Steve at Dubai
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One of the QintetiQ Mil-17s at Boscombe Down 19-Dec-08. It was out in the early morning sunshine outside the Rotary Wing test Squadron hangar with a Merlin, Apache and Sea King for a photo shoot with all the aircrew. No doubt the photo will appear in 'QintetiQ News' soon. The sun disappeared but as you can see from the grainy enlargement here, the c/n has disappeared from the tail boom and the UK serial appears to be in black on the boom. I couldn't read it though.
Chinook HC.3 ZH898 flew in formation with an ETPS Gazelle as Blackbox formation, then did several approaches of 23 and 05 at Boscombe Down callsign BDN35. The Gazelle changed to BDN34. Another Chinook HC.3 arrived as BDN64. The serial could not be read from my vantage point but it is believed that ZH902 is the only other flier and this has recently been at Westlands, Yeovil.
Thanks to my DA-42 expert we think that OE-FOG may be the previously sighted G-DOSC (albeit at the delivery centre in Austria). Like G-DOSA and G-DOSB it has 'de-blinged' prop spinners and a UHF antenna. Maybe the antenna isn't yet wired to anything as they seem to stubbornly use VHF when I've been listening.
Today at Boscombe Down, DA-42MPP OE-FOG departed at 0930 for a short hop to Old Sarum. It 'recovered' to Boscombe Down at 1200. As it was flown by a Brit and it 'reovered' this would suggest it's being evaluated here now that ZA179 and ZA180 (the erstwhile G-DOSA and G-DOSB) have migrated south. The greyed out flash on the fin looks like it's in exactly the same place as the UK Military flash on G-DOSA and G-DOSB aka ZA179 and ZA180. I've just looked up OE-FOG in my database and it says it's DA42 construction number M.001 owned by DO Systems (as the others were) and has G-DOSC reserved! Unfotunately the sun disappeared before I could get a reasonable shot of Chinook HC.3 ZH898 and its downwash managed to blow open a farm gate into the back of the car!
I can recommend Goa for an aviation break in the sun. The IndiGo departure gates are upstairs in the domestic terminal and afford an excellent view of the military action (assuming you're there before 1300ish on a weekday as the mil seem to mostly fly AM and domestic flights PM). These aren't great as I was bins-ing before snapping photos, but give an idea
So the story to date is that follwing a few weeks in the Aviation Maintenance hangar at Bournemouth where they were reasonably well guarded ('can I come in the hangar?' 'no') departed for Lyneham as Ascot 9901/2. Then G-DOSA and G-DOSB were reborn as ZA179 and ZA180, departed Lyneham on migration to warmer places and were last heard of in Aqaba, Jordan.
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