US C-17 Globemasters at Fairbairn

poetix said :

Pork Hunt said :

poetix said :

Pork Hunt said :

I was a RAAFie at Fairbairn in the late ’80’s when the Australian peace keepers came back from the Sinai in a C5 Galaxy.
To make the lads feel at ‘home’, the marshalling crew were wearing Arab clothing including head dress and one was holding a lead rope with a camel on the other end.
The said beast was borrowed from a circus which was in town at the time. Upon seeing/hearing the taxying C5, the camel wanted no further part in proceedings and legged it.
From memory the airport was shut for two hours until it was recaptured.

So planes don’t like speed humps?

Correct. Fortunately the camel in question was a dromedary, not Bactrian.

Good. Because bacterial weapons are Bad.

When we did NBC training at rookies, I’m pretty sure the “C” didn’t stand for “Camel”

Pork Hunt said :

poetix said :

Pork Hunt said :

I was a RAAFie at Fairbairn in the late ’80’s when the Australian peace keepers came back from the Sinai in a C5 Galaxy.
To make the lads feel at ‘home’, the marshalling crew were wearing Arab clothing including head dress and one was holding a lead rope with a camel on the other end.
The said beast was borrowed from a circus which was in town at the time. Upon seeing/hearing the taxying C5, the camel wanted no further part in proceedings and legged it.
From memory the airport was shut for two hours until it was recaptured.

So planes don’t like speed humps?

Correct. Fortunately the camel in question was a dromedary, not Bactrian.

Good. Because bacterial weapons are Bad.

poetix said :

Pork Hunt said :

I was a RAAFie at Fairbairn in the late ’80’s when the Australian peace keepers came back from the Sinai in a C5 Galaxy.
To make the lads feel at ‘home’, the marshalling crew were wearing Arab clothing including head dress and one was holding a lead rope with a camel on the other end.
The said beast was borrowed from a circus which was in town at the time. Upon seeing/hearing the taxying C5, the camel wanted no further part in proceedings and legged it.
From memory the airport was shut for two hours until it was recaptured.

So planes don’t like speed humps?

Correct. Fortunately the camel in question was a dromedary, not Bactrian.

When I was at work I saw one on Wednesday and another was there on Thursday. I did tweet USAF asking what base the yellow band was, but they never got back (as the original post says they were from Chalreston).

Would have been good to have seen the aircraft take off. When the last C-5 came to Canberra I was lucky enough to be out to watch it taxi past, line up on the runway and ……… then taxi back over to the RAAF base 🙁 Photos of that can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kommissar_todd06/sets/72157627991858451/with/6340237328/

I work at Fairbairn and have seen them for the past couple for days and watched them take off yesterday. Both were USAF aircraft as evidenced by the yellow stripe on the tail.

One of the coolest things is watching one land, seeing it immediately reverse thrust not only sufficient to stop forward momentum, but also then to reverse the aircraft back up the runway without turning around. A quick increase in throttle and it take off again. A truly beautiful aircraft!

shauno said :

If you read up on the C5 Galaxy that was actually designed for rough dirt runways as well but they reckon that was a big mistake in the design of it as its never been used in that role and it wasted a lot money.

It wouldn’t have been a feature designed for normal use, but an emergency capability. Given the maintenance requirements on the bigger aircraft, you wouldn’t do it more than you had to.

Big problem with the C5s is their maintenance is ridiculous and the design was flawed from the start, as tragically demonstrated in Vietnam.

If you read up on the C5 Galaxy that was actually designed for rough dirt runways as well but they reckon that was a big mistake in the design of it as its never been used in that role and it wasted a lot money.

johnboy said :

They’re designed to fly off short and rough runways.

Rather important for military aircraft.

What, like that IL76 a few years ago? 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BY7-LgF7d4

Pork Hunt said :

I was a RAAFie at Fairbairn in the late ’80’s when the Australian peace keepers came back from the Sinai in a C5 Galaxy.
To make the lads feel at ‘home’, the marshalling crew were wearing Arab clothing including head dress and one was holding a lead rope with a camel on the other end.
The said beast was borrowed from a circus which was in town at the time. Upon seeing/hearing the taxying C5, the camel wanted no further part in proceedings and legged it.
From memory the airport was shut for two hours until it was recaptured.

So planes don’t like speed humps?

I was a RAAFie at Fairbairn in the late ’80’s when the Australian peace keepers came back from the Sinai in a C5 Galaxy.
To make the lads feel at ‘home’, the marshalling crew were wearing Arab clothing including head dress and one was holding a lead rope with a camel on the other end.
The said beast was borrowed from a circus which was in town at the time. Upon seeing/hearing the taxying C5, the camel wanted no further part in proceedings and legged it.
From memory the airport was shut for two hours until it was recaptured.