Portugal Air Summit 2018

[Adam]

Another little video from me from a little-known airshow. At the end of May I was invited with three days' notice to the Portugal Air Summit in Ponte de Sor, not too far from Lisbon. I flew down over two days with one of the participating teams in a Robin DR40 through La Rochelle (France), Santander (Spain) and Porto (Portugal), which was an unforgettable experience in itself.

It's an odd show, with a trade-focussed setup similar to Dubai or Farnborough but on a much smaller scale. The spectator numbers must have been reasonably low as, while it's free to visit, Ponte de Sur is in the middle of nowhere. The static display consisted of about five GA aircraft and an ATR. The only other big activity on the ground were the panel discussions in the main auditorium.

The bulk of the flying display was taken up by the Air Race Championship. There were three classes: Vintage (Yak-52s), Sport (Vans RV series) and Extreme (XtremeAir, Cap-232, Extra 330 etc). Each class raced both Reno-style circular tracks and individual runs down a chicane track and the event was devised and executed by the Reno crew. To be honest it became pretty dull after a while, but it's good to be able to say I've seen some air racing at last.

There were more traditional flying displays too, but they were very Yak-heavy. There was a Yak-52 solo, the five-ship Jacob 52 team whom I found quite uninspiring, and the much more exciting three-ship YakStars. Cástor Fantoba put on a very good solo display in his Su-26. The first part was quite high and repetitive but the last half was great fun, with very low rolls and passes syncronised to classical music. He also raced a BMW down the runway. The final civilian team was GliderFX from the UK, who performed a stunning night pyro show (the first in Portugal) and a great daytime show which even saw them weave between the air race pylons - plus they broke the record for the most number of continuous rolls by a glider while on tow: 100 rolls!

Non-civilian acts came from the "Fire Boss" (an Air Tractor doing water drops), some quite distant but extremely low flypasts by a Portuguese Air Force CN-295 and a very brief but thoroughly entertaining mini-demo by a pair of FAP F-16s, who came right over the crowd on virtually every pass.

The finale to the show was a mass formation of ten Yak-52s at sunset.

All round an interesting few days and a couple of rare items on show, but not an event I'd reccomend travelling to visit.

Video below; hope you enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb75-kMJXZ4