I flew a couple of times at Skegness in 1991 as I wanted some experience flying from a grass airfield having become rather too familiar with the 2,500 yd runway at Teesside Airport. I kept an aviation diary at the time which might be of interest.

July 23 – Booked a trip on a Cessna 150 from the small airfield at Skegness. The aircraft was G-AZLH, its bleached paintwork showing that it hadn’t seen a hangar in a long time and its prop leading edge was far from smooth. The weather was hot and humid with poor visibility and a wind of 180/10 so that the shorter runway 17/35 was in use, a length of 440m. I flew with Paul Curtis and we put in an hour of touch and goes with 30 degree flap, 60 mph and 1800-2000 rpm with some full stop landings off 40 degree flap. With the exception of my first attempt the landings were quite good and the full stop landings were completed within half distance. Skegness would be a bad place to have an engine failure as it would put you into the nearest caravan park.

July 25 – Had another circuit bashing session in ‘LH but the wind had changed completely and was now 020/8-10. Quite a lot of low cloud was coming in off the sea so circuit height was limited to 600 ft. Due to the wind the runway in use was 35 and we did 50 minutes of circuits including some very short landings of around 100m, the aim being to clear the fence by a few feet and pull up well before the intersection. Approaches at the end were down to full flap at 55 mph and 2000rpm. There was no circuit traffic and the only other activity was the Auster taking people for pleasure flights along the beach to Skegness and back.

I think Paul was incredibly bored flying in circles around his home airfield but I really enjoyed it and found it much more rewarding than doing the same thing at Teesside. It’s a great shame that Skegness is no more.

Peter

Red Dakota G-ANAF is still operating over the north-east as I saw it again this afternoon (31st). It was flying a racetrack pattern to the west of Richmond at about 8-9,000 ft. Does anyone know what it is doing?

Peter

Daz

This is the photo you mentioned. It came from Bunny Currant who was flying the Spit in the background

Peter

Paul

Yes, that’s the one

Bruggen

I thought your photo of WA662 looked familiar, I have a slide in my collection that is virtually the same!

It was taken at Finningley on 19/9/81.

Peter

In the 1950s the RAF certainly used various types of wooden glider as air-to-air gunnery targets. It could well be one of these in the photo, although it does look as though it might have been slightly retouched.

Peter

Does anyone think that XH558 would be of interest to the military in any trials capacity or as a subsonic ECM-equipped target?

I seem to recall that the US military was interested in the Vulcan a few years ago for low altitude trials, an idea that was rejected outright by Dr Pleming. Although I imagine this would have used up a fair amount of the aircraft’s fatigue life, they were offering a substantial sum of money.

Any use along the lines suggested would, of course, considerably shorten the Vulcan’s potential life, but at the moment that seems to have ended already.

Peter