bloodnok[QUOTE=Roobarb;1107631]
yes its a shame (have fond memories of basic training at swinderby and doing duty airman at watton QUOTE]
Yeah fond memories……..running round the airfield being shouted at by some sad PTI who I’d dearly have liked to meet one night when I was wandering round Honington with an SLR! Bedpacks flying out of windows, German measle epidemics, buffing floors endlessly, delicious food…not and those psycho Rock-Apes who’d obviously all been affected by spending too much time getting some extra cash at Porton Down. 😀
Watton duty airman, did you ever work out how to put people through on that switch board thing? Boy I must have cut a lot of people off on that. And was that place creepy when I lived there for 5 months through the winter of ’83. Great place for giving the bike a damn good thrash down the runway though! Ever go in “The New Inn”, the pub that time forgot. Even the landlady was covered in cobwebs! 🙂
yup, the same fond memories of running on a seemingly endless peri track, bedpacks flying out of top floor windows etc. i was on 8flt, sep ’83 as a mere 16 1/2 year old!
the back of 6 hanger, now that brings back memories!…. lovely young WAAFS, the rush for a taxi on friday nights.
i only did duty airman at watton (i lived on barnham camp), and the same as you, probably managed to cut off any people with that infernal switchboard!
later on when it was pretty much shut down, i was doing gaurd there when i spotted a young bloke coming out of the old air traffic tower on the airfield and climbing the fence to get back onto the main site, so i drove over to him, got out of the battered metro they gave us to patrol in, and pointed my empty (this was before we were live armed) gun at him, his hands shot up and he pee’d himself!……. turned out after we go the local plod involved, that he was quite a prolific local burglar, and the old tower had quite a stash of videos and other stolen items in it!
bloodnokyes its a shame (have fond memories of basic training at swinderby and doing duty airman at watton), but you can’t save them all. there are still plenty of old wartime airfields in use and unless any thing spectacular or famous happened there, getting an airfield saved will be nigh on impossible.
bloodnokI have the complete cockpit interior of an ex USAF F-4C both front and rear cockpits all panels and instruments , sticks and two seat pans. Also have the front canopy from an RAF FGR2.
I am seeking either plans to build a replica cockpit section to put all these items in or a cockpit section to restore (bare shell). I know interior is F-4C but have space and time to make FGR2 section look right.
I know some time back someone built a replica FGR2 Cockpit from wood and it looked great and just wonderd if any one knew who that might be and if the have any plans from the build.
If anyone has a Phantom Cockpit section/simulator that I could come visit and measure up that would be great, the simulator cockpit would be great as it takes up less space in the hangar.
I look forward to your replies,
Brakes On, Throttles up, Brakes Holding,Brakes Off Burners in and Whaaahey…
i don’t know if you’re interested or not, but there’s a scrap yard in Diss with a couple of F4 canopies in it (Gillings government surplus), i think they are the opening, hinged sections. they’ll probably be off a RAF aircraft though. there also used to be advertised a F4 radome in the Mildenhal area for use as a garden ornament. not seen it for sale for a while though.
bloodnok…so you are saying that the people who choose to live near an active airfield should not expect to see aircraft flying? Did they create a fuss when the Red Arrows were there, or when 5 MU was flying and testing aircraft, or when the USAF was there maintaining and flying A-10s, F-5s etc? If the airfield was disused, that would be a different matter, but Kemble has been in constant use for years. Would you buy a house near an active railway line and then complain about the number of trains running, because you expected only one a day? 🙁
its all about what the airfield is licenced to be used for. if the locals were lead to believe that the airfield was to be used for just a few flights for storage and maintenance, but is clearly being used for general aviation, they are perfectly entitled to complain about it. there must have been some substance to the complaints for the council to issue an enforcing order.
don’t get me wrong, i’m fully conversant with the realities of people who live near airfields complaining about the noise (the last place i worked had the hours we could post maintenance engine run severely curtailed by the newly built neighbours), but as i said in my original post, if you look at it objectively, the owners of kemble are operating outside their licence, and have been told to stop. if they don’t like it, they should apply to have the licence changed.
its as simple as that.
bloodnokto be honest i have little sympathy for the people running Kemble, they were granted what seems to be a fairly strict licence to operate the airfield, and have chosen to operate outside that remit.
if you have aircraft coming in for storage or maintenance, then you’d be expecting odd flights here and there, so if there’s general aviation going on from there as well as the operation of historic jets, then thats clearly outside the terms of the licence.
you have to look at it objectively, someone has been granted a licence to do something near where you live, but they then go ahead and break the terms of that licence…….(just imagine it was a pikey caravan park near your home that was licenced for 10 caravans, for half the year, yet 20 turned up, all year round…. i bet you’d be on the phone to the council!)
bloodnokmodified Tristar used to drop rockets to put small sattelites into orbit.
bloodnoksurely if the problem is a downward force on one of the upper lugs, then that would only occur during negative G manouvers….?
i personally think its a good idea to be cautious, there’s been enough debate on this forum about how much damage is done to the ‘vintage’ aircraft scene by crashes, especially when they happen at airshows. so if this directive stops a JP losing a wing in front of a large crowd, then i think its a good idea.
anyway, its not permanent, as soon as they find a NDT technique that shows the cracks accurately, then this directive will be lifted.
bloodnokYes, massive cost.
The gun entails:
Huge number of extra flying hours to achieve and maintain currency.
Need for specialised range facilities.
Need for target towing for A-A.
Need for loaders, ground support equipment, servicing bays, specialised personnel.
Ammunition cost and storage facilities.
More wear and tear on the airframe.
i agree that there’s extra costs involved to actually use the gun, but a lot of the ‘extras’ you quote are already in place.
the ranges are already there
the target towers are already there
‘specialised personnel’ … that’ll be armourers who do all the rest of the weapons anyway and wouldn’t be just trained on the guns.
‘storage facilities’…. are already there with the rest of the weapons.
so yes it will be more expensive, but not quite as bad as you make out.
bloodnokActually TWCU stood for Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit,
or To Work Continuously Unrewarded………. for those of us that were there 😉How those Twikyu Lineys slaved to win the cold war for Blighty with their heroic actions on the beaches of Sardinia, the bars of Macrihanish and the pubs of Thetford. Their bravery on the fields of bunging and blanking and whilst yellow peril emtying will not be forgotten. We salute the fallen man A’s and B’s of the Death Camels from Hell, taken from us whilst undertaking heavy surfing in the Chase and we lament the passing of “Downtown 45″….
sadly now just a Pongo Tank park.What say you Bloodnock ? 🙂
or one last interpretation of the letters TWCU was Tornado Washing and Cleaning Unit…… which came about after a lot of back seat jollies for vip’s on friday afternoons, with the aircraft needing to be washed on nightshift the night before. it got so bad we had cloth badges made up (i still have mine!) and sewed them onto our overalls much to the amusement of the wing commander, but not the flight sergeant!
Surfing in the chase…. now that brings back memories… i still want to jump up as soon as i hear ‘i get around’ by the beach boys. rallying cars across the battle area at barnham, and the block parties/barbeques….. happy days!
bloodnokETPS Tornado low level….
i was at the IAT at Fairford in 1989 with our TWCU tornados and on the monday after the show was asked to do a starter crew on a ETPS tornado as they had no ground crew with them.
it was quite unusual in that it was a one man starter crew (normally its a 2 man job), and that the pilot (a rather elderly gentleman) had totally forgotten how to start one up!
whilst i was perched on the side of the cockpit strapping the crew in, the pilot put his glasses on, opened up a set of pilots notes, and started flicking switches in the order that they were written down in the notes…. next thing i know the APU is firing up and he’s raring to go!
i had to keep reminding of the checks he had to do, and whilst chatting to him on the headset i jokingly asked him if he’d ever flown one before….his answers was “not for about 18months, but they all fly the same once you get them in the air” , then the navigator started joking about turning the command eject on just in case…. it was an amusing end to a brilliant weekend away.
bloodnoki have one of the ‘anonymous’ 1941 copies, i’ve read it many times, and it was years after i first read it that i actually discovered who wrote it.
bloodnoki think the timing of these aircraft siezures is quite telling…..as said in the article, the only other people who operate the F-14 are Iran….potentially the next people on americas hitlist.
just imagine if they did invade, and then find parts off these museum aircraft on Iranian ones that might have shot down attacking american ones.
bloodnokthe large blister on the rear fuselage is called DIRCM, which stands for Directional Infra Red Countermeasures, this ios to stop heat seeking missiles.
the ports on the side of the fuselage are chaff and flare dispensers.
bloodnokif you shut your eyes and squint, in a dark room,whilst using your imagination, it almost looks like a tandem jet provost.
bloodnoki picked up a copy of the book last summer at a boot sale for 10p, a really thick paper back with some 560 or so pages.
its a bit slow in places, but its well worth the effort to get into it, and think it might be even better that the film/series in creating the atmosphere in the boat.
keep an eye out for it, and take the time to read it, and once you’ve finished it you’ll not be disappointed.
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