Gothenburg-Save, Sweden - 30/08/2008

A two day trip to Gothenburg featuring my son, Sammy's first flight on a plane was planned to coincide with the Gothenburg airshow.

The gang of seven met at Stansted in the dark on the morning of our departure. Our Ryanair flight to the airshow venue itself was approximately 55 minutes late getting airborne, but thanks to a decent tail wind and an opposite end approach at Save, we arrived only 15 minutes late.

The next issue came when mine and Sammy's luggage (along with a handful of other people's) failed to appear. After it was confirmed that there was nothing else to come, those of us who were missing our stuff needed to get a form filled in advising where we'd be staying during the trip. We were told that if the bags arrived on a later flight they'd be delivered to our hotel and if they didn't something would be sorted out on our return. I was rather riled by this. You go through all the stresses and strains of trying to ensure you don't forget anything and then, through no fault of your own, you arrive at your destination and someone else has managed to forget ALL of your stuff for you. The day hadn't started well.

It seemed to get even worse when the paperwork had finally been sorted and we were cleared on our way. Still some three or four miles from the airshow entrance the traffic ground to a complete standstill. The flying was already well underway. As we'd landed a pair of J-32 Lansens were waiting to depart. We made the decision that our best bet of getting anything from the day was probably to just sit on the approach. By the time we'd have got in the sun would've been on the wrong side of the runway, so we didn't have a massive amount to lose by that stage.

Even then, despite the clear blue skies, it still looked like we were in for a day of frustrations with almost no passes coming near us, and when aircraft actually were on finals to land, it seemed that out of nowhere a small, yet significant enough cloud would hover in front of the sun for many of them...

It all changed however when the J-29 Tunnan taxied out for the first of three flights during the day. We wandered across a field and positioned ourselves on the verge of the road that ran slap bang alongside the end of the runway. Even though the sun was virtually in our faces, it at least gave us hope for later in the day.

Save's commercial traffic continued during the day, but there's so little of it for it to pose too many problems.

Around lunchtime the Tunnan, a Lansen, a Hunter and a Vampire all taxied out and took off in a stream. Evidently they were tasked with performing a number of flybys over the city and returned to Save having completed them still in formation, which was nice.

Many of the older aircraft present took off to do the same, but the vast majority operated from the cross runway that was adjacent to the crowdline - ie nowhere near our position.

Team Vingarna were present with their pair of Hkp 9s (Bo105s to you and I!), though only one came close at any stage.

The Swedish equivalent of the Swift Glider Team were present, along with a para-dropping An-2.

Little did I know at the time, but arriving on the Ryanair Dreamliner 738 was my luggage! How many people can say they've got a photograph of their own bags arriving?!?!

The local aeroclub flew a formation of their aircraft.

Then it was time for the Tunnan solo display. The light for landing shots was pretty much out of this world by now.

After an extremely aggressive and impressive aerobatic routine from a Yak-55 it was time for a big block of Warbird displays. As with earlier, few of the passes were within shooting range, but the recoveries most definitely were! My biggest regret from Satenas in 2006 was that I'd got absolutely zero flying shots that I was pleased with. Some of these put that right!

Concluding the Saturday show was the highly impressive routine demonstrated by F7 Wing's SAAB JAS-39A Gripen. Sadly, once again it was a little too distant for the naked 120-300mm for the vast majority of the time.

With that we headed into town to find our hotel for the night, which in itself proved to be rather trickier than anticipated! When we finally did track it down it turned out to be a rather splendid boat on the river!

Having been called by the airport to tell me that my luggage had arrived, I asked the lady on reception if it had been delivered. It hadn't, but we couldn't have been in our rooms for more than two minutes before the phone was ringing to advise it had just arrived.

A day that had started so badly ended up turning into a rather good day, with great conditions and a few nice shots in the bag.

What would the second day bring?