A Real Community Airshow at Tyabb Airfield, Victoria, Australia
On Sunday 8 March, the Peninsula Aero Club at Tyabb Airfield, in Association with Paul Bennet Airshows and Sponsor IOR Aviation, ran their latest airshow with benefits to the community including Funflight, for children with severe health issues, Angel Flight, providing free transport for sick people from remote communities, Tyabb CFA, suicide prevention through Chasing Change and other community-based organisations.
As always, it was a great venue with most areas reached along the single crowd line within minutes. Local pilots support the airshow with donated air time and display aircraft on the ground. Tyabb has always had a nice range of vintage and antique aircraft, and has many unique warbirds, several having been restored here.
The display line was nice and close, making all aircraft types very accessible – we had a C.152 aerobatic demonstration, “Larry” the Might Bell 47, and even a RAAF C-17A Globemaster touch-and-go, nobody remembers seeing one of the latter so low at an airshow! Victoria Police Air Wing and, oh, the UFO….
Formations were very much order of the day – two early ones which remembered PAC members Peter Phillips and Ido Segev who were lost in a recent in-flight collision – the “GA tribute” featuring medium twin GA aircraft and a formation featuring some of the airshow participants.
The Tiger Moth formation was unfortunately cancelled to a sharp cross wind, but we saw RAAF heritage trainers (CT-4A, Winjeel and ring-in Harvard)…
and the magnificent, warbird “Balbo” (T-28, Boomerang, P-40F and -N, P-51 Mustang, Spitfire Mk.VIII, TBM-3E Avenger, s/n53857 and Corsair). The “communist” formation team also set a fine pace.
Being a “Paul Bennet show”, there were aerobatics galore, with the Wolf Pitts (Paul Bennet), S-1S Special, Rebel 300 (Glenn Graham), “Skyblazers” Pitts S-1-11B Super Stinker (13-time Australian aerobatic champion, 5-time World champion, Chris Sperou), Southern Knights (T-6) , Cessna A152 Aerobat VH-UNP (Gerard Lappin)…
and the RAAF Roulettes (PC-21) from Central Flying School, RAAF Base, East Sale. Victoria Police Air Wing Dauphine VH-PVH executed a nice departure.
Despite the crosswind and afternoon backlight issues, a great day was had by all, and with an estimated 9,000 attendees, it was clearly a well-supported and successful airshow. The Royal Australian Navy Band supported this event as well.
Photorecon.net would like to thank the Peninsula Aero Club, the media team and in particular, Mr Ian Johnson, for making their facilities available both during and after, the show.
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