Last Official Flight of the RAAF B707

[Jethro H]

Heads up for spotters from Defence Media:

On Monday 30 June, the aircraft, known as ‘Richmond Town’, is operated by No. 33 Squadron at RAAF Base Richmond and is retiring from duty after 29 years of service. It was one of two ex-Qantas B707s purchased for the RAAF in 1979 and has seen service with operations in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sumatra.

For the flight over Sydney Harbour, the B707 will be accompanied by a Hawk lead-in fighter, which will be used to collect imagery of the B707 over the Harbour. The B707 will be distinguished by its dark blue tail scheme, appearing above the Harbour between 10am and 10.30am.

The aircraft will fly at a minimum altitude of 500 metres. The two aircraft will enter the Harbour from Sydney heads and orbit Sydney Harbour Bridge before returning out the harbour.


And today was the last flight of the simulator:
The Royal Australian Air Force’s Boeing 707 simulator today ‘took off’ for the last time at RAAF Base Richmond, in preparation for the real aircraft’s retirement from RAAF service.

A small ceremony, involving members of Nos. 33 and 285 Squadrons, along with contracted support company CAE, and contract managers DMO, celebrated the historic final ‘flight’ of the simulator.

Air Commodore Jack Plenty, Commander Air Lift Group, said the simulator had been in RAAF service since September 1999. “It became the first military flight simulator in the world to achieve a level-five simulator accreditation - the highest level of civilian flight simulator fidelity,” Air Commodore Plenty said.

When the first B707s entered RAAF service in 1979, aircrew travelled to the Cathay Pacific Airways training facility in Hong Kong to conduct flight simulator training. In 1985 the Air Force was able to purchase an ex-QANTAS CASA level-two accredited simulator and operate it from the Qantas training facility at Mascot.

In 1990 the Air Force determined a need for high fidelity flight simulation and in 1996 the contract with CAE Montreal to supply both B707 and C-130J full flight simulators was signed. A new flight simulator facility was completed and the new B707 simulator arrived at RAAF Base Richmond to begin integration and testing in 1998.

“This simulator has made a valuable contribution to the training and development of RAAF B707 aircrews, and allowed us to fly the B707 more effectively. In their 29 years of service, the B707 has been an extremely important transport and air-to-air refuelling aircraft, and the full flight simulator has allowed us to free up the aircraft for more of these tasks,” Air Commodore Plenty said.

[Adam P.]

Where's the simulator going to end up???


offers, anyone? :D

[Jethro H]

Does anyone know what the fate of the 707 will be?

It's sort of sad as it is one of my favorite aircraft. I was at Richmond last year when XBA made its last visit.... oh well, some photos and memories.

[Gerard M]

From a thread in the flying and technical section i was told they are apparently being sold to a company that does air to air refueling i think in America, Omega.

[Andrew McLaughlin]

I'm hoping to get a seat on the flight on Monday - look for us over Sydney Harbour!

From a thread in the flying and technical section i was told they are apparently being sold to a company that does air to air refueling i think in America, Omega.

Yep, the last few airframes and the sim will likely go to Omega Air, although I understand no deal has been signed yet. There are a couple of retired aircraft at Richmond which need some work before they're flown out, as they're out of airframe hours.

[andrew evans]

I am assuming that the 707 will be taking off and landing back at Richmond.does anyone know.

[Nigel C]

In other military related aviation news, the failed Kaman Seasprite 805 Squadron was officially disbanded today during ceremonies at HMAS Albatross, near Nowra.

805 Squadron was originally formed in the 1940's, and has been disbanded a number of times during its history, details of which can be found here http://http://www.navy.gov.au/spc/history/aviation/805.html.

Cheers
Nigel

[Jethro H]

I am assuming that the 707 will be taking off and landing back at Richmond.does anyone know.

Yes. Take off is about 1000hrs for about 1 hour flight on Monday.

Late notice: for tomorrow (Friday) a bit after lunch, the old girl is due to arrive home from Darwin. They plan to have up to 8 F18's escort her tomorrow arvo for a fly over with maybe 4 of them touching down at Richmond.

[Gerard M]

What are the chances of them landing with the 707? or is it just a possibility€?
And after lunch im guessing after like 12pm or something?

Thanks,
Gerard

[Nigel C]

Methinks wake turbulance from the old girl in mega-dirty configuration might prevent a formation landing.

[Jethro H]

Today's return time has not been confirmed (as of 0700hrs) as they finishing up on their exercise at Darwin this morning. "After lunch... mid afternoon" is all I could get.

[Philip Argy]

The aircraft will fly at a minimum altitude of 500 metres. The two aircraft will enter the Harbour from Sydney heads and orbit Sydney Harbour Bridge before returning out the harbour.


Sounds like they'll stay east of the 16L glide path, which is a shame for those of us slightly further west. Cockatoo Island is probably the best spot to catch what I assume from the above advice will need to be a steep banking turn.

[Ken D]

Today's return time has not been confirmed (as of 0700hrs) as they finishing up on their exercise at Darwin this morning. "After lunch... mid afternoon" is all I could get.

13:30 is the current arrivel time.

[Jason Mac]

Hi all,
I was lucky enough to see the fly over today. I have attached a few pictures taken by a good friend of mine

Cheers

[andrew evans]

that looks sweet i hope they have the same flyby on monday i will have to make a trip out to richmond

[Jethro H]

that looks sweet i hope they have the same flyby on monday i will have to make a trip out to richmond
She will only have one Hawk. For the flight over Sydney Harbour, the B707 will be accompanied by a Hawk lead-in fighter, which will be used to collect imagery of the B707 over the Harbour.

[Andrew McLaughlin]

If anyone has good pics from the 707 arriving with the eight Hornets yesterday, please drop me an email/PM - I'd be interested in using a good pic in our next issue.

Thanks

[Peter JB]

Ah, the memories - I flew on this bird a few times over 25 years ago to/from RAAF Butterworth. What a long and illustrious career and that's post-Qantas (the plane that is)!

[Shameel Kumar]

Why is the Sydney Harbour fly-over on Monday? .... I understand that the last day of the month falls on Monday, but if they wanted to at least make some sort of spectacle of it, surely they could have done it on Sunday.

I would have loved to get out there, but no can do on a weekday.. :(

[Gerald A]

Info from 2GB at 06:45am this morning.

Sometime between 10:30am - 11am today, the last RAAF B707 named Richmond Town will fly over the harbour.

At 2:30pm it will do a flypast at Richmond Airbase.

[bernard smith]

Just flew over the Harbour northbound, with one in tail.

[Greg McDonald]

Pretty boring stuff really...one pass then gone!! I thought it might have done a few passes at least.

[Philip Argy]

It did three passes: one from south to north followed by two from east to west with a nice right bank over the Harbour Bridge and City.

I managed to grab a few shots with my pocket camera but only from a distance:

[Adam P.]

Go the black stuff!!! http://www.dmjwilliams.co.uk/images/forumpics/smilies/drool.gif

[Clarke P]

I should read the board more often, was at the Quay at 11 and definately wasn't expecting it :eek:

[Jethro H]

I was lucky enough to be aboard for the last passenger flight.
Left Richmond at 1000, tracked to Williamtown and picked up the Hawk. A fly over of Williamtown, down the coast and lined up on 34R, wheels up fly over of Sydney, headed to the eastern side of the Harbour Bridge and did 3 different circuits then home to Richmond by 1130hrs. The Hawk stayed along side all the way getting some nice tracking shots (we hope).

ABC and Channel 10 should be running a story tonight.

Boarding the plane with the specially painted tail:
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh111/jethro66photo/B707Lastflight1.jpg

On the return, the KC10 who had been stuck at Richmond for two weeks under repair had just started to push back and went home:
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh111/jethro66photo/B707Lastflight3.jpg

[Nigel C]

The yanks in the KC-10 must have thought it pretty funny that we've got an aircraft retiring after only 29 years service to the nation!:D

[Stephen Brown]

Channel 10 just promoted the story as:-

"And a startling sight over Sydney, a fighter jet chasing a passenger plane"

with vision underneath.

My God!! What a way to stir up paranoia. An historic occasion reduced to misguided sensationalism.

[Matt N.]

Channel 10 just promoted the story as:-

"And a startling sight over Sydney, a fighter jet chasing a passenger plane"



You think that was good, read Sydney Morning Heralds account. It won me over with the quote, "it was terrifying".

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/die-hard-in-the-cbd-not-quite/2008/06/30/1214677902873.html

[Jethro H]

We sort of had a laugh to think what people thought on the ground after the fly-past of Sydney.

A four engine jet with a blue tail jet on approach... does not land, then heads straight towards the CBD.... with a fighter along side.

With the government promoting the anti-terror hotline recently too!

[Brenden S]

Nice footage when you click on it, and good to see Plucka.... was there AA photographers on board?

[Clarke P]

We sort of had a laugh to think what people thought on the ground after the fly-past of Sydney.

A four engine jet with a blue tail jet on approach... does not land, then heads straight towards the CBD.... with a fighter along side.

With the government promoting the anti-terror hotline recently too!

A friend and I met at Circular Quay and were supposed to go to Centrepoint..

After the flyover, she changed her mind :p :rolleyes:

So we went to Krispy Kreme.. what is it with the interstaters and that place!? :rolleyes:

[Jethro H]

Nice footage when you click on it, and good to see Plucka.... was there AA photographers on board?
There were a couple snappers from a couple of mags, but I don't know them. The SMH report shot it all on his 'handy cam'.

Here is a hawk on the wing (I was busy with another camera so I only had stills on my phone... sorry for the low quality):
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh111/jethro66photo/30062008073.jpg

[Philip Argy]

Here's the direct link for the SMH video:
http://media.smh.com.au/?rid=39154

[Andrew McLaughlin]

Nice footage when you click on it, and good to see Plucka.... was there AA photographers on board?

Yep, I was on board. A lovely flight up to Williamtown (originally wrote W illytown - who'd have thought that'd be a banned word!?) where we joined up with the Hawk and did a missed approach, and then down to Kurnell (Near Kurnell, not Far Kurnell! ;)), a missed approach to YSSY's 34R, and then two and a half orbits over the harbour before a missed approach at Richmond and then landing. The Channel 10 reporter heaved on finals into Richmond apparently.

This hysteria about a plane flying around the city really pi$$es me off - the RAAF sent media alerts out to all media outlets last week informing them of the flight, yet not one to my knowlegde broadcast or printed the fact that it was happening before the fact. The SMH report is just crap reporting - they had people on board for god's sake, and yet they report that rubbish!

I'm on deadlines at the moment so am flat out, but will get some pics up this weekend.

Cheers

[Seth Jaworski]

Nice one Morris.
http://www.jetphotos.net/viewqueued_b.php?id=1998182

[Sarah C]

Very nice shot Morris! Love the angle, the jet trailing it and the blue sky. Awesome photo.

One of the letter writers complained there was not notice about the fly by and that is why people were worried. Funny because on the way to work, I heard it mentioned a number of times. The news outlets did thier job notifying people.

[Ross Corrigan]

To cap off the Herald’s rather hysterical report yesterday of the last flight of the RAAF 707 they managed to illustrate the story in today’s edition (1 July, page five) with not one but two completely incorrect photos. One shows a group of Miss Australia finalists apparently sitting in the engine of a 707. Unless they are midgets this is not physically possible. The engine in the photo is, I assume, attached to a 747. The other photo captioned "...the 707 takes off on its last flight" is clearly a much earlier publicity shot. Clearly the standards needed to become a journalist are slipping. Furthermore they choose to publish a letter from someone who works on the 39th floor of a city high rise who claims "it (the 707) banked at the last minute, about 500 metres away". As they say never let the facts get in the way of a good story!

[Andrew McLaughlin]

http://www.defence.gov.au/media/download/2008/Jul/20080701/index.htm
http://www.defence.gov.au/media/download/2008/Jul/20080701b/index.htm

Some nice pics of the flight and 33SQN parade yesterday.

[Brenden S]

Some great photos there.

[Morris Biondi]

Thanks guys, I was extremely lucky to get the shots I got from Lady Macquarie's chair.

Morris

[Craig Murray]

I was extremely lucky

When it comes to luck, you've been blessed! Another superb shot mate. Your shots make me miss all that Sydney has to offer a planeographer.

[Bernie P]

Thanks guys, I was extremely lucky to get the shots I got from Lady Macquarie's chair.

Morris

Morris,

Had I know you would be at my work, I would have come out and said hello!!! :D :D :D

By the way, it is Mrs Macquaries Chair... Located on Mrs Macquaries Road!!!

[Andrew McLaughlin]

Finally got my 707 final flights pics uploaded to JP.Net...

Hawk camera ship - http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6292405&nseq=7

And again - http://www.jetphotos.net/viewqueued_b.php?id=2006427 (Currently queued - will update link if/when accepted)

Richmond flypast - http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6292439&nseq=4

Final landing - http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6292384&nseq=8

I've got a few more (on approach, final taxi, final chocks etc) which I'll upload later in the week.

Cheers

[Rhys Xanthis]

With the little doubt i had doused with copious amounts of water, the lens i buy next shall be a 70-200 f/2.8L IS. (The cost put me off a bit, but it certainly looks like its worth every cent!).

Me has something to look forward to in the next 6 months!

/offtopic


Absolutely top notch shots Andrew! The first one of the Hawk...look at the pilot...looks weird in a slightly humorous way:p

[Jethro H]

Well done Andrew. I like the flypast with the 3 other (or 2 and 1/2) 707s on the ground.
I did see you on board.