WJ897
September 16, 2021 at 9:50 am

Topcliffe Navigator's Logbook – Varsity

We’ve recently had a gent contact us via our website for Varsity WJ897 whose father was stationed at RAF Topcliffe as a Master Navigator (Warrant Officer aircrew). Sadly he has recently passed away, leaving his son his logbook. This contains details of his flights in various Varsities including WJ897 whist he was at Topcliffe between 1968 – 1970 which have been shared with us for inclusion on our site – very welcome as we have a paucity of in-service information about ‘our’ Varsity. The logbook contains abbreviations and entries which we suspect may be training flight identifiers, and we wondered if the learned people of this forum might be able to help identify what they mean?

We have:

Air Eng 2;
AE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 17;
Cat;
E 5, 7;
Eng 3, 4, 6;
Ex 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8;
LL;
Functional LL;
Maritime Ex;
MCT;
MCT 1, 3 – also I and II Roman numerals;
MCT 1 + Wx Check;
MCT 2 + Formation x3.

Any help interpreting these would be most welcome, both for our website and for passing on to the navigator’s son.

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By: Arabella-Cox - 16th September 2021 at 18:34

Possible solutions for you:

Air Eng 2; = Air Engineer Course exercise 2.
AE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 17; = as above, different exercise numbers.
Cat; = Annual category check.
E 5, 7; = probably as AE 5, 7.
Eng 3, 4, 6; = see above.
Ex 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8; = course exercise numbers.
LL; = low level , possibly Nav training.
Functional LL; = as above, possibly the operating Nav.
Maritime Ex; = self explanatory.
MCT; = probably Multi Crew Training.
MCT 1, 3 – also I and II Roman numerals; = see above.
MCT 1 + Wx Check; = see above. Probably first flight of the day around a standard route to check the weather.
MCT 2 + Formation x3. = = 3-aircraft formation.