Motors Tornado's final flypast

Well, we've just had Tornado's final flypast on our Station. It's been in service since the year I was born, with nearly a thousand produced in it's 40 year run.

We had a deafening three-ship overhead, sweeping their wings back as they overflew, with a touch of reheat to shake the boss's windows. Awesome.

Certainly a memorable occasion, if a little sad. Great aircraft and first into every operational theatre following the Falklands conflict. Not many can boast that.

End of an era.

Edit: Here's the pictures from our Station Photog

1 by Sentinel-R1 posted 19 Feb 2019 at 20:26

2 by Sentinel-R1 posted 19 Feb 2019 at 20:26

3 by Sentinel-R1 posted 19 Feb 2019 at 20:26

 

I used to build the radio boxes for the tornados.

My favourite plane and a shame to see them go.

 

Their flying over us tomorrow at about two, trying to wrangle time to go see and hear them

 

Well worth making the effort. They must have been doing a good 400-500kts so you won't see them for long, mind!

 

Added phots to 1st post.

 

Came past me at around 1:40 today. Awesome sight.

 

I work at Filton, so we're going to be out today watching the flypast. If my pics are any good, I'll post them here!

Saw the Beluga XL last week but like an idiot didn't bring my 70-200mm . Still got a decent picture of it though with my 24-70mm.

 

Fly past is 13:23 (RAF time) for us. Doubt ill be able to make it as I've been shafted work wise, should hear the buggers

 

With the cloud base, I'd expect times to slip to the right a tad, depending upon how far into the sortie your location is. They have to go tanking at some point as they don't have the fuel (even with drop tanks) to do all locations without taking more onboard.

 

If you want to track them when they're airborne, try ADSB: https://global.adsbexchange.com/VirtualRadar/desktop.html#

Select 'Global Radar View' from the top menu and filter to show only military aircraft. Click on the Menu button above the map > options > filter tab > select military from the dropdown and check the enable filters box above it.

 

That's where I used to work, naval weapons division.

 

Any idea which tail number im looking for? Or should I just look for the fastest moving one.

 

I'm not sure what the TNs/callsigns are for these sorties, but if you just look for Tornados on ADSB, it'll be a three ship in close formation. Won't be hard to spot once they're on radar.

 

True, all sorts of weird an wonderful things aloft, an good point itll be a fast moving trio. Id not spotted the silhouettes at the bottom.

 

Thanks. I've been using FlightRadar, which doesn't show a lot of things.

 

Flight radar is only really useful for commercial a/c flying with Mode S. You get a bit more from ADSB, although not all military traffic.

 

Spotted yesterday over BAE Warton, some noise like!

 

Apparently their route over Cranfield was diverted due to other traffic in the airspace (police and ambulance chopper), even managed to get up there, quite a few miffed people.

 

Here's one from today for you then, taken by my mate's husband who's a Navigator in the third jet:

4 by Sentinel-R1 posted 20 Feb 2019 at 16:36