The Final EPIC Days- attn: NC Mil-Com

Disclaimer: I hesitated to post this earlier til I found some public open source to point
to, but as the time is nearing you'll have to choose to accept it as it is.

As many of you know, the CLT ANG C-130s are sadly to soon be no longer a fixture of the
piedmont sky, eventually to be replaced with C-17s. I have no privileged information to
share or nor access to any. Considering my inability to corroborate the following, and
the iffy weather forecast, this could be no longer accurate.

Last weds, July 26th, I overheard on the radio, that on Sat Aug 5th, in the early
afternoon there will be an EPIC flyover of proportions validating its name. The source of
the info should be easy to guess, and therefore lend credibility. I don't know when
they'll be up in the air, or what they're route will be on, but I imagine they will follow
a course that will hit areas normally frequented, as a farewell to those of us who have
enjoyed seeing them over the years. Or not.

One point on they're journey is a certainty tho, and that is their home away from home, KVUJ,
and a time of 1350 local ie: 1:50 PM was mentioned.

I post this here because, the folks on this site provided the info that gave me the jumping off points as to how to monitor them, getting me back into scanning almost exclusively due to my desire follow the
exploits. It has given me countless opportunities that would have otherwise been missed
to photograph them and enjoy getting to watch them fly those lumbering cargo planes like
they were WWII fighter pilots.

I missed the mass flyover that they did for the Super Bowl, and was quite disappointed
when I heard about it. I had no idea it was going to happen. This one will likely be the last mass flyover, and one of their last flights in general I imagine. It was pure luck that I found this out and share it in case
any others want to get a good last chance to wave goodbye, snap some pics or otherwise enjoy the transient shade of the aluminum overcast.


To keep up with what is happening, presumably, tune those dials to:

292.250 NEWSREEL, reporting a "wheels-up" time departure, a "X mins out ALPHA-X" RTB
376.025 Inter-plane, which I imagine will be non-stop
128.325 CLT App at various points depending on what they do.
126.275 VUJ Tower, normally contact 5-10 mins out, roughly 15-20mins travel time from CLT
direct to VUJ, but that is when in ones and twos and no detours, who knows what or how long on
this one.

Any additional info, updates or corrections etc would be greatly appreciated. I'm going to be bummed enough when their gone, but I would be really bummed to miss this.

Good luck.

Charlotte observer is reporting an estimated departure time of 1230/1245 from KCLT and returning at 1415.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article165567752.html

thanks for the link nitroboie. while that was from the day before, the lag time was such, with the google news search function that is, that i never came across that til you posted it. which was after the fact. considering what i thought was minimal heads up in the press, i was quite surprised at the turnout. i think the base security may have been as well.

anyone on here make it out there to watch? See them from downtown? see them from home? anyone?

also, after the fact, listening to the recordings, apparently they switched to VHF2 which was on this occasion 123.025, IIRC, one of the three helo common freqs to co-ord with SNOOPY2, which i think is one of the Charlotte police helos, for picture taking. if anyone comes across those pics online, i wouldn't mind seeing them, feel free to post a link here.

anyone else catch anything else? what their flight profile looked like, or at least when and where you saw them?

I missed alot of stuff due to issues with hungry ants and accidentally having paused the only scanner that records on a single frequency.

I'm pretty late again, sorry.

The only photos I found were from the observer:
C-130 Hercules planes flew over Charlotte Saturday | Charlotte Observer

I caught a few transmissions from home outside of Harrisburg but obviously never saw them. For whatever reason I thought they'd head this way until I realized Stanley is on the opposite side, brain fart on my part.

I still have a few recordings saved on my 436 if you'd like to hear them.