Mystery Sea King

[acklington]

Way back on the morning of 23 August 2011, a RN Rescue Sea King flew over my house, apparently heading straight for the airport. It was low enough to grab the attached photo (300 mm), but I couldn't read the serial very well.



A quick dash to the airport followed, but there was no sign of it, and it had overflown, heading South in the direction of Valley (?).

I've since spent several sessions trying to find (5)17 among the active RN Rescue squadrons, but with no success. However, last night the penny finally dropped, and in the photo it can be seen that it has no rescue hoist fitted. So to cut a long search short, it is XV670 (once 817), and is recorded as being with the MoD/Vector Aerospace at Fleetlands.

Does anyone know what it gets up to?

[Biggles]

Looks to be correct Flickr has some good uploads of the aircraft.


www.google.co.uk/search?q=XV670&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:

[Seaking]

Presumably it was a check up flight after deep maintenance. XV671 had been in deep maintenance at fleetlands 8/9 months before. Checking fightercontrol forum XV670 was logged on a ramp at RNAS Culdrose on 13 Jan 2012 - so I guess they refitted the winch and it is back on SAR duties

[Beemer]

Acklington, a couple of photos for you. The first was taken surreptitiously at Altcar Ranges during an exercise 10-04-2008 showing XV670 coded 17.


The second was taken at RNAS Culdrose 26-04-2010 showing same aircraft without code but both have winches fitted. Hope this helps.


Regards Beemer.

[acklington]

Thanks Beemer, and Seaking, for both your posts.

It certainly is back in normal Rescue service, and the (very) old code of (8)17 has now been removed.

Still not sure what it was up to in August 2010 though. Its southerly track over my house suggests that it had come from the weapons testing range at West Freugh. But I suppose that it could have come from Prestwick. I'm also guessing that Vestor Aerospace at Fleetlands were using it as a 'maintenance hack', to attend to any problems with the RN Rescue fleet that the local maintainers couldn't handle?