Yesterday, I went to the far south east of the Czech Republic to attend a function organised by the aviation museum and flying club in Kunovice. The event was officially known as "Military Day", but it was much larger and more well rounded than that name suggested. Beyond the open house aspect for the museum and flying club, there were exhibitions by historical reenactment clubs of WWII era military uniforms and equipment, tactical demonstrations by the Czech army as well as rescue and fire fighting demonstrations by the Kunovice airport fire brigade.
As Kunovice is home to at least three aircraft manufacturers, the day was also a good chance to get a look at some of the local aviation products.
At that, here's some of the civilian aviation subjects from the event:
This is the locally designed and built Evektor EV-55 Outback:
Another local product is the BRM Aero Bristell ultralight, which I took a very enjoyable sightseeing flight in:
Right after my flight landed, this Cirrus SR22 headed out on another sightseeing flight:
These vintage lovelies, an Aero C-104 and Zlín 381 taxied in right after the SR22 left:
This German registered Beech Duke was on hand to examine at close quarters:
I met an old friend in the form of OK-IFG, a Zlín Z-126 that I took a flight in in 2014. She stopped flying in 2015 and was donated to the museum. This was the first time I'd seen her on public display in the museum's collection:
The day marked the public debut of the museum's newly restored Let/Zlín Z-37 TM. The aircraft was part of a mid 1980s experiment to test the Z-37 T agricultural aircraft's suitability to the military close support mission. The tests showed it wouldn't work and the test aircraft was returned to farm work and found it's way to the Hungarian register. In recent years, the Kunovice museum located and recovered the aircraft and brought it home for restoration and display:
The day also had a historic event involved in the form of one of the very last flights of the Slovak government's Tupolev Tu-154 transport. It did three low passes over the museum in both clean and "dirty" configurations:
Some of the flying club flights did low passes over the exhibition area during the day. This Let L-23 Super Blaník, another local product, was one of them:
