This is something I wanted to do for years: Visit Wings Over Illawarra!
I finally made it on Saturday, May 5, 2018, the first of the two days of the show for 2018.
The show is held at the Illawarra Regional Airport, a couple of hours drive south of Sydney’s Northern suburbs. We spent around 5 hours there, and had the opportunity to experience incredible aerial acrobatics (see my videos here), and look and touch dozens of modern and older planes on the tarmac and in hangers.
We walked in and around a Qantas Boeing 747-400, that was operational up to a couple of years ago. We also walked DC-4, and Leo sat in the Captains chair. Awesome.
Here’s some of the other planes that we saw up close:
- General Dynamics F-111
- Consolidated PBY Catalina
- Hawker Hunter
- English Electric T4 Canberra
- Douglas DC4
- DHC-4 Caribou
- Lockheed 1049 Super Constellation
- Lockheed P2V-7 Neptune
- Douglas C-47 Dakota
- Grumman S2 Tracker
- Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifun
- De Havilland DHA-3 Drover
- De Havilland DH-82 Tiger Moth
- De Havilland DH-115 Vampire
- Piaggio P166 aircraft
- Auster Autocar
- Cessna 310B
- NSW Rural Fire Service BK-117
- NSW Police Bell 412
In the air, I saw (in awe) demonstrations by:
- the RAAF Rouletted Formation Aerobatic Team
- 2 F/A-18 Hornets (very loud!)
- MH-60R Seahawk Romeo,
- RAAF C27J Spartan
- RAAF C-17 Globemaster III (totally huge!)
- Beech-18
- Rebel 300
- Paul Andronicou in the Extra 330SC
- North American T-28 Trojan
- Grumman TBM-3 Avenger
I have posted all the photos I took here, and my videos here (all in full high resolution).
Here’s some some of them: