nicely lit one night last week.
Bigroll Beaufort at Woodside
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Air Traffic At YHZ
Having produced a couple of maps of ship traffic tracks in the harbour, I set out to do the same with the ADSB data i have been collecting. the result is Above, and is 5 days of Air traffic (arrivals in red, departures in green).
Shown are 325 flights. EHS, Cougar, and the coast Guard all conducted various training flights which are responsible for some of the weirder tracks visible. Lifeflights tracks to and from the hospitals are the tracks exiting the bottom center of the image.
You can see clear arrival tracks for Runway 23 and Runway 14 – runway 05 and runway 32 are less used.
I also pick up portions of international flights, flying great circle routes to Europe. those are shown in blue on this second map. – the range on these is much greater, as all these flights are happening above 20,000′
RCGS Resolute.
After the RCGS Resolute sunk a Venezuelan navy vessel, I was asked what i thought was going to happen next in in the One Ocean, RCGS Resolute saga…
well…
…Could it now be that the Venezuelan navy was merely wrong, but not not totally crazy in thinking the Resolute was going to launch a mercenary invasion?
Bellingcat is reporting that the Canadian Born, ex US Army Green Beret medic Jordan Goudreau, launched a Mercenary invasion into Venezuela by sea on May 3rd and 4th, with the idea of overthrowing the Madero government. 2 boats were intercepted, with 8 killed and 2 captured on May 3rd, and another 8 including 2 US Citizens captured on the 4th. Oh yah, Goudreau was tweeting about the raid as it was happening.
but if the live tweeting of the mercenary invasion wasent stupid enough, the AP reported May 1 that the original plan was for a force of 300, trained by Silvercorp in Columbia to attack. So much for Opsec.
Silvercorp became involved after they were hired to provide security at a Pro Opposition concert on the Colombian border, organized by Richard Branson. that got Goudreau introduced to some of Juan Guaido’s people. One of those people, introduced Goudreau to Cliver Alcala.
Alcala was a retired Major General in the Venuzualian army, and ringleader of a group of deserters, who were already training in camps in Columbia. Planning for the attack began in April 2019 at the Marriot in Bogata, which is where Goudreau met Alcala and pitched Silvercorp to train them, with an estimated cost of 1.5 million.
Trying to raise a small army of mercenaries is no small task, and no government was willing to bank roll them, Funding was tight, and the men in the camps were poorly equipped, poorly supplied and poorly fed. it all fell apart in March, when one of the men was arrested crossing the border, and Colombian police stopped a truck loaded with weapons. there is evidence the Madeuro Government was aware something was afoot as early as March 24th.
So along comes the RCGS Resolute. the ship, flagged in Portugal, a country that supports opposition leader Juan Guaido – acts a bit weirdly off the coast and happens to have an upper deck loaded with black rhibs, sufficient to land ~300 people. Meanwhile the Venezuelan navy is working on the assumption that there is a mercenary attack coming in the near future with the goal of toppling the government.
the failed plot, and the plans reveled by the may 1st AP piece certainly suggest that the Venezuelan navy had reason to be suspicious of the resolute, and the governments claims that they defended against a mercenary raid – actually now seam plausible, and not the crazy claims of a crazy dictator trying to hold on to power.
So who are the masterminds behind these plans?
Goudreau retired from the Military in 2016, and worked private security in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. he formed Silvercorp USA in 2018 with the idea of charging parents 10$ a month to put ex special forces into schools posing a teachers to collect intelligence about possible school shooters, and to neutralize them should there be a shooting. Goudreau has been photographed near Trump, and his firm has provided security for Trump rallies.
Alcala is currently awaiting trial in New York on charges that he was one of the architects of a Venezualian Narcoterrorist conspiracy that allegedly sent 250tons of cocaine to the US every year. He surendered to authorities in Colombia
Snowbirds Flyover
Cyclone in Operation
I caught a cyclone in operation on VDQ early this afternoon. its not clear if it flew, but it was running at power.
CCGS Captain Molly Kool
the Coast Guards newest medium icebreaker arrived for the first time in Halifax this week. the ship was acquired by the coast guard last year, and will be modified in when the work on the other two ships of the class are in service.
It tied up at the worst possible dock for photos, so hopefully a chance to get a better one will emerge in coming days.
HMCS Fredericton’s Helicopter has Crashed
reports are that the CH148 Cyclone, carried by HMCS Fredericton has crashed in Italian waters. Both the ship and Helicopter are based in Halifax, and were serving with SNMG2 in the Mediterranean Sea.
Fredericton, along with Italian and Turkish ships are searching the area. Reports are 1 body has been found by the Italian frigate, along with debris, and 5 others are missing.
Updates to follow
UPDATE 1: DND has confirmed the Aircraft is missing, and SAR efforts are under way. the CH-148 was lost in the Ionian Sea. Plane spotters indicate Shearwater advised all cylcones to return to base an hour ago.
UPDATE 19:47: Its currently 00:47 in the Ionian sea, Initial reports were 3 hours ago, so this flight would have happened under night time conditions. Weather forecast is clear,light winds 17 degree temp. half moon, so not totally dark.
UPDATE 00:55: RCAF confirmed via tweet family of all those aboard have been notified. should be coming up on Sunrise in the next hour.
UPDATE 0549: the search continues, with an Italian military ATR flying search patterns.
UPDATE 10:55: The Chronicle Herald has identified sub-Lt. Abbigail Cowbrough from Eastern Passage as the first victim of the Crash through Facebook posts from her parents.
UPDATE:12:20: the ATR Air search ended at 7:55am our time
News Conference – They have the flight recorders, 5 are still missing.
Sajjan says that Italy, Greece, the US and Turkey are all helping with the search and rescue effort off the coast of Greece.
At 6:52 pm Greece time, HMCS Fredericton lost contact with the helicopter. Soon after, the ship spotted flares that were shot from the water. the voice and data recorders floated away from the helicopters wreckage. “It’s in 3000 M of waters in the Ionian sea”
UPDATE 18:00:
Names of the missing have been released.
Additionally, some tweets from the Turkish military on scene.
Search for the Canadian Frigate FREDERICTON helo in Ionian Sea continues since last night. TCG SALIHREIS and Turkish Naval Helo as part of NATO SNMG-2 are continuing search and rescue operations in vicinity of the crash site. https://t.co/odJBXsLbuu
— T.C. Millî Savunma Bakanlığı (@tcsavunma) April 30, 2020
Our TCG SALİHREİS frigate and helicopter continue to carry out search and rescue operations for the Canadian FREDERICTON frigate’s helicopter and its crew which fell into the Ionian Sea last night. pic.twitter.com/tVfSWDLa94
— T.C. Millî Savunma Bakanlığı (@tcsavunma) April 30, 2020
Snowbirds Fly Over Sunday?
The Snow Birds have announced a cross Canada tour. From the release:
The Canadian Forces Snowbirds will cross the country to salute Canadians doing their part to fight the spread of COVID-19. This unique mission is being aptly dubbed Operation Inspiration.
The team’s signature nine-jet formation, with trailing white smoke, will fly over cities across the country starting in Nova Scotia this weekend and working west throughout the week. The team will release anticipated locations, routes, and times on their social media platforms each day. Flyovers will occur at an elevation no lower than 500 feet above all obstacles.
Routes will be posted to the Snowbirds facebook page, and will target residential Neighborhoods and Hospitals.
this post will be updated with more details as they become available.
Bigroll Beaufort.
Arriving late this afternoon is the the Bigroll Beaufort, loaded with 2 offshore wind turbines for the CVOR, or Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project. The ship will be tieing up at Woodside.
To get around the US Jones act, the Turbine equipment will be delivered to Halifax, where it will be loaded on the Installation vessel Vole au Vent, to then be taken to the installation site off the Virginia Coast. Vole au Vent is still in Rotterdam.
The Jones act is a piece of US legislation that requires any transport of goods between US ports to be done on US Built, Crewed and Flagged ships. Currently there are no US Offshore Wind installation vessels.
From the Project Release:
“Dominion Energy and Ørsted announced today the turbine components and monopiles for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) pilot project have started their journey to North America.
The foundations, consisting of the turbines’ monopiles, transition pieces and anode cages fabricated by EEW SPC, have been loaded onto the Bigroll Beaufort cargo ship in Rostock, Germany. The components for the two, 6-megawatt Siemens Gamesa turbines were loaded in Esbjerg, Denmark, before the vessel embarked in mid-April on the approximately two-week transatlantic journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Installation of the two turbines, located 27 miles offshore, is expected to begin later this spring and they are expected to enter service by the end of the year.”
ONE Matrix – Another Magenta ship
ONE Matrix spent yesterday at Fairview cove. The second magenta colored ONE vessel to Call in Halifax. Given her lightly loaded condition, you can see the Magenta and White funnel striping quite clearly.
the ship was repainted in and renamed in March, so its fresh, and on its first trip out of refit. Infact, when I last looked at the schedule, the ship was still MOL Matrix.
the light load is likely due to the pandemic, with container volumes finally dropping off.
