Good Lord we are no-where near up to 1980 yet,i was parked between a morris minor woodie and a 1964 E Type in Hayle (birthplace of the motor car) this morning, and Falmouth had the Red Arrows yesterday.
However its all getting a bit “high tec” now that the gas lamps have gone.
By the way our local boys in blue have set off “east” to quell your riots up there,with stocks of overbaked pasties to hurl at the miscreants.

This will be the final link gone that started with BRYMON who put Plymouth Airport on the map and also started the original St Mawgan-Heathrow service with a HP Herald (not theirs).
Cornwall still had some substantial engineering companies back then which not only still employed thousands of staff but attracted a steady flow of sub contractors representatives who needed to visit on a regular basis, plus St Mawgan itself was a provider of customers when it was a main NATO (anti sub) base.
Plymouth had its dockyard and Navy base plus associated engineering companies, but this too has been reduced considerably over the years.
This has meant that the “two-way” traffic flow that our business’s provided faded away over the years to be replaced by outgoing leisure and business customers wishing to access Heathrow and Gatwick.
With the cost and lack of slots at these major airports a “non subsidised” service becomes untenable.
When you add on the security factor and check in times the business model for internal travel is difficult to see, but the trouble is the alternative train/drive situation is not much fun nowadays.

Sea Turbulent

Perhaps its components have been used in a re-build of a normal model. It really needed bigger (longer) floats as a sea-plane but then also needed more power to cope with weight/drag.
It was on my list to try out when at Rye, but very rarely serviceable between several dunkings !!!!
The Sea-Tiger however was great fun.

Johnson’s Bomb

Johnson’s bomb was dropped across the dam (earth) wall using the a/c bomb sight.(ie as a bomb not a mine with depth fuse).
He explained to me at his home in Torquay that they could only make so many runs because the target was undefended. Due to the steep sides of the valley It was difficult to get a proper run in because of only having a few seconds to line up before pulling up to clear the opposite bank.I seem to recall that the comments from the rear turret were somewhat “to the point”.
Great character who stayed on in the post war RAF and ended up on ICBM.
As to the point of the programme; well we got to see some nice low level flying in a real aeroplane.

Plymouth – Newquay !!!

In the end it all comes down to how much “subsidy” an operation gets.
Newquay has lost sqillions of pounds per year for years (projected 2011 loss 3-4 Million).
Not only that but has has huge amounts of grant money pumped in at the expense of other needs in Cornwall.Of course when you are bailed out by the Public sector (and you are the public sector) no one seems to ever be responsible for the mess, so it carries on.
Plymouth City passed this situation on to the private sector years ago (after having spent quite a lot of money on improvements).
The simple truth is no one will pay for the true cost of running an airfield that has to provide so much in the way of “approved” facilities to CAA/ EASA standards, many of which are “safety requirements”.
If the Country has difficulty in manning railways stations what chance aviation.
The problem comes with trying to make aviation a cheap option (which it is not) and even more so on relatively short internal flights.
In all fairness to SHH they tried to run an airline to carry on the Brymon/BA service, but the basic problem of costs was never going to be solved despite changes. As a potential development site (surrounded by development and complaints) the writing was on the wall years ago and the reality of the recent financial situation made the decision inevitable.
I remember some time ago being somewhat shocked to find out that Plymouth needed around 20 (on a shift basis) fire crew to satisfy the regulations regarding the size of aircraft using the field on schedule services,the trouble is the paying passenger does not want to contribute towards that.

Typhoon

It was probably a cunning plot from our “intelligence service” to tie up dozens of engineers trying to get the sabre running then kill off a German test pilot when the tail fell off.

FANTASTIC how is the Sabre coming along !!!!