All good things come to an end. Same counts for our F-16 Demoteam.
As the last three years flew by, time has come for a quick look back at these most memorable years. September 2006, the idea was born to take over the F-16 demoteam flown by 'Goofy'. After headquarters approval, things needed to be arranged as soon as possible since 'Goofy' was about to end his air force career in December of that same year. Initially the main focus was arranging a complete Team which would be willing to put in a lot of effort to make the Demoteam as what it is today. This not only meant that we needed a very experienced technical crew with all the know how of the very complex F-16 systems, but of the same importance, a special type of person with the ability to sometimes run twice as hard as what is expected in normal day to day ops. And then, just as important, people you can thrust 200 % who are needed when demonstrating high performance jets in front of a great number of spectators, it does bring an extremely high responsibility with it. And then, when all the hard work is done, in the air force we tend to drink a nice cold beer and talk about the good times. These people are not just colleagues doing their day to day job, they become friends! I feel extremely lucky, we succeeded in 2006 by forming a Team with these kind of great people.
Now it was time to get starting. Goofy's team did a splendid job of helping out our technical crew, bringing them up to speed handling the smokewinders (always a pain in the …) and all other specials needed to run the technical part of the demoteam. On the flying part, Goofy put his life in my hands during our F-16B dual training runs. I didn't kill him the first few rides which resulted in my first solo demo flight at airbase Woensdrecht. At the same time, Noise, one of the 2005-2006 team coaches helped out Omelet and Sonar with all the responsibilities which came along being an F-16 demoteamcoach. From this point on, our team was on its own.
Now the time had come to turn all our big ideas and plans into reality. Racing against the Spyker formula 1 car became an obvious and successful first example of this. This being the first event for our team after the successful completion of all the training and receiving the important display authorisation, a high standard was set, not just flying and racing, but being able to organise and run such a event with our Team. Many more examples of Team effort would follow in the coming three years.
My job was actually quite easy; I just had to fly the plane. Sometimes my fellow team members gave me trouble for this, telling me over and over that I should not complain about anything since I would only work for 11 minutes a day! Luckily, I could give them sh..t when one of the smokewinders would not work during a demo. Which happened quite some times (when it became to bets whether they would work or not, they never thought about me being able to clear one of the stations inside the cockpit which resulted in only one operational smokewinder ; ).
Now on the serious part, this Team would not have been the same without any single person in it. Having Omelet, Sonar and Bitch on board, who were always seeking for new events, arranging everything around the flying, not only at our home base Volkel but also on location and keeping everybody informed of what was going on made this team a very dynamic one. They are the guys looking after the most important thing, flight safety, by constantly debriefing me after every flight to keep me sharp and improving the show performance.
I know that lots of extra time (even private time) went into this busy job. This once more shows the enormous dedication of those people willing to perform at the highest level!
In the last years, there were some minor changes in the technical crew for good operational reasons. It also gave a good change for more people to experience our Team from a members perspective. Having this supreme technical team around made sure we were able to fly our main special painted demo jet most of the shows. If not, we were always able to fly our spare jet and still perform our demo; again, this did not happen a lot of times. Flying jets on the edge of its envelope low level to the ground asks all of its technical state, therefore making these people paramount for a safe airshow execution.
Thanks guys!
Running a demoteam can be a logistical nightmare, and without good home base support it will be an actual nightmare! Volkel operational coordination centre did a great job supporting us, jets would be ready on Friday when the team needed to leave, even when things went differently than expected or during last minute changes, they are the people doing this coordination. On the other hand, I know for sure OC Volkel is giving a party when Omelet and Bitch finally have to hand in their Blackberries. There is this lady who probably will join them to the CIS to make sure they hand them in
Besides the OC, many more individuals at Volkel, who I will not name personally because I know for sure I will forget half of them, played an important role in the 2007-2009! Those who did will know and
our team is extremely thankful to them!
The only reason you are reading this story on internet now, is because Ron Sanders placed it here. Ron has been our webmaster for the last three years, before our team, Ron was already doing this since the Leeuwarden 2003 demoteam! Although he is not in the air force and not listed in the team members list, we feel he has been a true team member for us, doing lots of work behind the scenes running the internet site (which really became a famous and much visited one) and collecting pictures, and receiving all the e-mails which were send to the site.
A big 'thanks' goes out to Ron although I know he loves staying in the background!
At our headquarters we have a small office responsible for all the airshow business. Two remarkable individuals have their desks located there. Ed de Bruijn (well known for Texel airport where he claims the sun is always shining ; ) and John van Benten , two great people, just like Ron working behind the scenes, but just as important for us! These guys made all the initial airshow contacts for us and helped the team out anytime the team ran into problems.
Thanks guys, we will miss working with you!
What good is a demoteam without any fans and aviation enthusiasts? The Team has met a lot of people during the last three years. Some of them even became true F-16 demoteam fans! Always willing to come over and have a little chat with us. We always respected our fans big time, since we know how import it is for our Air force to have good 'supporters'! We were always happy to answer questions and tell about our lives being in the demoteam or being an operational military air force person. We really enjoyed all the great comments in our guestbook, the multiple different internet sites, even Hyves sites were created with great pictures of our demo jet, some of them even send to our website. Lots of fan mail was received by the Team at airbase Volkel. I know not all of the fan mail has been answered, simply by the fact the business of the whole team does not stop after demoteam operations, we are doing our 'normal' business as well, which include going to Afghanistan and join international exercises. But all of you should know we collected everything for our own archive to look back at a later stage!
At this point I really would like to thank all the great fans for supporting our team during the last three years, which for me personally were the best three years of my air force career!
Only one important task is left for us, succeeding in an excellent handover to Leeuwarden. We will make sure we hand over all the good things and lessons learned to the new F-16 Demoteam and give them a good start for the demo season 2010 and 2011!
I wish Hitec and his new team located at air base Leeuwarden all the best and many safe demo flights for the coming two years!
LINK TO VIDEO ON YOUTBE MADE BY RONNY RADIO 8FM
And now some final
did you knows about our life after the team to end my story:
Did you know that,
Omelet is participating in a lip-reading course; he blames me for being deaf after seeing and more importantly hearing lots of my demo shows. Maybe it's easier to mail him instead of calling him in the future!
Bitch found himself a new hobby to overcome the next years not being in the team anymore, on his Santa Clause wish list he is asking for a karaoke set, to keep up with the narrating in his free weekends. The neighbours will love this!
Due to the extreme barbequing of Ed, the average weight of an individual team member gained 5 KG during the last three years. The barbeque is ready for a major overhaul since it suffered more stress then the Orange coloured demo jet flown by Sheik.
Rinus is doing a site survey for possibilities to start a demoteam flown from Kandahar airbase, Afghanistan.
Willy is joining Rinus and made responsible for good accommodation, it's a long driven from Uden South to Kandahar
Gerrit, team member 2007-2008, might be seen in any IKEA around the world.
Ronald needs to work on his poker face!
Pascal invented a new type of butter, it's called Krautenbauter, and the Germans love it!
Gijs didn't thrust his bathtub during his last stay in Vegas, so a thorough inspection was needed.
Stolly did not only become famous for being in the demoteam, Hollywood has to be thankful to this guy!
Sheik has to be really cautious the coming days for fooling with his team mates this very last time!
So long,
Capt. Ralph 'Sheik' Aarts
F-16 Demo pilot 2007-2009 
