FORMATIONTEAM THE VICTORS

This year (2019) Formationteam 'THE VICTORS' are celebrating their 15th display season.

History (source website The Victors) : 

28th of March 2004. Manu De Craene, Frankie Deck and Luc De Smet returned separately from their navigation flight. By coincidence all 3 pilots called Ursel Radio to get all necessary information for the landing. But instead of starting their approach they asked each other to 'join up'.

They where flying for some time in each others neighborhood but this was still far away from a so called 'formation'. 

But they liked this way of flying so much that they started with a search for information/rules concerning formations flights in the Belgium airspace.

They started with a training to improve their flying skills and continue their search for more information (Belgian Air Force, internet and other sources).

27th of August 2004. First invite for a flight above the fire department of Gavere during their open doors.

After this display they flew a lot above Ursel, their home base, to support different local events.

2006. Unexpected they received an invite for a big airshow in Koksijde (Belgium), also that year they attended the Fly-inn at Zoersel (Belgium).

Because they liked it more and more they decided to start up a VZW, created standardized procedures, starting a promo team and practice even more.

Also 2 extra pilots where accepted to be sure that a display with 4 aircrafts was possible.

2010. This year The Victors flew their 100th display at the Sanicole airshow. 

2011. Invite SIAF2011 (Slovak International Air Fest) for their first debut outside Belgium.

In the meantime The Victors are known within and outside the Belgium borders for their nice displays.

They are the only civil display team in Belgium at this moment.

Why the name Victors : when they flew with only 3 planes, they had following identification letters :

OO-VMC / OO-VMX and 00-VCU. All callsigns started with a 'V' (Victor). The name 'Victors' was born.

Currently they use 4 aircraft : OO-VMY / OO-EBU / OO-VCU and OO-VMC. All Aircrafts (except OO-VCU) are owned by Aeroclub Ursel.

The 4 aircraft belong to the family of the Piper PA-28 Cherokee series.

2 types are used by the team : Piper Cadet and Piper Warrior III.

THE TEAM : 

#VICTOR ONE  - FLIGHT LEADER : Manu De Craene

#VICTOR TWO - LEFT WINGMAN : Luc De Smet

#VICTOR THREE - RIGHT WINGMAN : Rick De Smet

#VICTOR FOUR - CHAROGNARD : Steven Taildeman

#VICTOR FIVE - FIRST DEPUTY PILOT : Bram Joly

#VICTOR SIX - SECOND DEPUTY PILOT : Freek Van Hyfte

6th of April 2019. This day I was invited by the team for an AIR TO AIR fotoshoot.

Many thanks to the team to make this possible!

Below pictures are taken between 2015 - 2019 : Belgian Air Force Days at Florennes and Kleine Brogel / Open doors ATCC Semmerzake / Ursel Avia / Sanicole Airshow.

related links : https://www.thevictors.be