Returning from another short trip to Croatia here are my notes for Zagreb area on 11./12. October, all notes based on very short stops with no time to invest
Pleso
11. Oct after 13:00 No activity, MiG.21 ‚garages‘ closed, hangar mostly closed. Of the 2 stored MiG.21bis (110, 122) noted on 25.09, only 110 was left. An.32B 707 and 727 present of course, but have been moved around the last 2 weeks. Present were also 2 US Army UH-60; one I read as (10-)20314.
12. Oct. around 13:00 No activity again, but one UH-60 had been towed towards the An.32Bs, with a bunch of people around, the other one flew a short local mission. Serial may have ended on 425 or 426 or 725 or so.
After some google search I assume that there was a small official event for the handover of the first 2 Blackhawks for the Croatian AF, in this case possibly both former 1-214 AVN examples.
Also I noted that the storage compound of Pleso is visible nowadays, I counted 6 Mi.24 or what is left of them, plus 1 MiG.21bis in the late camo, but possibly there is more in that corner.
Velika Gorica
11. Oct. around 14:00 Mi.17 229 KFOR marks outside with no rotors, 4 more inside the hangar, not identified (as I got some attention myself …). Before that, I read AT-802AF 893 or 895 being moved into the middle hangar, where Macedonian AT-802AF Z3-BGT plus another possibly Macedonian example were present. Also in that hangar was a MiG.21bis in an older style camo, no serial on the left side (looked like 102 which was photographed here mid 2017).
12. Oct. around 13:00 Hangars closed, Mi.17 229 still there, plus Mi.8T 274 (also noted 25.09.) either engine running or about to depart.
Lucko
11. Oct. around 15:00 Mi.8MTV-1 210, 211 and 254 were present.
r.e.hendriks wrote:Saw some shots of the two US Army UH-60 on a Croatian FB page.
One clearly 20314, without any doubt.
The other one looks like 20245, last digit needs some confirmation.
Both helicopters were donated to Croatia.
Best regards, Rob
20245 and 20314 could well make sense as they are the two 1-214th helicopters that have been reported using non-standard hex codes (15C0B5 and 0020CC respectively).
"The United States government has approved the donation of two Black Hawk UH-60M helicopters to the Republic of Croatia. These completely new helicopters should come to Croatia in 2020.
Two US UH-60M arrived on Thursday in Zagreb to be presented to the local public."
Hi all, thanks for the feedback.
Seems that my notes caused some others to do google search as well. So not the official handover, but the teaser for Hrvatska of what they will get soon. Hope I see many of their Mi's till then
Regards
Martin