Monthly Archives: February 2010

I received the following interesting pictures from Simone Bovi. The images were taken on Feb. 21, 2010, at Turin Caselle airport by Beppe Miglietti (who I thank you for providing the opportunity to share them on this site) and depict a Thomas Cook B757-200 serialled G-TCBA experiencing fuel leakage from the right wing shortly during take off. The aircraft was compelled to return to Caselle where it performed a successful emergency landing.

The title of this post says it all. Most of the Italian readers of this blog will remember the fatal crash on an Italian HH-3F of the 84° CSAR (Centro SAR, SAR Center) in France on Oct. 23, 2008, causing the loss of 8 POB (People On Board). For more background information I suggest reading the following articles: An ItAF HH-3F crashes in France, Mammaiut: all the ItAF HH-3F grounded and HH-3F crash caused by the fracture of a main rotor’s blade. The inquiry following the crash hypothesizes that the helicopter lose a blade as a consequence of two factors: the first one, bad maintenance performed by Agusta; the second one, could be an incorrect translation of the aircraft manual. In fact, the crew was signalled by a cockpit light that the blade pressure had decreased but, after landing in Dijon for further checks, (perhaps) they decided to proceed to Florennes because the manuals contained a translation error that induced them to follow an incorrect procedure to solve the problem.

A C-2 Greyhound is preparing for an arrested landing on USS Nimitz on Oct. 19, 2009, while dolphins jump in the ship’s wake. An interesting picture, in my opinion, since the idea of power of a US supercarrier is balanced by the sense of freedom transmitted by the dolphins jumping out of water.

“Technology and nature (coexisting) in the Indian Ocean”.

I don’t know how this (leaked?) video was obtained. I’m not even sure it will remain online for a long time. The Belgian user who uploaded should be careful since I’m pretty sure the footage was not meant to be publicly disclosed, but maybe he got all the permissions required. Anyway at the following address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7DygPsJ_sA
you can see an impressive near miss recorded by an Italian F-16. Radio comms can be heard as well.
Here’s just a screenshot:

Aircraft involved are two ItAF F-16s of the 37° Stormo, based in Trapani (radio callsign “Brandy”). Date of the near miss is Dec 13, 2006. The aircraft are apparently returning to their homebase after some kind of exercise; they are in contact with “Cyrano” (a French E-3 AWACS) that clears them to climb to FL360 for RTB. Then, the two fighters are handed over to Rome Military radar that tries to identify the mission but can’t estrablish the radar contact with it. The two aircraft continue climbing to the previously cleared level and level off at FL360 when the wingman spots something that is coming from the opposite direction, same level, between the two F-16 (that are most probably flying a loose formation). At time 03:30 you can see the contrails of the commercial jet appearing on the left side. The leader of Brandy 41 sees the incoming liner at the very last moment and performs an escape manoeuvre. The cause of the near miss is obviously not clear: for sure the two aircraft are given from Cyrano a clearance to climb to 36.000 feet. The E-3 has coordinated the climb and they are under radar control. They contact Rome Military telling the controller “….climbing 360…” and they repeat the information as they give their position and altitude (“360, 100 NM from RONAB”) shortly before the close encouter, when they are requested to check the C mode. Something unclear occurred (I think on radar controller side….) but a fine weather, a watchful wingman and a certain amout of luck contributed to the happy ending.

The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by CanWest Global in Ottawa, Canada, with a circulation of 141,540. In an interesting article published on Feb. 14, 2010, by Ottawa Citizen dealing with the support provided by the Italian Government to the Haiti relief mission by means of the Cavour aircraft carrier, the Defence Watch coloumnist David Pugliese quoted my article “Cavour aircraft carrier joins Haiti relief effort“.
David Pugliese’s article can be read at the following address:
http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/news/archive/2010/02/14/defence-firms-sponsor-haiti-relief-mission-as-way-to-show-off-their-wares.aspx

I highlighted the text that referenced this weblog’s article.