RAAF C-130 Flaredrop ML 24FEB13
 

RAAF C-130J to make a spectacular appearance on Sunday, February 24 conducting a flaredrop over Port Phillip Bay. At 8pm the Hercules will fly over Port Phillip Bay towards St Kilda in a counter-clockwise direction, altitude 1,000FT.

It will complete a ‘practice pass' to ensure there are no boats or other obstructions for the flaredrop. On its second pass (approx. 8:20pm) it will dispense up to 240 flares over the course of ten seconds while banking left towards Williamstown.

Should make for an awesome sight from St Kilda beach.

Thanks for the heads up :ok:

Will try to get down.


Do you know if this is this part of another exercise
or why they chose to do it at Sk Kilda ?

The Avalon airshow starts this week. Probably a precursor to that. Who cares about the reason anyway; it's always good to see this type of stuff:ok:

Perhaps they could do it low enough to burn out the bogans around Geelong?

More information on vantage points here:

Hercules flare drop over Port Phillip Bay - Royal Australian Air Force

At least the sunset was a picture:(

Well I waited a bit....

Talk about poor PR - advertise the might of the RAAF and then not schedule a back-up aircraft? seriously....

UTR

Tend to agree.

Sunset was good.

If they can't organize that successfully with plenty of notice I'd hate for the enemy to be upon us!

Was thinking the same XXX. Wouldn't want to rely on them in our time of need! I bet this wouldn't happen in the good ol' US of A.

"Talk about poor PR - advertise the might of the RAAF and then not schedule a back-up aircraft? seriously...."


If it was at an airshow, a U/S aircraft isn't so visible but to announce
a one off event involving one aircraft to the whole of Aus where thousands
of people drive to go and see it and then cancel has me shaking my head.

ALG aircraft are doing more than you realise at present. They don't just sit idle waiting for a chance to brighten the arm chair pilots day. They advertised that they were planning to do a flare drop, aircraft broke, and no replacements were avaialbe. Live with it. There's more to the RAAF than pleasing you.:mad:

Obviously it was an exercise in stealth. A stealth C130J dropping stealth flares.

Yeah, live with it. :ugh:

The taxpayer 'gifts' you billions of dollars a year. You expect the latest & best of everything. Unfortunately for you PR is part of your job. And that sort of garbage wouldn't happen in the States. For a start, if they couldn't deliver it they wouldn't promise it in the first place

bodex

I know it's not about me. I would have liked to have seen
the flares but it wasn't that important to me. I've seen enough
and been in enough Hercs to satisfy my desires.

But what about the thousands of other people, kids et all who look
up to the RAAF, stood for an hour or two on the foreshore ?

As Jack said, PR, especially positive PR is part and parcel of selling
the services now, as it is with anything so to announce something
that was going to drag the general public out to see it and not deliver
is not acceptable nowadays.

The general public do not understand "technical issues", aircraft going U/S,
"subject to availability of the C-130J to conduct this task", and "may be cancelled at short notice".

An event to them that is advertised is expected to occur.

ROFLMAO! Typical response from a public servant. Icing on the cake of the PR disaster, IMHO!

DIVOSH!

This is Australia, we are untouchable, invincible we don't need any redundancy who would want to come to this place & bomb the sh1t out of us?
I guess to the RAAF it was of no significance!

The Yanks spend zillions on PR for their armed forces, not only to attract future defense force personal but to show the rest of the world that they are a force to be reckoned with so PR is everything which is all tied up with proper-gander to some degree.
Funnily enuf( no pun intended) terrorists have mastered the art of PR.They have spread the word very effectively!

We (OZ) are the laughing stock of the world at times.:-(

Wmk2

Let's pray the Chinese don't attack on a Sunday.....or Wednesday afternoon.

Friday afternoon from 3pm til Monday morning around 9am. 6 weeks over chrissy/new year. Public holidays.

Friday from 3? Ha! Invade any time after 1:30 Fridays mate, the only thing in the air is the Roulettes and hands at the bar..