NATO Tiger Meet 2009 – Kleine Brogel AB, Belgium

The Tiger Meet is an annual event which brings together many squadrons from around Europe to fly together in realistic scenarios and assess their skills using video recordings.

The event usually has a ‘Spotters Day’ which is aimed at allowing many hundreds of spotters access to the airfield to take pictures of the participating aircraft on what is essentially a normal operations day. The residents of Kleine Brogel AB in Belgium, 31 Squadron of the Belgian Air Force, are particularly helpful in this respect, providing good positions for photography and ensuring that the replica watches aircraft taxi past the waiting hordes!

Many of the squadrons decorate their aircraft specifically for this get-together – the artwork is sometimes outstanding and beautiful in its detail.

The Tiger Meet 2009 Spotters Day was held on 19 September and was blessed with excellent weather and a large attendance, as is evidenced by a couple of my images. One description I have seen recently is the ‘Spotter Two-Step’ – where there is the simultaneous clicking of hundreds of shutters (Step 1) followed by the looking down and reviewing of the resultant images (Step 2)!