Blackhawks over North Shore?

[JamesW]

I saw them fly over my school at around 1:30pm, heading eastbound towards Maroubra/Malabar Beach.

[andrew evans]

They did a flyby of Sydney tower and the turned East and flew out that way.It looked like they had civilian's in them maybe a charity flight of some sort ???.

[Russell D]

Had a formation of 6 flying fairly low heading NNW towards Richmond yesterday arvo around 1.40PM overhead the Mount Druitt area. Unfortunately no shots as I was on the train on my way home from uni.

[Brad E]

Here's a photo of them over Zetland last Wednesday. They approached from the north, hovered around Joynton/Epsom Rd for 30-60 seconds and then departed back to the North again

http://www.totalweb.net.au/evansbw/IMG_3463.JPG

[Stephen Brown]

Also over Newcastle/Willy today

[Nigel C]

Route today took them initially east, then across the south of the field to join the 34L circuit, past the control tower to Maroubra area, north to the Heads, Sydney Harbour, Manly, Northern Beaches, Harbour again, then back to Sydney Airport.

The flight wasn't for charity purposes.

Cheers

[Philip Argy]

Buzzing Drummoyne at 1 am at a low level is not too impressive - I don't see why waking everyone up at that hour is necessary for training, and they seem to be hovering around Cockatoo Island and creating quite a racket there too.

There are two of them running totally dark except for a red flashing tail light on the rear one of the pair.

I hope they wake up Senator Faulkner who lives at Drummoyne!

[Robert S]

Originally Posted by Philip Argy

Buzzing Drummoyne at 1 am at a low level is not too impressive - I don't see why waking everyone up at that hour is necessary for training, and they seem to be hovering around Cockatoo Island and creating quite a racket there too.

Pffft, you just got a flyby. Over here in Ryde/Meadowbank we got them drawing one big raised middle finger in the sky, hanging around like a bad smell, going around and around and around. The activity around 9pm I have no issue with, but the activity up until 12:50am was completely and utterly ridiculous. After they left here, Webtrak indicates they hung around B@lls Head for some time, albeit it was struggling to continue tracking them at that time, before they finally headed back to Randwick.

Those things are loud, especially when they echo around the valley here and all the unit blocks. There were four of them, three with nil lights, the last with the strobe.

Whoever made that decision needs a very sharp reminder that there are people down here and you don't do your public relations much good with this kind of nonsense.

There was some commentary on twitter, notably:

http://twitter.com/alyshajane
http://twitter.com/corinoco
http://twitter.com/v_benson
http://twitter.com/margey_pargey

This exercise was NOT in accordance with the story they put out which was picked up by AAP and republished in much online media:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...129-18ddj.html

I'm sorry, but unless there was an active threat, that was completely and utterly inappropriate.

[Philip Argy]

I haven't checked but if that's all Webtrak is showing then it's incomplete as I was watching them circling around north of our place and then heading south west from Woolwich right across Drummoyne - maybe Ball's Head isn't the only place that was censored!

[Robert S]

Well this is very interesting.

Webtrak's evidence of the harrassment of Ryde/Meadowbank residents on Wednesday morning has been removed. At that time it simply shows an innocuous-looking heli flight from Randwick to Holsworthy, and an aircraft arrival at YSSY.

However the noise meter at Hunters Hill clearly shows the impact during the helicopter's progression from Ryde/Meadowbank to B@lls Head - some time after 12:57am, when it suddenly rises from levels in the 40s, peaking at 83 dB at 12:58 am.

It concerns me that the ADF appears to have the ability to remove delayed noise impact data from a third party provider (although thankfully they did not do a complete job of it and some evidence is still there).

Meanwhile at B@lls Head, it appears from the following report that they did indeed remain at this location (as previously identified by WebTrak), where they caused damage to the historic former Sydney ferry, MV Baragoola.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/black-hawk...201-18grc.html

I think they have a lot of explaining to do.