Tikaboo Tales

Extremely secret reconaissance aircraft?

Bassett XS743

ZB698 looking as if it had a wash for the press.....

ZB697 looking a bit dirty the day after Project Curium press day

Andover XS646

The Mi-17 story now in the press http://www.shephard.co.uk/news/rotorhub-com/veil-lifted-on-afghan-pilot-training-programme/5760/ and a couple from yesterday at Boscombe Down

At Boscombe Down on Mon 1-Feb-10 was this Algerian Merlin.  It reportedly arrived by road - not sure why - from Yeovil and was towed across runway 23/05 to the compass swing area.  In the background is ZB697 Mi-17 which flew circuits all day.

Some photos in Nov-09 (thanks Phil!)  taken from 1.  Queen City Summit of - one assumes - one of the Groom Lake MiG-29s and at Tonopah Test Range, RAT55, NT-43A 73-1155

Pete prepares his secret weapon for action. 

N30LX Gulfstream 3 of Lockheed-Martin which is known as the Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory.

ZJ694 Sentinel R.1 landing on runway 17 at Boscombe Down today

Today at Boscombe Down the DO Systems Beech 200 N509MV departed at around 1230 for a short hop to Blackbushe. It's a 1981 vintage machine. There's photos on the HTML part of the DO Systems website http://www.dosystems.co.uk showing the aircraft on the ramp at Boscombe Down plus one presumably on delivery through Goose Bay? and for some reason a more ancient photo of it. It looks like DO Systems have hangar space aat Boscombe as the DA42s and the Beech 200 seem to live here.

The photos from the DO Systems photoshoot have now made it into their website http://www.dosystems.co.uk/html_site/air_ops_content/surveillance_content.html Which suggests that they're looking for a new customer as ZA179 and ZA180 have reverted to G-DOSA and G-DOSB according to G-INFO. No reports in the wild as such yet though. Maybe they're at Boscombe having the Kevlar floor removed....