RRR7400 Nimrod from BNA

Aviation Notable Activity
1

I’ve been watching this guy (on FA) the past few days in and out of BNA. It’s a British Nimrod, I’m assuming civillian, and it has gone to the DEN area, PIT area, and today it looks like they went to XNA and back.
Does this aircraft have anything to do with that spy satalite they are going to shoot down?
Is this related to the RAF or is it civillian?

It’s great to see the old Comet is still flying around, albeit in Nimrod form. I was lucky enough to see one of these things in STL one time. Surely the only time I’ll ever see an airworthy BAC Comet

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/RRR7400

2

Wow…the flight on the 15th might have been an endurance test of somekind. I Wonder how long it was actually circling south of Williamsport PA…

3

Royal Air Force. There are no civilian Nimrods. RRR is “Ascot”, the RAF callsign.

4

Boeing and BAe have been involved with a lengthy upgrade of the Nimrod. This includes new BR710 engines, same powerplant as G-V/550 and Global Express. These flight may have something to do with this program. Perhaps shakedown flights for some installation.

5

Thanks for the clarification, I didn’t think there would be any civlilan Nimrods, in fact I’ll bet there’s only a handfull in the RAF fleet as is,
but I assumed if they were indeed RAF that they wouldn’t show up on FA since they’re military. Kinda cool seeing a Nimrod flying around. I didn’t realize they were working to re-engine them, (thanks Wazzu) service time right up there w/ the B-52 or C-130, only these aiframes might be a bit older.

Sort of the same situation, I’ve seen is a VOODOO01
(http://flightaware.com/live/flight/VOODOO1)

It’s an F-16 usually out of TUCSON, but I’ve seen some VPS (Ft. Walton Beach) flights too. Don’t happen to have any info on this guy do you?

6

Googling around, it’s hard to tell how many they have. It looks like they’ll have 12 MRA4’s when it’s all said and done. They appear to have more of the older versions still in use. They went into service in 1969 with 49 units.

Here’s the new and improved
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/nimrod/images/Nimrod_10.jpg

7

wow!! Those nacelles are twice as big!!

8

I should say intakes, they’re sorta blended nacelles

9

Not to be confused with the forward protruding blended probe.

10

It’s an entirely new wing!

11

They doing icing testing on the new wing, going to where icing conditions are the way they want.

12

Interesting!
I don’t know if that’d be the test pilot job I’d want to do. It’s a dirty job and someone’s gotta do it I guess.

I saw a photo of the whole aircraft the other day, do you know if the “winglets” and “tailets” staying on?

13

They are ahead of schedule with their icing testing so they may head home next week.

14

cool. how did you find this? wonder if there r any other RAF Jets above our heads? :question:

15

[quote=“BHXUK1”]

I like to go to the “Live Tracking” link at over in the blue option bar on the top left side. Then I pick “airborne aircraft type” . They’re listed by number of aircraft type flying, so usually your 737 and CRJ types are at the top as there are a ton of em. I like to scroll down to the 1’s and 2’s of a particular type. There you get some real weird stuff. Usually in the mid morning (central time) you can watch the Cubana TU-204 fly out of Toronto and Montreal, I’ve seen the Guppy Nasa flies etc. I just happened to see a “NIM” and it turned out to be a Nimrod.

I think that is one of my favorite features on Flight Aware it’s alot of fun!