Maybe the half of actual military jet pilots had trained on this little jet - today 50 years ago was the first flight at Vodochody !
My first real encounter was Air'94 airshow in Buochs (Stans) with the retirement of our famous Hawker Hunter. Albatros and western counterpart BAe Hawk each had a demo.
Two years later I was already steering those beauties (from the backseat, and only some minutes each flight) with the famous russian display team ! Great memories and flights, repeated the following years too.
This time you can travel quite a lot of years into the past - my first flight in an Boeing Stearman was made out of Ecuvillens due one of those fabulous RIO's (Rencontre Internationale des Oldtimers). I helped with the parking organisation as 'Bénevoles' and enjoyed this little tour around the Gruyères area.
The star of the event was the Dassault Flamant, after the Mirage 2000 demo and the famous Patrouille de France a year before a much more rare bird to see in Switzerland. Film was expensive and camera all manual, but soon I was buying my first own camera back then, an Minolta Dynax 700si with lenses (kit) up to 300mm for the Shows in Ambri, Buochs and Langenthal in the autumn of 1994.
If the actual US President will ever know about this place, he whould be travel each weekend to switzerland ...
The end of the Gruyères lake and a view in direction my home with the 'Guggershörnli' in the background:
with beam.to now the already 3rd redirection service in my live has given up and closed down it's services. I will change the title picture soon, but in the meantime just use the direct adress of
Yeah, I know - normally this site is dedicated to our Swiss Air Force. But with not many new positions and experiences to go - especially for myself, don't forget that I've began to take pictures of our Air Force in 1993 - I use my big lenses for some nature photography and video for a couple of years now. Here another one taken this year - I hope you are impressed as I was ...
Since the end of the Mach2 Mirage III RS 'AMIR' in 2003, our fastest Recce is 4.61m long, has an wingspan of 5.71m and has an Vmax of 220km/h ! The quality of the pictures are lower than those on the Mirage, but available in real time and with a range of 4 hours.
Swiss Army uses the Israeli-Swiss drone IAI/RUAG ADS-95 for reconaissance missions. The drone costs about 2.5 Mio SFr ($1.9million), 27 systems (including mobile equipment for command and control) where delivered beginning in 1999. An flighthour costs about 7300 SFr and about 40-60 flights are made for Swiss Border Patrol (Grenzschutz) each year.
The AufklärungsDrohnenSystem 95 is the evolution of the ADS-90 with increased range and charge.
ADS-90
Based on the IAI Ranger and built by F+W Emmen, this 1st drone of the Swiss Air Force had an MTOW of 270 kg with an maximum charge of 41 kg. With 240 km/h maximum speed a bit faster than the ADS-95.
Prototype XP-01 on a poster
D-101 due Armeetage'99, Frauenfeld
ADS-95
The modified version of the ADS-90 with a MTOW of 275 kg and a maximum charge of 45 kg. Updated Sensors and support vehicles.
Sometimes (sh)it happens - but without incident on humans/animals - see here for example
Production of ADS-95 systems for Finnish and Swiss Air Force
Here some video pictures published by the Swiss Air Force a couple of years ago:
With those little birds, the pictures are quit nice. German Luftwaffe published some actual footage of there sensors on Tornado aircraft, also capable for live-streaming to the headquarter:
Photo taken by the infrared sensor of the TORNADO:
Photo edited by fusion of infrared and normal photo taken by TORNADO:
ADS-15
After an evaluation of multiple modern systems (Long List included five systems, Short List and tests in Switzerland with two systems), Elbit won the competition with the Hermes 900. 'Swissification' consists of a motor change to Diesel and - due that change of gravity - longer wings. Swiss Air Force Insiders hopes the changes/tests in RUAG wind tunnel are paid by Elbit according an article in the NZZ newspaper of September 04th, 2016.
Today very early morning, 0326h local time, two Hornets take off from our main base Payerne LSMP. Another test of the availability and procedures - normally our QRA is not yet ready at this time of the day but 2021:
Press bulletin
Erster Start bei Nacht ist gelungen
Die Einsatzbereitschaft im
Luftpolizeidienst wird bis Ende 2020 kontinuierlich ausgebaut. Ab
dann werden während 365 Tagen rund um die Uhr zwei bewaffnete
Flugzeuge einsatzbereit sein. Im Januar 2017 ist die Bereitschaft auf
365 Tage – also auch an Wochenenden und Feiertagen – von 8.00 bis
18.00 Uhr erweitert worden. Vom 3. bis 4. September 2018 hat die
Luftwaffe eine noch längere Bereitschaft im Luftpolizeidienst
angeordnet.
Das Projekt
Luftpolizeidienst 24 (LP24) hat zum Ziel, die permanente Bereitschaft
an 365 Tagen während 24 Stunden bis Ende 2020 zu erreichen. In
der aktuellen Phase der Umsetzung ist die normale Bereitschaft von
8.00 bis 18.00 Uhr an 365 Tagen vorgesehen. In der Nacht vom 3. auf
den 4. September 2018 wurde jedoch Bereitschaft angeordnet. Zum
ersten Mal starteten zwei F/A-18 um 3.30 Uhr.
Ziel dieser Übung
ist es, wertvolle Erkenntnisse für die Umsetzung der nächsten
Phasen erhöhter Bereitschaft zu gewinnen und so die ersten Lehren
aus einem Flugdienst bei Nacht zu ziehen. Ab dem 1. Januar 2019 wird
die Bereitschaft des Luftpolizeidienstes auf die Zeiten von 6.00 bis
22.00 Uhr an 365 Tagen erhöht.
Motion aus dem Jahr 2009
Das Projekt LP24 geht auf eine Motion
von alt Ständerat Hans Hess (FDP/OW) aus dem Jahr 2009 zurück.
Darin forderte er eine erhöhte Bereitschaft im Luftpolizeidienst
auch ausserhalb der normalen Arbeitszeiten. Mit LP24 wird nun in vier
Schritten eine permanente Einsatzbereitschaft von zwei bewaffneten
Kampfjets innert höchstens 15 Minuten erreicht.
Up to 4000 people have visited the little airfield at the beginning of the famous Berner Oberland area - after an very sunny, very long and hot summer unfortunally with not so nice weather at 12° Celsius. But the colorful aircrafts and the good organisation allowed some nice impressions and we all hope to see this event in the future again.
This time you can travel quite a lot of years into the past - my first flight in an Boeing Stearman was made out of Ecuvillens due one of those fabulous RIO's (Rencontre Internationale des Oldtimers). I helped with the parking organisation as 'Bénevoles' and enjoyed this little tour around the Gruyères area.
