Military Jets Photography: 2009 04 30 Basevisit Beauvechain airbase

Beauvechain Air Base is officially called Air Base Lt.Col. Charles Roman and is one of the biggest air bases in Belgium. It is the home base of two training squadrons, or “smaldelen” as the Belgians call them, the 5th and the 9th. Both squadrons fly with the Marchetti SF260D/M+. A The maintenance of the France based Alpha Jets is still done at Beauvechain as well as the maintenance of the Marchetti.
After a warm welcome and a short presentation about the base itself, we started our base tour. First we stopped at a hangar where we found a stored Fouga Magister. Two more aircraft of this type were preserved next to this hangar. After hese aircraft we moved on to the Marchetti platform. This is the main platform on this base where the Marchetti's of the Belgian Air Force could be found.
After our tour on the Marchetti platform, we moved on towards the maintenance hangar of the Alpha Jet. There wasn't too much to photograph; most Alpha-Jets were decomposed because they were in maintenance. The aircraft inside this hangar were completely under construction. Hereafter we went to the old F-16 shelter area of the base. There were three F-16's over there, two inside a hangar and one outside on the platform. The F-16's aren't operational anymore and they were used for training purposes of ground crews. The last stop was the maintenance hangar of the Marchetti. In the old F-16 area was nothing left to see anymore. Also in this hangar aircraft were decomposed into small parts because of their maintenance.
We would end our base tour with a small visit to the museum which is located next to the main entrance of Beauvechain. Most of the airplanes were ex Belgian Air Force, but there were also a pair of Mig-21's. Especially the silver-coloured Starfighter next to the building of the museum was very nice and well kept. Furthermore, this museum had a few other nice aircraft in its collection like the Gloster Meteor, Hawker Hunter, RF-84 Thunder Flash, T33 Tbird, SF260 Marchetti and an F-16A Fighting Falcon. The Belgian Ministry of Defence announced that they will close down Bierset due to reorganizations. The entire Belgian helicopter fleet will move because of that from Bierset to Beauvechain.