The Last C130H Platform drop......

for the RAAF. With the fleet being retired at the end of this month & with it my flying career I was fortunate enough to have access to the drop zone & have permission to photograph this historic "Last heavy drop" by a RAAF C130H. The load was a new type of bull dozer for the ADF, approx 25000lb load for the old girl, A97-008.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …_photo_stream/8​147402436/

Great shot, and a fantastic opportunity. Shame about the flying gig though. Anything else on the horizon for you?

Sorry you're losing your ride, & why only one shot?

Great catch Phil! So sorry about the end of these for you. Any other birds you can slide into?
It must be a hectic few moments for the flight crew to stabilize the ship after unloading that much weight all of a sudden.

nice shot, amazing they can drop something that heavy and have it work when it lands

very cool!!! A great plane and a great shot.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks guys

PhotosGuy wrote in post #15197979
Sorry you're losing your ride, & why only one shot?

The drop sequence is up on my flickr page & I still working on the rest.

S_Egbert wrote in post #15198133
Great catch Phil! So sorry about the end of these for you. Any other birds you can slide into?
It must be a hectic few moments for the flight crew to stabilize the ship after unloading that much weight all of a sudden.

Thankfully I've moved to the dark side (I'm a Flight Engineer), I'm now doing C130J ground & sim instruction & a few other things at the unit to keep me busy. As a contractor it would have been easy to save some money & give me the "don't come Monday" notice but that hasn't happened.

& for you Egbert, you need to be stable at the point of release, once the extraction chute is in the air it all happens pretty quick. A load like this with a 28 ft extraction chute will throw you forward into your harness as the a/c wants to stop but before you can do anything to counter it the load is gone & you just fly away!

Phil