Brilliant, just don’t let Peter Jackson see it, he might get ideas.

I know that the Magister had good short field performance, but to put it down on a school playground! Either it was a huge playground or the condition of the aircraft, as shown in the photo, reflects the consequences of a playground landing! The HSE would never permit that nowadays.

Hmmm, looking at the size and state of the junior school playground just down the river from where I live, I reckon you could land and take off a Storch or Lysander from there, the local residents wouldn’t be impressed but I bet the kids would!!!!!
I’m going to take the dogs for a walk now and pace it out.
Could be an interesting new thread, pictures of a/c landing on school playing fields.
The amount of playing fields around my old Grammar school in Nottingham made me think that anything could have landed there, in fact every spring, the late lamented Rolls Royce Spitfire used to take off from Hucknall and carry out his shakedowns over the school, not good for concentrating on lessons but was it because he had somewhere to land in case of trouble, our two back to back Rugby pitches with further cricket, football and hockey pitches would have been perfect, who’s going to get the book out on pitch sizes and work that one out.
Sorry to sabotage the thread.

This afternoon at about 16:00, low back Griffon Spit over the back garden heading north followed 5 mins later by invasion striped Merlin Spit on the same heading only over the front garden.

Spot of the year happened a week last saturday.
After a series of disasters while attempting to drive to North Devon including a lorry fire on the M25 followed by problems on the M3, we eventually drove past Popham just before midday.
Low and behold, taxying for take off was a certain red Rearwin Cloudster, it could only have been Melv, or were we mistaken.
On the way home on Saturday, my missus could just about make it out parked up in the pouring rain, looking a bit forlorn.

Not much action from Devon, one Tornado heading for the South Wales ranges and appearing to go supersonic over the Bristol Channel and one low flying Hawk over our cottage on Exmoor.
A yellow SAR Seaking was having fun over Woolacombe bay on Friday, he remained on hover next to the cliffs for ages before hammering along the beach, right over the top of us and just clearing Baggy Point, quite impressive.

Wow, as I’m writing this, the DX P-40B just came whistling overhead, heading home, it looked and sounded fantastic!!!!!!!

This is not an anti immigrant rant as I am one myself (from Ireland) but apparently around 2,000,000 immigrants have arrived in the UK since 2004 and they all have to live somewhere which even at the lower end of the market still has to have some knock on effect. A programme about Slough said people were living in Garden sheds. I don’t see it getting any better for a long time and I fear for my children who are just starting work.

Garden sheds burn well don’t they.

Shared ownership with a housing association, don’t even think about it, in our experience it was the worst thing we ever did.
I’m lucky, we bought our first house, a victorian terrace in a conservation area in 1976 for the princely sum of £7950, 10mins walk from the station in an Essex London commuter town, at the time we were probably earning nearly 10K between us, so work that one out.
After a series of renovating cottages and moving on, we ended up in a place valued at £275,000, that was in the late 80’s, what happens, divorce meant having to sell after Black Wednesday, we got 90K for it.
I had to rent, as I couldn’t afford anything in the village, eventually a housing association put up some semi’s, only for people with local connections. Was I offered one, no, not applicable. Fortunately, the parish council had to approve the applicants list, when they saw my name on there, they went mental, ‘Oh, son at local school, lived in village for 10 years, vice chairman of PTA, school cricket/football/swimming coach, local scout leader, member of village cricket team, fete organiser, etc etc etc.
When I eventually moved in, I found that the other occupiers had no connections with the village at all, one family actually came from Brazil!!!!
The 5 years I spent living there were a constant battle with poor workmanship, lack of interest and a general nightmare. When we came to sell it was even worse, we were forced to use their valuers who came up with silly figures and they took a year to sell the bloody place, of course, to someone outside the village.
We bought the local village police station, and, after struggling with massive debts for 5 years, we sold it for a good deal and moved to a nice little semi in Braintree for bog all mortgage.
How the hell my son is going to get on to the property market is beyond me, I can see him dissapearing into the sunset for foreign climes, university degree or not, he is bound to struggle, and who wants to live in a country with the constant threat of being blown up.
I give up thinking about it.

Well said Kev 35, bloody hell we seem to be in agreement these days.

Gollaiven, we’ve had to put up with the theat of IRA terrorsism for years and you may think we are used to it, but you don’t understand what it is like to be under these pressures, British troops have just pulled out of Northern Ireland, magic, but something else seems to take over, your country will be targetted, I can assure you of that, all Christians are part of the ‘ Evil Empire’ full stop. What the proportion of Muslims is per head of population in Finland, I would be interested to know.
I recently saw a programme about Northern Ireland, where their very small number of Muslims applied for planning permission to build a Mosque and was turned down on the spot, a member of the planning commitee appeared to be a friend of Mr Paisley, his argument was that they wanted to get established so they could kill us all, point taken.
The majority of Muslims are not evil killers, but isn’t this a Christian country, with a likewise constitution, so what is their status, where do we go from here.
My missus staidfastly refuses to go into London, she thinks it’s too dangerous, isn’t this sad, life shouldn’t be like this, why can’t we all get on, after all our religions are so similar that theres only a gnats eyebrow between them, not like the Hindu or Sihk religions that are so different from ours but those people and their religions are lovely, frigging world has gone mad, we’ve switched from Cold War to religious war, whats the bloody point.

At the tender age of 15, taking off from Jersey in an almost empty ( only 5 of us) BM Handley Page Herald late one summers evening, being invited into the cockpit straight away and watching the sunset over the Channel from the ‘Office’, then approaching the massive thunderclouds over the mainland and being quickly shoved back into my seat to experience the most horrendous storm at close quarters, prop jobs having to dodge through the gaps in the clouds, with lightning flickering all over the place.
At 15 you always feel immortal in such circumstances.

Incidentally Willip old pal, forgive me asking but what machine are you talking about, the immortality bit jolted me back into reality, hope you’re ok.