Having for many years been used to flying either around or past Thorney Island, while en route to the Isle of Wight and beyond, it was good today to finally have the opportunity to land there.
The former RAF station, where a long time ago I used to ride my motor bike to see the Meteors and Varsities and later Hastings and Beverleys, has been occupied by the Army for many years and is not usually open to the general aviation community.
However, this weekend there is a rare opportunity, as a small fly-in, PPR obviously, is taking place in support of the very worthwhile Help for Heroes charity, for which a donation is requested in lieu of a landing fee.
Among those there this afternoon were a Tiger Moth, Chipmunk, 2 Messengers, 2 Luscombes, Cub, Porterfield, Airedale and several more modern, mainly homebuilt and microlight types.
Thorney has long been on my list of airfields I would like to have flown into as it is in such an attractive and ideally located position. Has anyone got any special memories or photos of it from days gone by?
Wicked Willip :diablo:
By: daveg4otu - 14th September 2010 at 16:39
Thorney was where I attended one of my earliest airshows – the BoB show in 1955.
Cycled from Southampton by way of Hamble, Lee,Gosport and Portsmouth Airport.(of these only Lee remains an active airfield now).
By: Willip26 - 14th September 2010 at 15:31
For the flyers amongst you just a heads up to advise that for anyone who missed last year’s event, there is another opportunity to fly in to Thorney Island on the weekend of 25th/26th September, when there is an Armed Forces Charity air day.
PPR required and contact can be made via the organiser on e-mail, details given on the Royal Aero Club’s Calendar of Events website.
By: dailee1 - 7th June 2009 at 09:41
Thorney Island
I remember RAF Thorney Island as the OCU for the C130, and the home for the first of the four C130 Hercules simulators built by Miles Electronics Ltd; the remaining three C130s were installed at RAF Lyneham. In the mid 70s as part of a research project into the system requirements for the addition of a sideways (Sway) degree of freedom for updating the existing C130s, approaches made by Singer Link Miles to the RAF to borrow the motion system actuators from C130 No 1 which was at that time still resident at Thorney. Further investigations revealed that it would be too expensive to power up the simulator to determine the state of the actuators prior to removing them from the simulator, so the project was abandoned and the low payload acrtuators were used instead. No 1 was later removed from Thorney and put into storage, and I believe it was scrapped when the RAF ordered new 6 DoF C130 simulators in 1984
By: Arabella-Cox - 7th June 2009 at 09:10
I will dig out my photos!
I recall going there in 1969/70 when there were Beverley’s (46 Sqn?) and Hercs (OCU?) all in the two-tone dark earth/stone camo and, I think, Yellow ASR Whirlwinds of 22 Sqn. I did have loads of photos. Need to find them. I flew in one of the Hercs out along the south coast (low) to Old Harry Rocks near Swanage and back. Very memorable. I was very jealous of my pal who flew on another Herc doing a ULLA drop with a Land Rover (I think?) on a pallet and ‘chute over Tangmere.
In those days you could drive into the camp from Emsworth, stop briefly at the guard room, and drive through the camp, past the hangars, across the runways and down to St Nicholas Church and the sailing club. There were at least ten wrecks on the mud, too. 3 x Blenheims, Anson, Beaufort, Beaufighter, Meteor and various others. Have photos of them, too.
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June 6, 2009 at 11:35 pm