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Post by suthg on Jun 16, 2016 21:13:52 GMT 12
If they were using GPS devices to record the location of the booty in the sea then these other folk were also using GPS units to find the booty, and it would have been dropped closely together as in with a boat and possibly a small buoy as well - they need a rope to pull on to quickly get the loot up. And you don't get 500kgs of product to the surface at once either, it would have been chain linked on the rope carefully. So the plane is probably a red herring.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 16, 2016 22:17:43 GMT 12
I wonder how many other times they have done this without getting caught.
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Post by madmac on Jun 17, 2016 23:22:26 GMT 12
Why would you drop drugs there, an exposed west coast beach with strong currents doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you want to get caught (or it actually did get thrown out of an aircraft because the fuel burn was worse than expected and that was as far as they could go).
It makes an interesting planning exercise working out what aircraft could actually make NZ with that payload and back again, the typical drug running beechcraft would struggle making it one way from oz, aAlthough a Fokker F50 could make a return from the islands or OZ without being completely overloaded (plus with the right one you can open a door in flight).
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Post by baronbeeza on Jun 18, 2016 1:30:04 GMT 12
Half the guys I knew in the Air Force would have more chance of telling you the difference between a Lion and a DB than they would a piston vs Turbo-prop twin.. Not everyone was working in a technical trade or branch. www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/81118783/new-zealands-biggest-meth-bust-a-comedy-of-errorsI can see how it could be a comedy of errors but I have yet to work out if it is the reporting, the Police or the smuggling operation. www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10889928I disagree with the dates on the Karamea incident because I thought I was water-skiing with the cop when he got called away for this 'rescue'. Maybe I am confusing events but for sure... Of all the possessions the sailor had, he managed to bring ashore one bag,- the important one. There was one embarrassed local constabulary when the facts emerged then also.
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Post by craig on Jun 18, 2016 8:00:40 GMT 12
The fact remains a twin turbine was in the area at low level and about the same time. More likely than not linked some how. maybe it was the police?
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Post by Bruce on Jun 18, 2016 8:06:57 GMT 12
The former Eagle B1900's are being ferried to Australia.... anyone checked?
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Post by madmac on Jun 18, 2016 11:13:37 GMT 12
The fixed wing air ambulances go in and out of kaitaia any time of day & night.
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Post by baronbeeza on Jun 18, 2016 11:57:53 GMT 12
The fact remains a twin turbine was in the area at low level and about the same time. More likely than not linked some how. maybe it was the police? Extremely charitable Craig but we could give the coppers the benefit of the doubt and say they were well on top of this operation having been monitoring it for several weeks. You could almost imagine them having a search aircraft in the vicinity. Like you say, there is every possibility there was an aircraft there at the time. I personally doubt it would be the Police or involved with the smuggling attempt. That doesn't seem to fit in with amateur hour. The aeroplane could have been anything but someone will know what they were doing flying about. In the real world it would be considered impossible to load an aircraft with half a tonne of drugs, fly 1000 miles do a low level drop with loitering and then return. I am thinking that apart from mention of an aircraft in the area, at some time, then there is nothing to suggest that the load was dropped from the sky. The media often hover about somewhere outside the real world.
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Post by scrooge on Jun 18, 2016 13:22:58 GMT 12
I see that the aircraft is now reported to have been at 500', not the 1,000' first mentioned.
Who knows whether there was an aircraft there or not or whether it was involved or not. You certainly can not rely on the first reports of anything. We all know that aviation reporting is random and fanciful at best. How often do we hear of crashed aircraft that were 'on fire', 'misfiring', 'spinning' or that 'exploded in the air', when none of these things happened.
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Post by johnnyfalcon on Jun 18, 2016 17:54:43 GMT 12
That's quite right Scrooge - everyone knows they only 'plunge'
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Post by hamfists on Jun 18, 2016 20:52:14 GMT 12
madmac is right, the kingairs from NZ air ambulance are in there (KT) 2-3 times a week including Wednesday and Thursday but in the morning not at night those days. There is also an NZAAS service operating into the pacific from AA and having a good knowledge of the region I would have to think that even with a temporary fuel bladder, a long range smallish turboprop would need to stop either on Aussies east coast or in Vanuatu, Noumea, Norfolk, Tonga, Samoa, Niue, Tuvalu, Nauru or maybe the Solomans..and then land here and refuel somewhere..logistical nightmare..
There are a couple of Turboprops in Noumea (a pc-12 comes here often) which would pass KT...and then there's the P-3's from the RNZAF which still do the occasional coastal patrol
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Post by lindstrim on Jun 18, 2016 20:54:20 GMT 12
The former Eagle B1900's are being ferried to Australia.... anyone checked? FL250 plus too Norfolk Island. EAM was the latest just the other day
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Post by isc on Jun 18, 2016 21:43:54 GMT 12
What about the MC-130H aircraft currently visiting, low altitude is just their thing, out doing a night patrol. isc
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