Wings Over Baltics Airshow

[Adam]

Last weekend I attended the innaugural Wings Over Baltics Airshow in Latvia. It was held at the home base of the largest civilian aerobatic team in eastern Europe, the Baltic Bees, who fly six L-39s, and the show celebrated the team's tenth anniversary.

As an event, the crowd size was reasonably small and there was no special static display (the static aircraft consisted only of museum pieces already at the airport) but they were rare and fascinating despite that, including MiG-21s, Su-22s, Yak-40s, Mi-35s and others left over from Latvia's Soviet past.

There were a good number of local displays, which largely seemed to ignore any attempt to regulate the show, flying insanely low and often very close to the crowd. These included a superbly (almost uncomfortably) aggressive An-2 and a host of lighter aircraft such as an R-22, RV-7 pair, autogyro and so on. A handful of bigger names came from overseas, including the Skycat wingwalkers from Scandanavian Airshow in Sweden, Aerosparx from the UK (day show only) and a PZL-130 from Team Orlik of the Polish Air Force. Sadly the latter was just a single-ship display by the team's solo pilot as fleet upgrades are currently taking place, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Poland were also due to send their MiG-29 display, but the fleet are grounded following an accident.

The headline act was the Baltic Bees, of course. Comments I have read from previous years suggested they could be quite forgettable, but clearly the Bees are improving all the time and I found their show to be pleasently watchable with a pleasing amount of variety in its routine. My sole criticism would be that there were some very long gaps between the 6-ship formation manoeuvres at the start, but that really was the only niggle. On the Sunday, one of the Baltic Bees' formation passes was combined with the two Grobs of Aerosparx, who flew by low and in the opposite direction trailing yellow and blue smoke - a lovely, dynamic moment which the crowd clearly loved, and an example of the sponteneity that so often feels missing from British airshows.

Overall, a fascinating weekend, but not because it was full of rare and interesting aircraft - it wasn't; simply because it was very interesting to get my first taste of an eastern European airshow, where even the dullest RV-8 was flown in a very different way to anything I'd seen before. Video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faXkhpa1BFU

[RyanS]

Glad you made it out alive! I look forward to watching the video when I get a chance

[Ken91]

Thanks for the briefing on this airshow, Adam. I'd love to attend some international shows, even it just to see how they compare to the US shows that I've seen.

[Adam]

Cheers @Ken91.

Here's a great moment I didn't include in that video I shared. The opposition pass between Aerosparx and the Baltic Bees. This took so much planning - and had to be executed without a full practice. https://www.facebook.com/AerosparxTeam/ ... 041020086/