El Centro - 20/01/2025

[slogen51]

El Centro afternoon of bank holiday Monday
Five AV-8B
165312/WP-22 - on tow
/WP-09
/WP-02
/WP-14
/WP-35 twin stick

Plus two AV-8B+ on the ground at Palm Springs (heading home to Cherry Point?)
165585/WP-17
164569/WP- 223 CAG VFA-223

Plus two other Harriers departed Palm Springs ( RTB Cherry Point ?) just as we arrived - not seen by this correspondent!


T-45 x7
B 240, 289, 283? (280 was noted flying on FR24)
B 219, 216, 252 grey, 285

F/A-18E/F NJ x 11
201 no markings - towed left towards the big hangar flight line
132
147
165
136

137
133
134 towed next to 201 above
117
213
164

Ten Blue Angels

Two T-34
0506 NJ
0475 mispole or typo - should be 0478?

Credit the MOP - Men of PW tours for reading the codes

[Charles022]

The Harriers are on det until Feb (certainly at El Centro anyways) and they only arrived late last week, so I am assuming the Palm Springs birds haven't departed back to Cherry Point?

[slogen51]

Plus two AV-8B+ on the ground at Palm Springs (heading home to Cherry Point?)
165585/WP-17
164569/WP- 223 CAG VFA-223

The above two Harriers did a gas and go at Yuma Tuesday mid morning callsign sounded like Storm 31/32

[Neil D]

I visited one of these exercises a few years ago at Yuma. Four crews flew from Phoenix on a bank holiday to make use of the training time in the good weather.

Neil

[david14]

Just to add to Slogen's log based on 4 hours at El Centro on Wednesday morning.

Nine WP harriers on the ground, four flew in the morning, CAG bird being prepped when I left: codes 02, 08, 09, 14, 17, 22, 27, 35 and 223

More T45s, all from NAS Kingsville, including a second grey c/s example: 252, 219, 215, 297, 216, 285, 280, 294, 284, 229, 236, 240 and 272

A third T34 parked up with the other two: 937, and it's definitely 475 on the nose from my photo

Two F35s stopped off for less than an hour from Yuma, WE 01 and 02.

Down the road Imperial County had a couple of pairs of gas and goes, firstly two Miramar based Ospreys YW 04 and 06, and then two MH53s which I only saw from El Centro.

Blue Angels flew twice, hornets as per Slogen's log plus two in the hangars.

Hope that helps

[slogen51]

Thanks for confirming the T-34 0475 and the T-45 280 which we read and then decided it was 283 ( heat haze trauma!)

[dotwatcher01]

8 x WPs (the [allegedly broken] CAG not logged but another a/c reported partially visible in the hangar) & 5 CGs read off this morning, serials in due course.
About 13 Blue Angels here as well, mainly coded "7". They're flying so perhaps serials to follow.
OK, here we go:
WP02/164551, WP08/165383 (edited), WP09/165596, WP14/165417,
WP17/165585, WP22/165312 (edited), WP27/165569, WP35/164122 (added)
CG00/165567, CG01/165576, CG04/165587, CG05/164552,
(CG)06/165574 *(at Yuma), CG07/165389 (edited)/ CG11/165428
* Had the "Spades" badge but the code was scrubbed
Blues noted were:
1,2,3,3,3,5,6,6,7,7,7,7 of which 2, a 7 & one in the corner were hangared - probably the fourth "3" (5664).
Some noz; 165666/1, 165661/3, 165664/3, 165534/3, 165538/3, 165540/5*, 165539/6, 165782/6, 165800/7, 165673/7 & 165679/7. Any more serials anyone?? (*5540 reliably reported as "5" on one side, "4" on the other )

[slogen51]

I didn't realize there were so many Blue Angels - we saw 10 but none readable