With the participant list including a Lithuanian AS365 and the option to (hopefully) get some good shots of the retiring Sea Kings the decision was quickly made to register, and see what the day would bring.
We arrived at the civil airport side of Nordholz early in the morning, under a grey cloud cover. The weather prediction showed that in the morning the sun would be shining, and with a spottersday from 8:00 to 11:00, that would proof to actually be correct.
MFG5 brought us from the civil airport to their platform by bus, where the participants were lined up. Unfortunately, a LOT of the helos were still covered up, and most of them faced the sun directly. During the morning the various crews removed a lot of the covers, so it got a bit better later on. That part out of the way, lets get on with the show.
For me, one of the main attractions. Early in the morning when the first sunrays came out, the AS365 was looking nice. The background will show you what I meant with helos being covered up..
42 AS365 Lithuanian Air ForceIn that same regard, the H145M.
77+01 H145M THR30During the day, we took pictures of 5 different Sea Kings. The first one was the 89+50. It's sad to see these old ladies go.
89+50 Sea King Mk41 MFG5The award for the best positioned aircraft of the day would go to the RK Flugdienst Do.28. Almost sitting alone on a part of the platform, you had multiple good options to take pictures of this one.
D-IRES / 59+11 Do.28 RK FlugdienstIn contrast to the earlier messages that nothing would fly, the special painted Sea King came in, and did a few fly-bys in front of us
89+63 Sea King Mk41 MFG5The sun now came up far enough to clear the NH90 hangar, so that the special painted Lynx, an NH90 and a Sea King could now be photographed. A few members of MFG5 removed a couple of fences that were in the way, and they removed as much of the covers from the NH90 as they could at that time.
83+26 Sea Lynx Mk.88A MFG5
79+59 NH90NTH MFG5
89+64 Sea King Mk41 MFG5The Czech crews went on to remove the covers from the Mi17 and the W3A.
0834 Mi17 Czech Air Force
0716 Sokol W3A Czech Air ForceOur hosts also put an H34 and a Sycamore coded WE+543 on display. Especially the Sycamore looked stunning, and nothing like the previous photos of it. It seems to have been repainted and rotorblades are mounted again. Unfortunately when the sun came out, it was almost impossible to take a decent picture of it due to the amount of people around it by then.
On the way back, we got a small and very quick option to visit the graveyard on Nordholz. It's a shame to see where probably most of the Sea Kings end up. This 89+53 has seen a lot better days..
89+53 Sea King Mk41 MFG5The graveyard also holds P-3C 60+01, F-104 22+92 (marked as 26+72) and Sea King 89+62 in various butchered states.
The bus returned us to the civil airport to end an enjoyable morning on Nordholz.
Regards,
Bram
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