Over the weekend of 26th and 27th of May 2018 the Red Thunder Airshow 2018 was staged at Watts Bridge Memorial Airfield, around 1.5 hours drive west of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The airshow was organised to coincide with the end of the Red Thunder TFC (Tactical Flying Clinic), a separate week-long event where owners of ex-Russian and Chinese aircraft get together to learn formation and tactical flying from experienced pilots.
In this article I focus on the various piston-engined trainer aircraft that appeared over the airshow weekend. This includes the following aircraft types:
I am excluding from this article the Yakovlev Yak-52 and Nanchang CJ-6 trainers that attended the event, as I have covered them in this separate article Red Thunder Airshow 2018 – Red Thunder TFC Participants. I also photographed several of the aircraft in this article at sunrise, those images are displayed in the separate article Red Thunder Airshow 2018 – Sunrise and Dusk Aircraft Shoots.
Formations
It was wonderful to see some of formation flying with some of the Wirraway, Texan and Trojan aircraft throughout the event. Unfortunately I didn’t successfully capture many of the formations due to bad light and incorrect camera settings, I certainly learned a lot photographing at only my second airshow.
North American AT-6/SNJ Texan
CAC CA-16 Wirraway
North American T-28 Trojan
CAC CA-25 Winjeel
Beechcraft T-34 Mentor
Other Information
Location
Watts Bridge Memorial Airfield is located near the town of Toogoolawah, around 125Km (1.5 hours) by road North-West of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For more information about the airfield and its operation, visit the airfield’s website.
Image Galleries
If you’d like to view more of images on this topic, below are some links to my photography gallery website.
