Torrejón de Ardoz,  17 October 2008

After our experiences at Colmaner Viejo yesterday we had do think of another plan. At first we planned to stay the whole morning at Colmenar Viejo to take some shots of the helicopters parked at the ramp and the landing helicopters. But as you can imagine we didn't had the guts to go to Colmenar Viejo again. During the first two days we experienced that the photo conditions at Getafe and Cuatro Vientos are not as good as at Torrejón de Ardoz. And the fact that these two airbases are mainly equipped with transport aircraft, so they won't be flying much, made us decide to go back to Torrejón de Ardoz again.

Around 9 o'clock in de morning we arrived at the northern landing area of Torrejón. Only half an hour after our arrival we noted that we were spotted by the Policia Local, so we quickly changed our CF-cards. When the two officers arrived, we immediately started a friendly conversation. We told them we knew it was not allowed to take shots of the base itself, and only took pictures of the aircraft. This was no problem at all, and they even took a picture of us in front of their patrol car.

It was a nice chat we had with the two officers. We talked about the aircraft, birds and our camera's. We showed them our camera and they even showed us their camera, including the car crashes they took pictures of. After this nice conversation which lasted more than 30 minutes they left.

The weather during the early morning was not as sunny as the two days before, but this got better and better every minute. When we arrived in the early morning we noticed that a lot of CL-215 were airborne. During the day seven of these nice fire fighters came back, so we had a lot of good opportunities to take good shot of them.

Besides the local Hornets and CL-215s that flew we saw some Falcon 20's, a A-310 and a very rare C-212. The real highlight of today was the Hornet of CLAEX which was carrying a rare pod underneath its wing. The departure of the Belarus Il-76 was also very spectacular. Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon we left and drove back to Alcorcón for our 2nd night in the Formule One Hotel.