Northern Ireland Aviation Enthusiast's Forum
Military Aviation => Modern Military Aircraft => Topic started by: Paultojo on October 05, 2009, 04:25:22 PM
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Hi Guys
Flight of 4 Harriers heading for thier floating callsign I had them last on 233.325 at 5000 feet blowing my ears off as they say about 16.10, dont think HMS Illustrious is to far from our east coast, might be wrong
Paul
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Part of the Joint Warrior excercise I presume?
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Hi Guys
Flight of 4 Harriers heading for thier floating callsign I had them last on 233.325 at 5000 feet blowing my ears off as they say about 16.10, dont think HMS Illustrious is to far from our east coast, might be wrong
Hi Paul,
You were certainly correct about HMS Illustrious. I took the afternoon off work to head out to West Torr to watch the fleet heading north for the start of Joint Warrior 092. I met up with Chris at our usual haunt. In the 20+ years of watching the fleet heading out to start the exercise I have to say this was one of the most interesting to watch. The four ship of harriers launched off Illustrious just to the back of Rathlin and joining in formation just off our viewpoint. They returned as you say around 1610 and passed again right over our location in a box four formation working with Homer then Flyco for recovery on to Illustrious. Although quite a few of the warships were still working their way through D509 with some live gunnery we decided to head back north again to catch up with Illustrious as there was quite a bit of chat about upcoming helicopter GCA’s. We headed to White Park Bay where we were nicely aligned with the ship once again. A Lynx ‘Skua 348’, a Merlin ‘Tiger 1’ and an AEW Sea King ‘Cyclops 82’ aka ‘Oracle on TAC all lifted off from the ship and headed out for various taskings in the bay. Inbound from one of the USN vessels was ‘Venom 505’ which used the callsign ‘Big Dog’ while working with Illustrious. By 1800 we moved position once again, this time to the carpark beside Dunluce Castle. Illustrious was holding station just to the north of the Skerries as the helicopters all continued exercising in the bay. After it got dark Illustrious turned on to a northerly heading and it was an awesome sight off Portrush with the green landing lights for the controlled approaches on to the vessel. I’m sure anyone driving through the area must have wondered what they were seeing with a runway at sea. I think it will be a while before we top the start of this exercise.
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That sounds like a sight for sore eyes. I am devistated that i missed this. Are they comming back the same way? Any photo's snoop?
Xair
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Please tell us you have pictures???
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Should have let us know Snoop. Could have had a "board" meeting at Torr Head. Nothing showing on shipais. Are there more to come?