Last Official Flight of the RAAF B707
 

Heads up for spotters from Defence Media:

And today was the last flight of the simulator:

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


offers, anyone? :D

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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/hi...ation/805.html.

Cheers
Nigel

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.

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

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

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.

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.

13:30 is the current arrivel time.

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

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.

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

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)!

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.. :(

RAAF B 707 flyover Sydney harbour
 

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.

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

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

A few shots
 

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:

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

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

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/h...astflight1.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/h...astflight3.jpg

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

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.

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/...677902873.html

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!

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

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:

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/h...0062008073.jpg

Final B707 flight over Sydney Harbour
 

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

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

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

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.

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!

http://www.defence.gov.au/media/down...0701/index.htm
http://www.defence.gov.au/media/down...701b/index.htm

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

Some great photos there.