made it a very succesfull demo!

The rest of the show was filled up with some nice participants. Next to the more often seen PC-7 demo of the RNLAF and French Alpha Jet display, the Danish Air Force participated with two teams in the flying display. First of all there was the F-16AM demo. With his red dummy side winders (so no smoke winders) this display was a little bit disappointing compared to the F-16 demo from Belgium. The second display team was the Baby Blue team, flying with four T-17's. A little bit exotic participant was the Hungarian Mig-29. It was a twin seater wich is always very nice to see. It was expected to fly both days, but on Sunday it wasn't able to fly because of problems during the start up. At the Saturday the Patrouille de France did an also bit dissapointing display, most likely due to the foggy weather conditions. At Sunday the French contribution was a Mirage 2000. Besides the fixed wing displays there were also some helicopter display's. The Army Air Corps particpated with a Lynx AH7 and the Aeronavale showed a Dauphin. 

The decision was made to witness the show from outside the base area, this ment some (helicopter) display's were too far away for the camera. Main reason was the position of the general public, for taking photograph's you were facing the sun the entire day. First day saw a lot of fog and difficult photographic conditions but 2nd day showed a clear blue sky! We definately enjoyed both days!