Chinese also has a proverb saying “early bird gets the worm.”. Enthusiastic photographers who were willing to sacrifice their weekend to make their way to the show site were rewarded when the FTC-2000G made its first flying demo over Zhuhai at 0730hrs.
The pilot was on a familiarization exercise and merely flew circles around the the airfield. He went up again before ten to start his first demo practice.
The PLAAF August 1st team was next. They made some changes to their display but it still a boring routine and the most difficult maneuver for them was probably the four-ship barrel roll.
Compared to the previous show, the Y-20 display was shorter this year.
The highly anticipated J-10B cobra maneuver failed to materialise. Equipped with a thrust vectoring nozzle. The jet made three passes at different flight levels. It is said that the smokewinders it carried were borrowed from the August 1st team.
Everyone broke off for lunch after that and returned at 1pm to catch the foreign acts by Russian Helicopters with their Mi-171 and Ansat rotorcraft.
The PLAAF Red Eagles team is making their first debut to the international audience at this show. Flying eight K-8s, these jets are manned by flight instructors from the Air Force Academy. They can be described as the version 2.0 of August 1st. These men were willing to demonstrate new formations and maneuvers in their less capable subsonic jets. Sequence is almost the same as August 1st.
Although listed on the flight plan as Y-9. It was three J-20s that roared into the show from left to right in a delta formation. One broke off and the two jets flew a runway 23 circuit pattern for four passes before one broke off and left a single-ship to make a few more passes. The jets were painted in a new two-tone scheme .
