Whether it’s different formations or flour-bombing a target, the Red Radials have been busy in Cowra this week.
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Keen spectators still have the opportunity to see the airplanes in action with the group performing maneuvers and practicing combat missions throughout Friday and Saturday morning.
They will depart Cowra on Saturday afternoon.
This year marks the group’s third visit and Red Radial Sean Trestrail said the pilots had practiced a number of advanced handling and tactical application activities during the week.
“We were actually running all of our airplanes… doing some close formation flying, we were also doing some tactical formation flying,” he said.
“We are going out to a friendly farmer’s paddock and we will be actually dropping some flour bombs on the farmer’s paddock which is an exercise in navigation, timing and precision flour bomb delivery.”
The rest of the week featured similar flights.
“Again we will go out into a lot more tactical formation, which is not the same as close formation. We have a whole bunch of exercises,” he said.
“(Wednesday) is another exercise where we go to another friendly farmer’s place and we do a sort of simulated attack on that.
“Then finally on the last Friday is the culmination of the whole exercise. We have a very complex exercise where we go to another farmer’s place and we’ll have a scenario which we cannot reveal to anyone.”
Mr Trestrail, who was in the Royal Australian Air Force for 12 years before joining QANTAS for 31 years, said the Red Radials was a great group.
“I retired last week from QANTAS and now I’ve been flying in this sort of community for about the last five years,” he said.
He said he enjoys working out of Cowra Airport.
“Honestly, the air field here is so pro-aviation, and the support we get from the council, the Rotary, the Ladies Inner Wheel... it just makes life really easy for us to be able to come here, do what we need to do,” he said.
“The airspace is free, the town is great and it’s an ideal place for us to do it.”
