Batajnica AFB had it’s Open day event today which turned into a mini-airshow. Open day purpose in Serbian Air Force is primarily to open the gates for base personnel families, friends and enthusiasts. I’ll post the video report tomorrow with some intense MiG action, until then enjoy the photos made by my friend Igor Salinger.
Just in. Eurofighter press-release which recaps the Typhoon’s recent appearances (Turkey and the Czech republic) and confirms in general that the demonstration caravan is expected to attend all the season’s major military shows.
If it’s going to be as lavish as it was in Dubai two years ago it will be the best presentation effort for sure.
Bellow you can watch my interview with the Eurofighter’s PR and an interesting mission systems and procedures mock-up demonstrator where I got a chance to witness long and close-range intercepts.
Euro Fighter Air Show Season Begins_13.05.11
There is one routine I look forward to every day. Loading up my iPhone with aviation podcasts: Airplane geeks, ANN, AvWeb, IAG, Airspeed. Getting my daily avgeek fix is essential for two reasons, being up-to date with aviation news without tiring my eyes early in the morning in front of the monitor while reading 150+ RSS entries and enjoying various interesting features that capture ones attention more effectively than print or digital could ever do.
You can imagine my delight when Pieter Johnson of “Across the pond” segment from Airplane Geeks invited me to talk about Serbian aviation! I tried to give an abbreviated run-down of airline, GA and military aviation in a country that has a respectable aviation tradition and is definitely worth a visit. Download episode 146 here.
The 2009 Dubai Airshow had just about enough fresh aluminum on it’s tarmac to be as exotic as it could be in the land of oil, money and all-around extravagance. F-22 Raptor had it’s overseas premier at the event which was a pretty big deal understandably. The Al Dhafra DACT controversy was there to heat things up between the “partners” eying the UAE future multi-role need.
My initial awe-inducing roaming of the static grounds quickly ended up at the US pavilion. I will never forget the USAF PR’s guy words: “Whether you’re a blogger, print, or CNN, you are all the same to me. Whatever you want!”. “The Raptor guys” was the answer. Enjoy.
Welcome to Tango Six Blog, the English language version of my Tango Six on-line brand that is three years old at the time I’m writing this. If you already read the “About me” section you can get the general idea on my background and if you followed me on twitter you know the low-down: aviation.
For all of you out there that are neck-deep in RSS and twitter feeds and are trying to keep track on every single aviation titbit on-line you should naturally be wary of yet another such venture. Let me appease you then, Tango Six Blog is not here to give you anything you can already find elsewhere. Period.
One should think very logically, do I need another source of avgeek fix besides Flightglogbal, AvWeek and others? And one should especially be very versed in filtering out original from recycled content. There are many who love aviation and tire others with that fact by merely transmitting somebody elses work. Sometimes, they don’t even credit the emitter.
Here, you can expect that no single post will ever be recycled, copied or loosely based on somebody elses hard work, access, skill and dedication. In short, you will find my original content, news, opinions, analysis and all other goodies that are appropriate for this format. If any information, photo or video is quoted it will be done so with clearly marked credits and associated explanation.
Hope you’ll enjoy reading the blog as much as I will enjoy writing it. Leave a comment here and there, drop me an e-mail or say hello on twitter.
I do my best to help with the promotion of Serbia’s GA. Powered trikes have became it’s mainstay. Cessna’s and Piper’s of the 60′s technology are no longer cheaper and simpler to operate than the new plastic birds from Italy, Slovenia and such. It all boils down to buck (euro) by the hour which only makes sense in some ab-initio ATPL well thought-out adventure. Joy-rides should be cheap, the wind must be caught by ones own hands and the smell of cold fresh air at altitude must be experienced.
Here’s a video we shot one beautiful summer day. We had three trikes (one as a camera ship) and a general idea it had to be cool.
Tango Six 2010 aviation calendar was one of those insane ideas that came to me primerely on the grounds of promoting the Serbian language Tango Six but you knew it was going to get bigger. And it did.
If a given avgeek gets asked how did he got infested by aviation, attractive multimedia will most probably be the answer. Movies, photography, magazines and the internet. You don’t get lovin’ it without absorbing the vulgar beauty of it. That’s for sure. Subsequent wet dreams after each of us saw Top Gun were the building blocks of the mentioned obsession, not the suffocating cramped space in a C-172 on a hot day. Beauty is the defining aspect of aviation in my book, and while back I ventured in some interesting productions to try and make my creative statement on the matter. Was never talented for predominant visual arts but always known how tho choose people that were.
Out of that state of mind came the idea to attempt an internet viral via photographing beautiful women near airplanes. A concept that was as old as aviation itself. Not especially innovative, but the plan was never focused on the print example. Internet and social media were the key.
All the girls were found via Facebook, all had respectable follower numbers and the story had to be shared, anticipated and covered all over the place. Buzz generation at it’s best if you will.
We indeed succeed to mobilize some GA people, companies and friends after it all started rolling. They helped out during the final production phase and still we didn’t make any money. We had the times of our lives those few months and that was more than enough.
It got printed in some 300 examples, we had a promo-party, various social media locations were it was mentioned had a couple of thousands of hits and to top it all of, we got mentioned by Flight International. In a review of 2010 calendars we got a link for ourselves and shared the stage with the likes of Ryanair and other serious global players. Not bad for an idea that was born in a small coffee-shop between friends.
The making-of video:
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