RAAF Richmond 100th Anniversary Air Show

I'd booked ticket for the family to visit the 100th Anniversary RAAF Richmond Air Show on Sunday 28th Sept. I was reading reports on Saturday night of the absolute shitshow traffic jams trying to get to Richmond. I didn't buy parking tickets as its a single lane road to Richmond and I knew it would be a shitfight. So my daughter and I jumped on the train, took 30 minutes to get there. Piece of cake, no sitting in queue's of traffic for hours, that would have blown my mind....

There were large queue's of people waiting to get in the gates at 8:30am though. They estimated around 40,000 people for the day. So we waited in the queue but it only took about 20 minutes or thereabouts. Once inside there was ample room to walk around as the base is huge. We stopped for a quick pic in the middle of he runway, it's not everyday you can do something like that.

As we walked across the runway we could see the Roulette' parked up on the taxiway, I stopped for a photo as the Roulettes really do have all their ducks in a row.

Entering the apron, the Globemaster loomed high above us, we had to walk all the way around it to get to the back. Sweet baby Chesus, this thing is big.

As we arrived fairly early we decided to get in the long line to have a look inside the Gigantic Globemaster. Did I mention this plane is Gigantic? The line was at least 120m long, but we had 1.5hrs until the flying starts and may as well do this now while nothings happening. 

Waiting in line.....

We found some shade at least.......

Getting closer after 20 minutes.......

Yep its big inside

Next up we decided to have a look in the Hercules. Bit of a mistake, should have done that first as it was a bit underwhelming after looking through the globe master. It make the Hercules look tiny in comparison.

It wasn't long after we finished looking through the Hercules that another one started flying overhead. For a big plane it was fairly quiet.

A coffee and mini donuts were calling our names, but damn they weren't cheap. We wandered about an looked at the refuelling tanker. One of RAAF personnel was giving us a rundown of the refuelling process. It the pilots choice whether he refuels from the wing pods or the flying boom at the back. The boom extends 17metres. The inside of the plane is fully fitted out to carry passengers still.

We made our way towards the crowded area near the grandstands. There certainly was a large crowd now. Next up was a Rural Fire Service Helicopter, completing a water dump.

Then a Boeing 737-800 did a few flybys at low level.

Getting a position along any of the fence lines was a task however. I wasn't concerned about being in the front row, as we would be looking into the sky for most of the day. Next up was the big guns, the F-35A Lighting II. Now starts the photo dump.

The flare drop was spectacular, he must have dropped 30 flares or more. 

The Hawk127 training jet came out next for a few passes. 

Then a F/A-18 Growler was up next and he put on a great display, also dropping a bunch of flares.

Another 737 did some low slow passes. It noticed when it was passing a long way away over the nearby fields and houses how impressive a big jet is flying at such a low altitude.

Not long after this an announcement came over the PA system, that the air show was cancelled due to "There's a Chance of Thunderstorm and Hail immanent". Yeah, I reckon we got as much chance of hail as a meteor landing on my  head.

My Daughter had gone to try out the flight simulator so I sat and watched the crowd disperse waiting for her to return. When she came back she said, there's an F/A-18 and F-35 on the ground on display. We couldn't see it before due to the crowd blocking them out.

So we went and took a look at them up close without the crowds. We spoke to one of the pilots of the F/A-18 and F-35 who gave us a few insights into both jets.

We had to move back as they were towing the F-35 into the hanger.

We took a look around now with the lack of crowds as we made our way towards the exit. 

That was pretty much the end of the day. We had 2 drops of rain on us while waiting at the train station. Beside getting cancelled we saw most displays, missed out on the Roulettes. All up it wasn't a bad day out, my daughter enjoyed it and it was great to spend the day with her.