• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Chinook flyover Dorset coast today 19/07/21

Status
Not open for further replies.

Wilts Wanderer

Established Member
Joined
21 Nov 2016
Messages
2,463
There was a fantastic low-altitude (c.80ft) chinook flypast all along the Jurassic Coast this afternoon, at roughly 1600hrs, from east to west. Does anyone in the know have any information regarding what it was, please? Pretty spectacular (and loud!) when it came over the Lyme Regis area.
 

Attachments

  • 27DA791F-BE03-4BF9-99E3-0844F61570A1.jpeg
    27DA791F-BE03-4BF9-99E3-0844F61570A1.jpeg
    800.9 KB · Views: 31
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

D6130

Established Member
Joined
12 Jan 2021
Messages
5,648
Location
West Yorkshire/Tuscany
Can't answer that specific question, I'm afraid, but we've had several Chinook fly-pasts over Hebden Bridge in recent weeks - both singly and in pairs. I guess the RAF guys are just doing preparatory exercises for whatever war BoJo decides to involve us in next. :(
 

Gloster

Established Member
Joined
4 Sep 2020
Messages
8,289
Location
Up the creek
When I was a teenager (when the RAF consisted of more than two gliders) I was told that if they had a good reason to go out on a general flight on a sunny summer day, they would often plan a route along the coast, so as to be visible to the holidaymakers. It was intended to show the populace that we still had an RAF and, possibly, to sow the seed in the minds of a few watchers that, “That’s what I want to do.” Whether they can still afford the fuel to do so nowadays is another question.
 

XAM2175

Established Member
Joined
8 Jun 2016
Messages
3,469
Location
Glasgow
Interestingly, a lot of the military flying around Britain isn't obfuscated and thus you can follow it on services like Flightradar24. There are at least six choppers from the Defence Helicopter Flying School pottering around between Shrewsbury and Stoke-on-Trent at the moment, for example, and a US Navy C-130T from Goose Bay will be making landfall over Liverpool heading south-west at 23,000 ft in just a few minutes.

Grand way to pass the time stuck at home :p
 

ExRes

Established Member
Joined
16 Dec 2012
Messages
5,761
Location
Back in Sussex
Can't answer that specific question, I'm afraid, but we've had several Chinook fly-pasts over Hebden Bridge in recent weeks - both singly and in pairs. I guess the RAF guys are just doing preparatory exercises for whatever war BoJo decides to involve us in next. :(

Or we could try something along the lines of pilot and navigation training flights, they were regular when I lived in Devon and I don't remember us launching any wars in the last few years, now if Blair was still in Downing St you might have a point
 

Irascible

Established Member
Joined
21 Apr 2020
Messages
1,988
Location
Dyfneint
Another just flew past Beer off towards Portland ( might be the same one going back? ) so perhaps that's where they're exercising this week. Usually it's the inhabitants of Yeovilton waking us up, but they tend to fly ( at least the bigger aircraft ) under the clifftop so you never actually see them.

Or we could try something along the lines of pilot and navigation training flights, they were regular when I lived in Devon and I don't remember us launching any wars in the last few years, now if Blair was still in Downing St you might have a point

In Cold war days most of Devon was a low flying training area ( it still might be, I guess ), and Chivenor was a training base - when I was a lad we had so many low level high speed passes down the Exe valley every day you stopped noticing them unless there was something unusual ( like the Tornado with what appeared to be an excess of flame from the tailpipe... ). Lyme Bay is still an active RN exercise area, as the local air traffic suggests.
 

dgl

Established Member
Joined
5 Oct 2014
Messages
2,391
We do get a few down here, sometimes using the Heli Operations training base at Osprey Quay so get to have a nice close up look when popping down to Lidl, I bet few people can say they get to see military helicopters on their trip to the local supermarket!
 

DerekC

Established Member
Joined
26 Oct 2015
Messages
2,107
Location
Hampshire (nearly a Hog)
We are only fifteen miles from Odiham, the main Chinook base, so we get pretty frequent fairly low flights. And often you can hear them pottering around the horizon even when you can't see them
 

antharro

Member
Joined
20 Dec 2006
Messages
597
I believe Bournemouth (Hurn) Airport is one of the service centres for the Chinooks. So they're seen around the area from time to time on test flights, coming from or return to their assigned bases, etc.
 

Irascible

Established Member
Joined
21 Apr 2020
Messages
1,988
Location
Dyfneint
Some people might find low flypasts thrilling.

Others may not be so keen on the sudden very very loud noise.

I'm not sure anything about a Chinook flypast is "sudden", given how far away you can hear them... the FAA Merlins do like sneaking up on us by flying below cliff level down the coast & then crossing inland over a town though. For people up the cliff it's not that bad, helicopters are not actually that noisy from above.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top