It is said that all good things must come to an end, it also happens to be true for events that are not as good. In the case of the former, “endings” happen all too soon whilst the latter is often an altogether different kettle of fish. The African Aerospace and Defense Show is a biannual event hosted at the Waterkloof Air Force Base close to where I live here in South Africa, the primary purpose of which is to create a platform for players in the defense sector to display their goods and talk shop for about five days every second or third weekend in September of the year in question. Attached to the commercial side is one of the largest airshows in the country, if not the continent and spans over the weekend following the first three commercial days. I’ve been seriously shooting the event since 2012 and have on occasion had the privilege to cover AAD for this publication as a member of the press. Believe me having that tag really helps finding a decent spot to park! 2018 has been a bit unusual in some ways, the first being in that the weekend on which the show was scheduled, happened to be over a long weekend, meaning that the Monday after the show was a national public holiday. This bode well for the numbers expected to attend and proven correct, judging by the queues at the gates on Saturday morning,
The next morning at 05:45 I eased my car into the queue at gate 6 and enjoyed my first cup of coffee while watching the line of cars get longer behind me. By the time a friend and his son arrived they were roughly 60 cars back from my position. Some time after confirming their arrival the gates opened to the flood of cars awaiting entry. It became a free for all in the rush to get though the entrance into the base proper and I was happy to finally park in a decent spot. Car parked, gear collected and security checks done a brisk walk brought us to our spot, just to miss one of the largest fighter formations I’ve ever had the pleasure to see and the displeasure to miss from a photographic point of view. Luckily I managed to fire off four shots on the next pass, only a single frame being somewhat usable. We quickly set up our gear, poured a coffee and gorged on a chocolate muffin before the next display and thus our day next to the flight line started. All things considered I would likely not rate 2018 as my best experience at AAD. For one the lens jammed again twice and focusing was unreliable in the extreme (still awaiting the outcome of my refund request) and atmospheric conditions were not conducive to beautiful photography. Add to this a less than ideal lineup, at least compared to prior years, made this show a hard one. We can’t always have it all our own way can we? Sometimes one needs to work for results one can be proud of and are worthy for public consumption. I’ll let the images do the rest of the talking. O, before I forget. Quite possibly one of the most graceful displays of formation flying I have ever seen happened at the very end of the show. The “Flying Lions” performed a closing display at dusk that I felt very fortunate to witness. Close your eyes and imagine four AT-6 Texans flying in close formation in the waning light performing slow, sweeping turns with radials rumbling and trailing display smoke forming perfect “tubes” in their wake, the air so still that you can actually see the wake turbulence causing the smoke to roll in on itself and becoming so dense that the four ship appeared from a bank of dense smoke like ghosts on their final pass. Any images from the display? Nope, I packed up all my gear just prior of the surprise display so I just sat down and enjoyed the experience.
more on this in a minute. The second was that for some reason unbeknown to me my application for press accreditation was denied. No easy parking and shorter queues then...... The lack of accreditation also meant a single day of shooting over the weekend as not being on the press also meant no access on validation day the Friday prior to the show. I’ve developed a liking in the Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di USD G2 and after using it at a show in 2017 decided to rent another lens for this event. I took some time off on Friday to collect the unit and while testing at the supplier the lens locked up with some error regarding the connection to the camera. Firmware updates were done on both the camera and lens at the shop and no further errors were encountered. Going home I stopped off at the air base and hung around in an open field just outside in an attempt to steal some images of aircraft passing on approach but the sky was terribly hazy and I didn’t have much success.
Truly, good things pass much to soon…