Another "F-117 Companion" thread and a bit of history!

a reply to: Blackfinger

Funny you say the bare bases up North, an Antonov An124 is scheduled to operate from Scherger to Cairns soon. Thats an odd movement!

I dont buy the Pine Gap arguement due to there being no nearby airfield or runway with the exception of Alice Springs (which thanks to ATS, I learnt about the weekly then C-141 and now C-17 Reach flights that come through Richmond and Alice) but Tindal, the countless barebases and the massive Woomera complex are all perfect locations.

Oakey is just literally student training, but the airspace around it is mainly fast jet ops. Was your BBT sighting back in the F-111 days?

Happy Straya Day!!!

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Blackfinger

Several years ago an ATSer was out in that area and caught Top Cover flying.

Could you be more specific as to which area this was? Blackfinger described 3/4s of the continent!

a reply to: Ironside800

You're asking about something that was something like 7+ years ago. So, no.

a reply to: Zaphod58

How on earth do they manage to get a cruise missile to loiter for 24 hours I'm amazed it can carry that much fuel?

a reply to: Woody510

More efficient wings to generate lift. Forward swept wings are actually extremely efficient. That would allow the engine to have a variable throttle and throttle down for loiter time.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

No, it happened at warton. Just a turn of phrase, sorry.

a reply to: Zaphod58

can you explain further the forward swept wing variable throttle connection.

I understand forward swept wings are more efficient for generating lift especially with smaller wings because the air flow of a forward swept wing for lift generation goes from the tip inward to the wing root. the most lift being generated in the forward swept configuration at the wider wing root as opposed to the rear swept configuration where the lift is generally a lot more prevalent at the wing tips which a smaller and thus less efficient.

sounds perfect for a loitering cruise missile where the wings would need to be tucked in for storage and for launch. in this case i guess less is more.

FYI

Halo

Near miss

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Forward swept wings generate lift at lower speed then conventional wings. One of the things you could do is have it go in with the wings folded, and a higher power setting, then deploy the wings and drop the power to as low as 25-30%.

originally posted by: Blackfinger
Pine Gap is perfect for Radar exercises..BAE had a field day with Taranis in Woomera.My BBT sighting was at Dalby at night which is west of Oakey where they do a lot of helo exercises..

What you doing at Dalby? I get out there occasionally!

originally posted by: T3rrap1n
a reply to: waynos

I concur, i’m from the fylde, for years myself and my brother in the summer watched them fly from our back garden at night. Small triangular craft, You could hear warnings to other flights that uavs were operating in the area on a scanner.
Up at nearby rivington it became a bit of a joke about the testing of the black triangles over there. That would have been 93-96.

I seem to recall there was a near miss that was reported in the press involving a civilian airliner and a small black triangle late 90’s I think.

There have always been rumours of an emergency landing at Warton of something special from our American brothers, sf descended on to the scene quickly and things were covered up, literally. Happened in the 90’s.

Also had a girlfriend from Elgin, who had a full complement of new double glazing from the mod due to a low flying ‘black thing’ that shattered her previous ones. She reckoned it was a us plane as it was too big to be British apparently

I've never heard of that at Warton, if there are no scheduled aircraft at the site the tower shuts down and the Firefighters go home, it's not an emergency landing spot so I don't think anything would be routed there out of hours. If it were in hours then all the staff carparks line the runway, it would have been seen by lots of people, there were always lots of enthusiasts there as you could imagine.

Also, I don't see why anything would be routed over it that couldn't divert to RAF bases in Wales and Scotland, Blackpool Airport was the emergency recovery for Warton when they took off west.

The only rumour I heard was one I think was a joke, an Italian aircraft routed to Warton had an emergency on landing the pilot and nav ejected, the aircraft rolled on its own to a standstill without any damage, as I said, I think it was a joke about Italians being cowards as I never saw a press report on it.

a reply to: T3rrap1n

Was it US manned bird? When it happened?

a reply to: Zaphod58

I thought the general conclusion was any swing wing scheme added too much weight. That is why the technology was abandoned.

a reply to: gariac

Top Cover was abandoned because it wasn't as effective as they hoped, and other programs did basically the same thing, without the maturation requirements it would have required.

a reply to: Forensick

back in the day when the taps ran with gold I was listening to the tower at night. Also the police helo operated out of there 24/7. there are many reasons why Warton would be chosen as a suitable airfield, not many places you can lock down, wait for backup then move an aircraft without causing undue attention.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

Which one Elgin or warton?

Elgin, she had no idea what it was apart from big, black and loud.

Warton, definitely manned.

originally posted by: T3rrap1n
a reply to: Forensick

back in the day when the taps ran with gold I was listening to the tower at night. Also the police helo operated out of there 24/7. there are many reasons why Warton would be chosen as a suitable airfield, not many places you can lock down, wait for backup then move an aircraft without causing undue attention.

So do you have a link to this? I'm not being funny but having worked there with a thousand others it's not that easy to lock down.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, Replica happened under everyone's nose but it never flew, I don't think it was more than a model.

Taranis needed fuel systems, engines, avionics etc. They took the fuel system from my assets, assume that RR employees also had to build a random Engine or two..

Wrt police helo, it was stationed there after 2000 maybe as late as 2008 and didn't need our tower and fire engines to be active when it was. It would be a disaster if an emergency landing happened with no recovery crews when there were 4+ other airports in the area with full recovery gear and runways farther from public access than Warton.

a reply to: T3rrap1n

Yeah, I'm asking about Warton.
So check if am I right with my thoughts or not... So US manned "special" made an emergency landing at Warton sometime in the 90's, right?

There have been emergency landings there before for military craft, no?

A quick google provided me with 2 examples already.

Example A


Example B

Did you see any of those? From experience the most remarkable things happen daily. The vast amount never get reported or recorded in the wrong way. I’ve also worked with our American cousins and I can say when they turn up to party nothing is impossible, the level of security and secrecy is impressive to say the least. I’m sure others on the forum will agree if they don’t want people to know you won’t.

Now look the guy who told had no reason to lie, but it’s up to you, I trusted him with my life for years as did he. All I was doing was passing on what I thought was a fun little thing he brought up. That’s all i’m Just going to go back to lurking now...

Everyone here is after the same thing. We'd all love to be able to find something and for something to leak. All information is good information, to an extent. You never know when something might be said that triggers something else. We have seen that too many times to ignore information that could point in the right direction.