Aeroshow 2007

This article was sent to me by Dr. Ramamani, who is the CMD (Chief Medical Director) with BEL Bangalore. With her permission I am publishing this as a blog.

I witnessed Aero show 2007 on .8.02.07 with the free pass issued by our management. Jet aircrafts Manufactured in USA, Russia, France, Syria and of course India were on display. F16, Sukhoi, Grupine, Suryakiran were some of the aircrafts I saw. There were exhibition stalls from BEL, HAL, DRDO and some foreign companies. BEL had displayed warfare equipments like distance target measuring, night vision equipments etc.
Coming back to Aero show, even though I have been witnessing the spectacular event for the third time, I never feel tired of watching it any number of times. Aircraft exercises and aerobatics are simply awesome. Just watching leaves my pulse racing with excitement, with fear whether the pilot can control.
While in Aero show it so happened I met a senior executive officer from BEL who was good enough to take me to a sit out meant for VIPs and customers. It was a vantage point as I could watch the jets right from take off and witness the breathtaking and awesome events.
There was an initial hiccough though. The first jet had a tyre puncture while landing. Smoke started rising from the ground which gave rise to panic among watchers. Actually nothing much had happened and the runway was cleared in an hour
The first display was that of Sukhoi. It took off., was air borne in no time and zoomed up vertically. As it went up it became a speck, took a vertical backward U turn and came down at 2 MAC speed in addition to gravitational force. Later it changed to a horizontal course, rolled and somersaulted from left to right and right to left .It zoomed up again and repeated the aerobatics before it came down. The show was a perfect harmony between man and machine built on perfect technology and a perfect co ordination between man and machine. What a combination in defying the laws of gravity and aerodynamics!! Man made split second decision and controlled the machine which in turn responded obediently.
Then there was the spectacular show of fleet of Suryakiran consisting of 9 aircrafts/jets all painted red. It was a beautiful ballet in sky by the Suryakiran fleet.- dancers in red skirt against blue sky. The fleet went up together, arranged themselves in various figures keeping a distance of 3 to 5 feet, changed the geometrical figure from V to arrow, from triangle to diamond. As they flew they left a trail of tricoloured smoke of green, white and saffron in the trajectory. Then four of them separated from others and flew towards each other in opposite direction criss-crossed their paths giving an optical illusion of touching .
Then other 2 jets flew in another pathway separately and each left a heart shaped smoke in their trajectory. One more aircraft cut across the path of these two leaving a horizontal trail of smoke which pierced the smoky heart in air with an arrow !!
Finally the parachute jumpers!! A helicopter took 8 of them high up and paratroupers jumped with the help of tricoloured parachutes. Each one maneuvered the parachute by moving the legs and descended slowly from a height of 30,000 feet .
It left me exhilarating and breathless