Zhengzhou 2018 - a little Chinese airshow action

[Adam]

I spent about 10 days at the Zhengzhou Airshow in China (formally the World Formation Aerobatics Championships and World Air Carnival) in late April and early May with one of the participating teams. While I was there, I got plenty of opportunities to watch and video the displays both from the active ramp and from up in the control tower.

The Zhengzhou Airshow is a very odd event, consisting entirely of GA aircraft and taking place on the sprawling Shangjie Airport over five days - but despite the scale of the show, very few spectators actually turned up. I'm sure the event couldn't possibly turn a profit, but this did in fact lead to a reasonably pleasant atmosphere - there were no queues and it was never too late to get a spot on the crowdline, even right at show centre.

The displays mostly came from Europe - the Global Stars put on very energetic day and night shows, the Yakovlevs did an excellent job of filling the sky with big formations, noise and smoke, and Aerosparx provided stunning, graceful pyrotechnic shows at night - a first for China. Also in attendence were ANBO, a 3-ship Lithuanian team in which one of the pilots is the former president, and the Pioneer Team from Italy, who I enjoyed tremendously (but I seem to be in the minority).

Solo aerobatics came from Mark Jefferies of the Global Stars, with one of the best solo displays I've yet seen, Jason Newburgh (the flying was great, but his jet truck was so underwhelming that, when it finally managed it's only run of the week, we in the tower thought it had aborted its run - turns out it's supposed to look like that) and Elgin Wells, the latter very sadly passing away during his first practice run, two days before the show started. Elgin's team deserve a shout out, they had a horrible situation to deal with in an unfamiliar country, and yet still found the time and willpower to get involved in the show and even help us out with a couple of things over the week that followed.

There were three local Chinese acts too: Sunward put on a very tidy and watchable display in two Chinese microlights, Sun Hawk were similarly enjoyable in their three autogyros (sadly I wasn't able to film Sun Hawk though) and they had a 10-ship paramotor team to whom display lines seemingly didn't apply as often they were ten metres or more the wrong side of the crowdline, almost taking off people's heads!

Enjoy this short highlights compilation. I've been saving up my air-to-air shoots, experimental footage and GoPro footage for the team I was with so you may see some more bits and pieces around too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr6_4VkA7eU