Taiwan & Japan 2018
For the second year in a row we organised a tour to two beautiful Asian countries with a large variety of aircraft.
The second tour to Japan and Okinawa started on Saturday 1 December 2018 with a gathering of a small group of 5 enthusiasts at Schiphol. One participant had to cancel at the last moment unfortunately and the last one would join the group in Taipei. China Airlines provided an Airbus A350 for our ride to Taipei.
Arrival at Taipei was on Sunday 2 December, very early. Clearing immigration took some time, but eventually we ended cashing some Taiwanese Dollars for the days to come. Our final participants had arrived from Paris as well and we were picked up by a representative of the rental car company. After inspecting our van we headed off! First target was a preserved F-5E. The whole country has numerous wrecks & relics and whenever we were close to one (or two, or more) we tried to visit them. We visited a couple more before ending up at Songshan airport. We spent a couple of hours there, both at the café and in the approach and enjoyed the Government 737 take-off and two visiting C-130s among a lot of civil traffic and loads of people watching and taking photos. A quick closer view of Taipei 101 followed and a couple of wrecks & relics before we eventually ended up in Hualien for the night. Time to get some sleep!
Monday 3 December we got up early, as we always do, and after breakfast we drove towards Hualien Air Base. The sun was shining brightly and skies were blue, as per the forecast! We didn´t know which runway they would operate, so ended up at the beach and saw the first F-16s take off from the other side. Take-offs shots ‘done’. Since some F-16s and the (R)F-5s did not stay low enough during take-off we soon drove to the other end of the base for landing shots. We enjoyed the sights and sounds of roughly 20 F-16s and 2 F-5s (one RF-5E, one F-5F) during the day, the company of British enthusiasts and the practice of being asked to leave from the Carrefour parking lot (as expected). All in all a great start of the tour. Later in the day we drove along the east coast of the island towards Taitung. We spent the night in a hotel that is very conveniently located for the local air base.
Being so close to the destination already, and with breakfast being served on the spot we enjoyed a very good start of Tuesday (4 December). Baking in the sun it didn’t take long before the first F-5E taxied towards the threshold, just to wait for more to join him before take-off. This procedure kept going on for a number of hours, with many F-5E and F-5F, grey, brown/green and silver, taking off and landing at Taitung Air Base. We captured each and every one of them. The visiting Fokker 50 and a rescue S-70 completed the picture. After the lunchbreak we moved to the approach area (moving along with the favourite position of the sun), but had to conclude after some time that it looked like they were having an afternoon-long lunchbreak. Nothing seemed to be happening anytime soon and very happy with the results in the morning we drove towards Kaohsiung for the night.
The next morning (Wednesday 5 December) we were aiming for the correct spot at Tainan. We lost about 10 minutes trying to find the correct (very small) road to the perfect spot and managed to miss a couple of F-CK-1s landing early already. Still, after our arrival, and while enjoying the sun and blue skies again, several others landed as well. After some time security showed up to check us out. No problems, but they promised to stay with us while we were there. Talking to them they soon found out we were planning to move to Chiayi in the afternoon. By the time we were about to move they told us they would follow us to Chiayi. At Chiayi they were exchanged for local security, that would monitor us for the rest of the afternoon. Again, no problem. Activity was a bit too slow in the afternoon, but we managed to capture some F-16s and our first Army chopper. Knowing we could have another go at this base next week we drove back to Kaohsiung, visiting some more wrecks & relics along the way, to spend the night and enjoy another fine dinner.
On Thursday 6 December we wanted to see the activity of the Air Force Academy at Gangshan. Did we mention the awesome weather already? Again today! Actually, the temperature was that high, that we were happy there was some shade in the approach of Gangshan. In the next couple of hours we enjoyed dozens of aircraft, both AT-3 and T-34s, doing their thing. What an active place this is! With Thursday-afternoon labelled as off-time as far as flying goes in Taiwan, we visited the local ROCAF museum. A very interesting museum, but it is a pity that it is so hard to get good shots of many of the inhabitants. On our way out from the museum we saw the T-34s flying again. So, we went back to the approach for a while. That visit generated more shots, but from the other side since the sun had moved since we left. Our next stop was a hotel in downtown Taichung, where we checked in for the next two nights.
We were aiming for two bases on Friday (7 December); Hsinchu and CCK. First one was Hsinchu. Today, we saw the first Taiwanese clouds. Not a lot, but just enough to form an interesting background on the many Mirage 2000 photos we took at Hsinchu. Besides the Mirage 2000s we had a calibrator Beech 1900 coming by, which was a nice addition to the collection of different types seen. In the afternoon we moved to Ching Chuan Kang (or CCK or Ching Chan-Kang or Taichung). By the time we got there the sky had become totally clear again and we enjoyed the activities on Friday afternoon. Interesting was a test-flight by a modified F-16B (modified with the V/Viper-package). When we thought it was almost time to go we were surprised by yet another six Ching Kuo’s coming back in beautiful golden hour sunlight conditions. Yet another successful day in Taiwan was celebrated with a good meal and some drinks.
Saturday 8 December started like the other days; getting up in time, conclude that the skies are blue, have breakfast and head for a ROCAF base. Since Taiwan flies its military aircraft on Saturday (morning) as well, we went back to CCK for more F-CK-1 shots. And that is what we got. By the end of the morning the time had come to head further North, towards Taipei-Taoyuan Airport. Later that day we took a China Airlines flight to Naha (Okinawa, Japan), landing there around 19.45 in the evening. Two taxi’s took us to our hotel for the next four nights.
On Sunday (9 December) we wanted to visit Naha Air Show. This meant we started the day early again and took the taxi to the main gate of the base. The weather wasn’t as good as in Taiwan, but that was forecasted. The forecast predicted a number days with lots of clouds and periods or rain. Today was a cloudy one, with not much rain. The show provided many interesting photo opportunities, especially since many of different aircraft types that are based at Naha could be captured. The clouds prevented Blue Impulse from doing their full routine unfortunately. At the end of the day we collected our rental van for the remaining days at the island and drove back to our hotel.
Monday morning (10 December) brought us to Kadena Air Base. Unfortunately the weather forecast appeared to be pretty accurate; the weather was crap (cloudy, rainy, dark). The weather conditions meant that we could stay at the café all day, so we would not be in the rain and would not be facing the sun. Despite the weather we had an interesting day. Kadena managed to provide a wide range of very interesting aircraft; EP-3, P-3C with Littoral Surveillance Radar System (LSRS), RAAF P-8, RC-135, HH C-17, KC-135s, P-8s, etc. Only two F-15s though, which was disappointing of course.
Tuesday 11 December the weather was a bit better. We started from the roof of the civil terminal Naha Airport/Air Base. The JASDF and JMSDF units were active and we enjoyed the opportunities from the roof. With the sun slowly moving to the other side of the runway we decided to spend some time near MCAS Futenma. Not the easiest place for photography (chopper are always tricky) but we were lucky to capture a couple of USMC choppers anyway and saw a UC-35 arrive, as well as two USMC Hornets. We then went back to Naha for some additional shots from the other side.
We returned to Kadena AB on Wednesday (12 December) again. Another day with not the best possible weather. Having looked at the forecast regularly we were not surprised though. We spent the morning at the café again and were able to capture a number of additional interesting subjects. Around mid-day we moved to Naha again where they were using the other runway direction. This gave us more interesting views and photo opportunities (on F-15s, T-4s, E-2 and C-2). By the end of the afternoon we handed in the car and checked in for our flight back to Taiwan. A China Airlines Boeing 747 (not many left these days) took us to Taipei, where we landed around 9.30 PM. Immigration was a lot faster and the rental car guys were quick. That meant we ended up in our hotel at a fairly decent time after all.
Thursday 13 December was the first ‘spare’ day in Taiwan. We had scheduled the tour in such a way that we could go back to the bases that didn’t deliver as much as we had hoped for during the first week in Taiwan. First one up was Chiayi, since only had a couple of F-16s there the first last week. Our plan worked; this time we had eleven F-16s, including two with special colour tails. Also, like at many bases we saw visiting aircraft and local choppers. This being a Thursday, we were not expecting much traffic in the afternoon and left when lunch had started. On or way to our hotel in Kaohsiung we were therefore surprised to see Ching Kuo’s flying from Tainan and spent a short while in the approach there to catch some additional ones. We then found a (freshly) preserved S-2T Tracker, which rounded off the day.
For Friday (14 December) we were planning to go to Pingtung. Since all other fighter bases had given us ‘enough’ already we decided to aim for two missing aircraft types; E-2 Hawkeye and P-3 Orion. Both can be found at Pingtung, besides the C-130s. It took some time, but local contacts informed us to wait. Eventually we got both types. By the way; it was sunny again, the whole time during our second stay in Taiwan. Very happy with the outcome we decided to try our luck at Gueiren. Gueiren is an Army chopper base. Since the army is not so welcoming to photographers we decided not to stay too long and left after getting great afternoon shots of some AH-1W Cobras. We then headed North to find our last hotel of the tour in Hsinchu.
We had a second chance at Hsinchu on Saturday 15 December. Besides capturing fourteen Mirage 2000s we met some friends there as well. What better way to spend a Saturday morning? After that we had enough time to go to Songshan again and see if we could see ever more than we had already seen. That visit didn’t bring very much, apart from a relaxed viewing area and a very nice sunset.
It was then time to hand in our car and board our KLM 777 that would take us to Amsterdam. We had time to reflect on a great tour that gave us brilliant weather in Taiwan and loads of very interesting aircraft in both Taiwan and at Okinawa. Take-off was just after midnight (Sunday 16 December).
