The forum for all movements and news about Spangdahlem Air Base.
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Mode S / SBS and radio logs, airfield specific, are allowed, but always state your source, mode S / SBS or air traffic conversations. These logs can be placed in the "day topic" so a separate Mode S / SBS radio log is not necessary
(notes: although some Italian Tornados and AMX’ were detached at Spangdahlem since almost two weeks, I did not find time until the rumoured departure day of the Italians to join a tour of a friendly fellow-spotter and make it to the last USAF fighter base in Germany. Arriving at Spangdahlem right after sun-rise, the sound of based F-16s running up their engines could be heard as soon as we had reached our spotting place and hided ourselves in bushes near the Runway 23 approach.
Soon, flying activity began in the shape of two A-10s, and although 05 was the runway direction of the day, we managed to identify almost all flying aircraft. A nice surprise were three additional A-10s all equipped with one external fuel-tank and two travel-pods performing a joined test-flight (701, 207 and 954), probably indicating their departure back to CONUS within the next couple of days.
While local flying activity of based F-16s was restricted to just five examples in the morning and three additional examples in the afternoon, departures of three further examples and two A-10s to other air-bases made up for some welcome additional activity. Regarding the Italian detachment, some patience was required until all four Tornados and six AMX’ finally became airborne. Surprisingly, they did not only return back to Spang’ after their sorties but some of them performed some nice local flying before landing. Four AMX’ flew again in the afternoon, two of which had to divert to Beauvechain after a blown tyre of a landing based F-16s caused the closure of the runway for around 10 minutes.
While three visiting UH-60s remained unfortunately unidentified so far, the afternoon provided some very nice surprisse for us: a missing-man formation flypast of four based F-16s, and – even better - the return of 14 based F-16s plus three supporting tanker aircraft from an exercise in Turkey. Some airwork of a C-21 and a C-130 from Ramstein plus late departure my first ever Canadian CC-177 completed this really unforgettable aviation day ...)
Last edited by Richard de Florennes on 21 Sep 2008, 20:50, edited 4 times in total.
Can you confirm that the AMX are still there and not returned home yesterday?
Thanks for the correction.
I can confirm that five AMXs were parked on the visiting aircraft ramp yesterday when we left at 18.00 hours. The four Tornados were also still present at that time.
AMX 51°Stormo MM7131/51-11'31' however did depart during the afternoon.
The two missing examples to make it eight have been listened departing back to Italy Thursday evening by my spotter friend via radio.
Two more AMXs
29-09 is a comming monday /emirates.gif)
