How did you get into historic aviation?

Chipmunk WB627 still survives as an instructional airframe with Dulwich College CCF. Regret XV183 is a Hercules, not a Nimrod!

Thanks for that info,i must’ve got the numbers muddled somewhere on the log book for the Nimrod,well it was dark and i was probably a bit excited 😀 the strange thing is the logbook was signed by the pilot who i think was in charge of the Squadron.

My father was originally from Trinidad and Tobago, and his parents worked on a sugarcane farm. When he was young he used to love watching the crop-dusting aircraft (usually ex-US WW2 vintage) spray the fields.

When I was 10 he took me to an airshow after we moved to new york. There, I had bought a book on WW2 a/c (my 1st aviation book) and I was thrilled to meet WW2 vets who flew the Liberator. I asked them to autograph the section of the book with on the Liberator, and they told me war stories. I was absolutely fascinated

Since then, I’ve always been an aviation buff

🙂 Not sure where the initial spark came from but living 3 miles from RAF Debden and Duxford still in it’s infancy as a museum and a Dad that was more than happy to travel round the country to take us places probably did it.
I joined 1824 Squadron ATC and had a summer camp at RAF Wyton and was lucky enough to get a night flight in a Nimrod and flights in a chipmunk and Gliders at RAF Debden.

The chipmunk was WB 627 anyone know it’s whereabouts now and the Nimrod was XV183.
The gliders were flown from Debden and the numbers were YE 790 and 812.
Ever since then i was hooked but i like to watch,listen and Photograph them now. 🙂

Chipmunk WB627 still survives as an instructional airframe with Dulwich College CCF. Regret XV183 is a Hercules, not a Nimrod!

How did you get into historic aviation?

It seems it’s always been there for me. My father was killed in a Bristol Blenheim during the war, just before I was born, so I grew up with the knowledge that men like him and their aircraft were something special, something important in our lives. It’s always seemed to me that we ought to do our best to preserve the memory of such men and machines and I’ve now been researching the Blenheim for almost twenty years in a serious way and before that, I made models of WW 2 aircraft. But having the mechanical expertise of an amoeba I have never attempted to do anything “hands on” in the restoration field although I sometimes think I would like to get just a bit closer to some of these important machines.

I owe it all to my father, who was in the RAF during WW2 flying on 215 Sqn. B-24 Liberators in India. In the ’50s he joined the Royal Observer Corps and had some great air shows. My first air show was Farnborough 1958 and once I had seen 22 black Hunters make a loop, that was IT – I was hooked. Dad proceeded to build Airfix kits for me and teach me, then it was trips to Heathrow and the reggie-spotting started in 1961, with b/w photos being thrown in for good measure with a Box Brownie! It was all ‘down-hill after that with serials being logged, air shows, collecting photos, trapsing round London’s airline offices collecting postcards,making kits….and it got worse when I sharted taking slides when I was 16!! Ah well, it’s kept me off the streets and away from booze and women…well, at least for a few years! :rolleyes:

Wouldn’t it be great if the viewing terraces were still open at Heathrow like this taken in 1961? Oooh, I spy a Loftleidir DC-6B, BEA Vanguard and Viscount – much better that all those boring Boeings and Airbuses today!

🙂 Not sure where the initial spark came from but living 3 miles from RAF Debden and Duxford still in it’s infancy as a museum and a Dad that was more than happy to travel round the country to take us places probably did it.
I joined 1824 Squadron ATC and had a summer camp at RAF Wyton and was lucky enough to get a night flight in a Nimrod and flights in a chipmunk and Gliders at RAF Debden.

The chipmunk was WB 627 anyone know it’s whereabouts now and the Nimrod was XV183.
The gliders were flown from Debden and the numbers were YE 790 and 812.
Ever since then i was hooked but i like to watch,listen and Photograph them now. 🙂

Born into it at RAF South Cerney in 1939, never been out of it really.

I think as time slips away you become more nostalgic with the sights and sounds that we knew when we were kids, it is just great to think that there are enthusiasts around to keep those dreams alive today 🙂 !

the Nairn road (A46),

You mean the A96 – I was posted to Lossiemouth in the mid-’70’s & spent what now seems like the best 3 years of the life there. However, I may be wearing rose-tinted glasses.

Interesting, guys.

My father worked on the airport. At the age of 3-4, when he was on dayshift I went with him to MELSBROEK(he was then ATC).

At the age of 6 or 7, I don’t remember I flew for the first time in a brand new V-tailed Beech Bonanza registered OO-FUN with Marcel Nagels as pilot.

Later on I flew in a DC-4, most likely a C-54 as there was a huge by the then current standards CARGO DOOR, registered OO-CBQ, an then finally in an RAF surplus Proctor, again Marcel Nagels as pilot, livery white and yellow (remember the works Opel Ascona in 1981 World Rally Championship). Unfortunately, I then stopped logging registrations. The Proctor was to me the closest thing to Spitfires I usually saw overflying Koksijde during the summer holidays.

I should try with BAHA to find out the registration of that particular Proctor.

Cheers.

Willy

Correct Daz, it really is where you live (or are prepared to regularly travel to) that counts. I have had to make two major moves in the past fifteen years to keep up with historic aircraft. Living next to North Weald and only 30 minutes from Duxford suits me fine at the moment.

Aeroplanes have always fascinated me and are a part of my earliest memories, despite there being no family connections.

As an about-to-be teenager, I bought Veteran and Vintage British Aircraft by Kenneth Munson, a slim tome published by Ian Allen in 1963. There were two things about this book that caught my attention: each brief chapter on an individual aircraft type listed the production totals, e.g. twenty odd thousand Spitfires, 8,000 Mosquitos, 11,000 Wellingtons, 7,374 Lancasters etc etc. Then, at the end of the book was an all too short section listing surviving airframes. I simply could not understand how so many aeroplanes had disappeared only twenty years after the wars end.

That triggered my interest in aircraft preservation and I spent many happy years as a member of the Northern Aircraft Preservation Society, helping in whatever way I could.

Later on, I started to build up my own collection of artifacts and I still do to this day. See you at next years aerojumbles!

How does one get a job or become more involved with historic aircraft?

For someone like me, who has no engineering skills (unless you call gluing plastic together engineering!), pilot’s licence or anything like that except a keen interest in writing about them, as well as the warbirds themselves, getting into this proper would be a dream come true!

Mind you, I can hold a paint brush! 😉

Lots of interesting stuff been posted here. Thanks everyone for responding:)

Thinking about where my interest got me – I got into airfix kits as a child and then into photography – I have boxes full of pictures with dots in the middle of them – is that a spitfire or a vulcan again!

Then my first big airshow was a trip to Alconbury in about 1980. That got me interested in warbirds. Than after passing my driving test I ventured south with my sister to my first Great Warbirds airshow at Wroughton! She got us to sign up with the SallyB club and Ive been a member ever since – becoming ground crew about five years ago!

Shame I dont live nearer to Duxford though!!;)

Rich

I think it’s genetic for me. My Dad was always into aircraft – still is – and brought me up to run to the window at the sound of an engine. I was taken regularly to the Air Tattoo at Fairford – a biannual treat! I was there also when the Space Shuttle visited en route to Paris in about 1984-ish. We had gliders floating around near the house on sunny days and before they moved to Scampton, the Red Arrows gave us free displays while practising from their base at Kemble.

My interest went dormant whilst at university but resurfaced with a vengeance when I moved to Cambridgeshire, only 6 miles from Duxford…. Can you guess what happened next? 😉 😀

Cycling out of Forres in another direction we used to pass the Forres airfield

Topgun

Sorry but my brain was saying Kinloss but it came out as Lossimouth in the posting- I’ve corrected it now.

The Forres airfield was out on the Nairn road (A46), on the south side just before the river Findhorn – probably a housing estate now:eek: It was a grass airfield with some hard-standings very close to the road but not much else.

Not really sure where my interest came from. But by the time I was seven and went to see the Battle of Britain it was already well established. There was a documentary screened before the film about an airshow and my Dad said I was telling him what every aircraft was. Airfix et al also played their part as did four years in the ATC. I did have a neighbour who told me stories of being at Middle Wallop during the Battle and of diving under a fuel bowser for protection.

Now, it’s all coalesced into this incredible feeling of gratitude towards those who were prepared to risk their lives so I can sit and type this. That’s why most of my interest and the research I do revolves around Rememberance, and, corny as it sounds, the debt that I feel is still owed and will never be repaid. I like the machinery and feel truly priveleged to see the machines which were the instruments of our freedom. A good display from an aircraft can bring a lump to my throat, but it is the meaning and sacrifice behind it which are truly inspiring. It is the Veterans who mean more to me now, and in that I am extremely Honoured to be in contact with a good number from one particular Squadron and to have been entrusted with the correspondence of hundreds of others.

I just wish I knew who planted the seed, so that I could thank them for putting me on a path which has given me a lifetime of enjoyment and given me the greatest and most enduring of friendships.

Regards,

kev35

Strange that Topgun Reject, my other grandad was captured at Dunkirk, fighting as a rearguard, which you would think would make me want to get interested in Army history, but planes it is.

Tom

Originally posted by EwenT
S). Cycling out of Forres in another direction we used to pass the Forres airfield

Forres Airfield???? Is that what is now RAF Kinloss?

My interest in aviation started as a young boy, my Grandad was in the Army during the Dunkirk evacuation and was on one of the last boats out so that started my interest in WWII. Then my dad took me to RAF Finningley airshow and I found I liked the quieter warbirds best then he bought me an Airfix Lancaster which fuelled my interest in aviation modelling. then after twenty years in the Air Cadets I’m still hooked!

Incidently my grandad died on Dunkirk beaches 36 years later in 1976 whilst on a veterans trip to the area and his picture appeared on issue one of the ‘Images Of War’ partwork magazine about Dunkirk.

I still wish I knew him better, I was only six when he died.

When mum took me to see a crashed Me110, a pair of 190’s (I believe) flew low over the house, a V-1 buzzing overhead whilst I was going to the local town in horse and cart, a V-2 motor steaming in a local field, B-17’s returning, first flight in a Lincoln.

What chance did I really have? I still look for every sound in the sky and I will be airborne on Christmas eve! 🙂

I have no real family aviation ties, just growing up in the West Raynham, Marham and Sculthorpe flightpaths might’ve had something to do with it. My Grandad had a farm on the edge of Attlebridge airfield and the Yanks were billeted in various buildings around the farm, which is probably where grandad got interested in planes, though I was too young to have known him. Mum and dad helped me on my way and I guess that the first kick into planes for real came when I was 8 or 9 and I was bought an all colour book on WWII aircraft, swiftly followed with a visit to Mildenhall the same year, which is where I saw AR213 and now all these years later, working on the first spit I ever saw, can’t be bad 😀

Tom.