Yes, it’s air show season again and Wings over Wairarapa 2009 has kicked off the year in, well, very average style.

On the whole, it was worth spending the day in the moderate heat and wind, but it wasn’t as exciting as promised.  The star attraction – Doug Brooker’s Spitfire – was of course absent after its unfortunate mishap on Thursday. The RNZAF failed to bring anything larger than a King Air (which was hidden away until after the show!), and many of the more delicate WWI-era aircraft were not taken aloft due to the blustery winds.

Anyway, here is a small selection of what did make an appearance.  There is a Wings over Wairarapa 2009 set on my Flickr site which contains 159 of the 586 photos taken on the day.  The good news is my new lens and new memory cards performed brilliantly.

First up, perhaps the most spectacular sight of the day was an 8-ship formation of Yak-52s which kicked off their involvement with a “pylon race”.  Very entertaining.

There were, as usual, a few agricultural aircraft displaying including the only remaining Tiger Moth top dresser, Wanganui Aero Work’s ZK-AUZ.

Only three of the WWI-vintage aircraft got airborne on the day, including this Pfalz D.III

WWII warbirds were well represented with two P-40 Kittyhawks, a P-51 Mustang and, my favourite, the FG-1D Corsair

The RNZAF showed up with their best-ever selection of 7 helicopters – a Kaman SH-2G Seasprite, pictured here, four UH-1H Iroquois and two Bell 47G Sioux.  By the next WoW, two of those types will be undergoing replacement.

And, of course, the Red Checkers were on hand. I’ve never been to an air show where they weren’t present.

And finally, after deciding to hang around for a bit after the show instead of rushing to join queues of traffic, we witnessed a mini-airshow with a very interesting selection of aircraft that had either been purely on static display or owners had simply flown in.  They included this DeHavilland DHC-2 Beaver.