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but harder to find a connection with any of the clue.




Gerroff! ' "The Hunted One" Australia', ' "The Hunted One" Wales' or, for those who know me, ' "The Hunted One" aircraft' will all get top-line hits on Google, which will take you to RAF Llanbedr - this was easy!

Perhaps you were just having a bad day

Congrats to all who got there.

For those who didn't get there, the aircraft in question is an Australian-built Jindivik target drone for use in air-to-air missile firing. Typically it towed a flare when infra-red missiles were being used, or a radar reflector when radar-guided missiles were fired.

Here is a picture of a Jindi landing after a sortie.

Jindiviks were quite expensive and the flares only burned for about 20 secs, so comms between the firing aircraft and his photo chase plane were quite tight. As the firing aircraft acquired the target, the controllers would light one of the two flares carried. The chase aircraft would confirm "Flare Lit" and start his stop-watch. When he'd given it 20 seconds, he would shout "wait, wait, wait"; the lead aircraft would have to launch his missile within those brackets, or he stood a damn good chance of blowing the Jindivik away, which, of course, was every red-blooded young Lightning pilot's ambition anyway. I believe they went through a couple of hundred of them over the years.

The Jindiviks were flown from RAF Llanbedr and were controlled over the range in Aberporth Bay by the radar unit at RAF Aberporth - the squadron undergoing missile practice camp flew from RAF Valley.

Cheers,

Frank