About a year ago a group of ten friends decided to (re)visit Japan in order to catch the military aircraft and helicopters of Japan in digital photo format. With October, November and December being the most favourable months to visit Japan when it comes to weather, it was decided to aim for that period. This is also Japan’s main aishow season, so airshow dates became leading in deciding on the exact dates.
Only Iwakuni (5 May) and Iruma (3 November) have annual airshows that are always held on the exact same date, no matter which day of the week it is. We decided to include Iruma airshow and plan the rest of our trip around it. When the first provisional airshow schedule was published, Gifu, Akeno and Tsuiki airshows were announced for Sunday 28 October. With this in mind we decided that our trip in Japan would take place from 20 October – 04 November.
Our initial schedule was set to drive all the way south during the first weekend and slowly work our way up north from there. To our surprise a few weeks later the Hyakuri airshow was announced to take place on Sunday 21 October, which required us to drastically revise our schedule. After the Hyakuri airshow (see http://forum.scramble.nl/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=90050) we gave up Monday to drive as far south as possible in order to start our tour at Tsuiki.
Below is a small compilation of my photos, taken at Tsuiki on Tuesday 23 October 2012. The weather started out grey, but the skies cleared during the morning. At the end of the afternoon we were treated with a small rehearsal for next weekend’s airshow.
Hope you like the shots,
Cheers,
Iwan
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