As someone who worked for many years in general aviation on aerodromes in the south of England I can say that most (if not all) airfields have those in the local community who form pressure groups to close or curtail operations. I have no reason to think Old Sarum would be different. When I was at White Waltham in the late ’70s there was a rich man who bought a house overlooking the main gate of the airfield. He got the house cheaply due to the immediate proximity of the airfield. He then started a pressure group to attempt to shut us down. He moved to the village knowing about the airfield and rumour had it he had done the same thing at a motorway (he failed in that attempt). I have come across this sort of mindset on every airport I have worked on or flown from in the west of London area. Most of these airfields now have ‘noise abatement/circuit modification routes’ due to decades of anti-aviation campaigns by these people.

I can understand it from people who live near an airport that grows up into a monster on their doorstep (eg: Stansted) but I feel the real trouble-makers are ‘move-ins’ who knew that the airport was there when the relocated near it. So forgive me if I agree with the ‘hysterical’ pilots at Old Sarum. Pressure on general aviation airports has been a huge issue since the 1960s and the next time you make a 30 degree turn to the left or right directly after takeoff remember why you are having to adhere to this routing, and that these noise-abatement routes are a fairly modern thing that came along with the residents’ pressure groups. I flew in the ’70s and ’80s and I can think of only one airfield back then that had a noise-abatement departure procedure. They are very common now.

The Antonov is a turboprop and they don’t sound like piston engined types, more like C-130s. Sounds like a DC-3 to me. Air Atlanique used to fly newspaper flights out of Luton back in the late 1970s and the engine noise was very noticeble even ten miles away at 8000 feet.

I guess we just have to hope that the trade off for a carp spring is a stunning summer?

Moggy

Pity it doesn’t work that way. 🙁

We have low (anticyclonic) stratus and wetness down here in Wiltshire, but no snow. We missed it because we pay more council tax in the southwest and our council paid for a warmer airmass for us.

Its a bitch that there is a Siberian high keeping the country cold and snowbound. It could last for weeks but probably will improve by end of week I would guess.

If anyone gets to fly while the snow is around you should grab the chance because its a great view, hard to navigate visually though. I had to use radio navs during a snow flight back in the early 1980s I did to Luton (one of the few airports open at the time due to snow). If anyone takes airborne snow pics I’d love to see them on this site!

Nice photos, Peter! Real airliners not like the modern bunch of computer operated tincans. 😉

Having said that, these jet-types replaced even more iconic classics, the 707 replaced the Starliner for Lufthansa, the VC-10 replaced the Comet 4s and Britannias for BOAC, I guess the DC9 replaced the KLM Viscounts and Electras. Even wondered what if KLM had ordered Caravelles rather than DC9-10s? How would they have looked in old-stripe KLM livery? Pretty nice I would imagine.

Very interesting photos! lots of crazy flying going on. The cloud photos in 1926 are a strange inclusion. The clouds then would not be different from the ones we get today.

RE 17

VeeOne

All you write is beyond dispute. However, life isn’t like that – neat and tidy. Because of the frailties of human nature there will be someone somewhere who will neglect to visually check their fuel state.

Yes, I agree. Pre-flight walk-around checks are designed to avoid human error, but not to check for deliberate sabotage. If you own your own high-wing aircraft and you know you filled it up (you’d do this especially in winter to avoid condensation contamination) then it seems reasonable not to check the level before flight.

Many non-aviation people consider private pilots as part of the upper-class, loads of money segment of society. I think it makes some people who have nothing very angry. Yes there are fliers who are very well off indeed but in my experience most of us are spend all we have to fly, even aircraft owners often spend their money on flying. You rarely see people turning up in really expensive cars because the money goes on flying the aeroplane. If Popham was attacked because of this then it is a shame as Popham is populated by ultra-lights and light tail-draggers, rather than expensive, touring aircraft. I still feel, given the isolation of Popham, that it was a ‘revenge/jealousy’ attack by a local man. I think the police should use that photo to check out the local farmers (woow, controversial).

…they hadn’t realised the potential seriousness of a/c departing with less fuel than they thought (not everyone bothers to check before flying) and the prop stopping over Salisbury City center. Still, someone should remind the Police of the potential for catastrophe.

No competent pilot will fly without first checking their fuel state visually or at least by gauge. Running out of gas over a city would be one of the most incompetent things a proper pilot could do. It would not be the scumbag’s fault but that of the pilot. Or am I just old-fashioned in this matter? I did learn in the 1970s before the days of easy-going ultralight aviation.

The only time I might not have checked fuel carefully would be on a quick turnaround. Maybe high-wing pilots might ignore the visual check but anyone who would start up and taxi out without once checking the fuel state would be an incompetent idiot, imho.

Back in the late 1970s when I was at White Waltham we rarely had vandelism but most of the aircraft were hangered. Once some punks broke into the old RAF hangers and smashed in a storm window to to steal something inside the aeroplane. Luckily for us these toerags don’t know how easy it is to syphon out a low-wing aircraft’s fuel tanks, or simply open the underwing drain. Hopefully they never will or all aeroplanes will have to be hangered.

Popham has a whole bunch of mogas types as I recall. Anyone stealing 100LL for their car will suffer. I used to know a flying instructor at Blackbushe (back in the 1970s) who used a mix of (old) 80-87 and 100LL fuel for his sports car. eventually the engine blew up.

Popham is far from the average scumbag centre so I would suggest this attack was personal. Maybe someone living nearby doesn’t like the airfield noise? The man in the photo looks at least 50 to me.

Nice pictures of the Northwest 707s at London, Longshot.

Especially the zero-five landing – that was a runway that was so rarely used in the latter part of the 1960s. Flights arriving from the east and north (Lamborne and that hold up northeast of the airport) would have to trek downwind to the ten left ils intercept point and then run south over my home and finally back east before being able to get a shot at 05, which didn’t have ILS if memory serves.

So it was usually breezy, fair weather conditions for 05, unlike the windy, bad-weather crosswinds that forced the use of the reciprocal, 23. It was the only time I noticed the colourful yellow Northeast and red Cambrian aircraft overhead.