The great Scotland trip 2009

[Polecat]

We spent five great days in Scotland with a group. Really lucky with the weather and the flying activities.
After landing at Edinburgh we started with RAF Kirknewton, an Air Cadets base where Viking T.1's were flying like crazy...
(no bombs or burners, but still military! )

a very relaxed atmosphere, and this blossomming yellow stuff everywhere! (brem??)


They used six cables, so many starts, meaning many good photo opportunities...


One of five flying Grob G.103's having a kip in the grass....


In the civil hangar, the owner of this Chippie was waiting for a short spell of rain to die out...



Next stop was the Museum in East Fortune. The infamous "Rio de Janeiro Vulcan"is preserved there... (for the younger viewers, in the 1982 Falklands War, this aircraft had to divert to (officially neutral at that time) Rio de Janeiro during a "Black Buck" bombing mission). Read the outstanding book "Vulcan 607" if you want to know more about it...


Another classic on show here is this Comet.


A very recent addition is Jaguar XZ119, resprayed to its Gulf War colours...



Monday saw the real military jet-action, we went to Lossie. Thanx to the Scramble "where to go" map and the very friendly Scottish spotters (thanks guys!) we got to all the great places around this superbase. Four Squadrons of Tonka's,-though we didn't see a single 14 Sqn a/c-, and loads of visitors!

All pics were taken from outside the base, almost felt like the gool'ole days of wild spotting.....
Tornado ZA410 with practice bombs under the fuselage going full-burner...


There were quite a few Typhoons, they were doing some live-bombing and other ground attack judging by the designator pods they carried... This one is from 17 Sqn.


and afaik the sole dual-seater of 3 Sqn performing an overshoot...


Later the wind changed, but the other side of the runway offers good possibilities as well, though be aware, the farmer -and rightly so- is not too keen on people entering his land and destroying his crops... A pity, but please respect it in order not to get the local spotters in trouble!
After live 1000 pounders, Tiffy ZJ933 now carries a Paveway bomb!


In the afternoon, when the sun crosses the runway it doens't take long to get to the other side in order to get pics like these...



Day two saw us go to nearby Kinloss. This base is not too long away from Lossie, in fact it's easy to spot what's in the circuit on the other base... As a first teaser an impression of what the Kinloss approach looks like...


For excercise Joint Warrior, there were no less than six Falcon 20's present. Some with FRA titles, some with Cobham titles...


This US Navy P-3 left for a "Joint Warrior" mission I assume, it taxied quite slowly, allowing some prop-blur experiments



more to follow soon...

[Brian]

very nice pics you took there!

[Bianca]

Wow nice pictures!!! 19 more days and I'm going there. Can't wait!

[planespotters.nl]

Great shots!

[flying_kiwi]

Sounds like a fun trip!!

The infamous "Rio de Janeiro Vulcan"is preserved there... (for the younger viewers, in the 1982 Falklands War, this aircraft had to divert to (hostile at that time) Rio de Janeiro during a "Black Buck" bombing mission).

I'm pretty sure Brazil was neutral (although they might have secretly been for the Argentines). As I recall, the aircraft was only interned for a few days before being allowed to be flown back to Ascension, which wouldn't have been the case if Brazil was hostile!

This US Navy P-3 left for a "Joint Warrior" mission I assume, it taxied quite slowly, allowing some prop-blur experiments
more to follow soon...

Did you catch the RNZAF Orion? I'd love to see that.

Regards,
Yorden

[Boudewijn van Oirschot]

Wow, good job Arnaud

Som good variety too!

[Polecat]

Kinloss was host to several aircraft for the Joint Warior exercise, though I'm not sure they all were present exclusively for the exercise we saw two French ATL2's, an Italian Atlantic, a USN P-3, a NZ P-3, a Canadian CP-140 and several FRADU Hawks and Dassault 20's. Unfortunately we missed the Kiwi and Italian aircraft, however, we got the Canadian quite nicely.......



The ATL2 19 revving up on the runway for her 13th of may mission....


The Hawks were operating together with the Falcons, and both days we visited Kinloss they all flew...
XX169 landing with another Hawk downwind...


The Mirage F-1's flew quite long missions, they must have done some AAR...


Unfortunately not many operational Nimrods flying, during our stay we only saw two different aircraft flying, XV244....


and XV229...
It was rumoured that an MR.4 was to arrive at Kinloss shortly for some operational testing..


Maybe a common visitor for the locals, but for me it had been a few years since I last saw this one, and at that time QinetiQ didn't even exist....


After everything had recovered to Kinloss we decided to hop over to Inverness, a nice regional airport with a tiny museum as a bonus.

Scottish HEMS helo's are based at Glasgow and Inverness, G-SASB, an EC135T2+ was standing at the apron showing off its Tartan decorations...


Not a spectacular picture, but this LY-NSC is in fact a very well known aiframe to many of us as it is former PH-KJL of Netherlines. Nowadays it's leased to Loganair as a freighter...


A Danish Let-410, not really what you expect to see at Inverness...



Hidden in the industrial estate near the airport one can find the Highland Aviation Museum. http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/i ... index.html
Frankly it's quite a small collection of some airframes and several cockpits, but in my personal opinion one should only respect the time, money and effort that volunteers put in such a collection. Highlight for me was one of only five Valiant cockpits that survive (of which only one is still attached to trhe rest of the airframe...). This belongs to XD875, the last Valiant B.1 built.


As our B&B was in Lossiemouth, we had to drive back via Elgin, where the Buccaneer petrol station has a preserved....Buccaneer!


Spent a last hour at Lossie, not too much happening, few Tonkas and two 100Sqn Hawks ....



more later...

[canberra]

Sweet

If you have more Comets (ehh Nimrods) fell free to post

/M

[Polecat]

Sweet

If you have more Comets (ehh Nimrods) fell free to post

/M

added one of both

I'm pretty sure Brazil was neutral (although they might have secretly been for the Argentines). As I recall, the aircraft was only interned for a few days before being allowed to be flown back to Ascension, which wouldn't have been the case if Brazil was hostile!

I stand corrected, Brazils official neutral status allowed the aircraft to be flown back to Ascension a week later... Still, a great story!

[Thermal]

Wow, a real treat fot the eye. Not to mention the great scenery and clouds in the background in some of the pics.

Any more perhaps?

[Erik V]

Great pics Noddy, show us some more!

Ciderman

[Polecat]

As we wanted to spend a day at Leuchars as well, we went south wednesday afternoon. First stop was Aberdeen-Dyce, a fairly large airport, but also one of the busiest off-shore helicopter bases worldwide. Over 37,000 helo flights per year, care of three companies based there.

Biggest company (besides Bond and Bristow) is CHC-Scotia. They operate several types , including several Super Puma variants like AS332L, L2 and EC225.

Operations seem to never stop, here AS332L G-PUMN taxies in...


while sister ship G-BKZG was parked a bit further in a slightly different paint-job.


Frequently seen during our stay was Eastern, whose 20+ Jetstream 41's seemed to be all over the place...


After a good night sleep, -despite the jetnoise-, we went to Leuchars early. As could have been expected in hindsight, flying was low this morning, due to evening ops the night before... The only active aircraft were the Tutors of the UAS/AEF, here G-BYUR comes in for a landing.


We had arranged a visit to the Universities of Scotland UAS, so later we hadthe chance to get better shots of these Grobs...



Also, six Tucanoes were based here , they were having a Nav-Camp from Linton.
Taking morning pictures of these small aircraft with anything under 300 mm is really tricky as they come in quite high...


Only one Tornado flew this morning, and this one was still in 56 Sqn markings, the former OCU...


It wasn't untill 11.30 before the Rafale Ms would start, five aircraft were based here for Joint Warrior. In the afternoon we could take pics of them from outside the fence with (I Think) St. Andrews, the famous golf-town, in the background...


Again, flying started quite late, so we had time to find a spot for take-off shots... Quite a walk and quite a drive, but worth it!



As the light crossed the runway, we waited for the late afternoon wave to come in. Because it's summer and Scotland is about as far north as the south of Sweden, taking pictures untill 20.0 is no problem at all...
The Fighting Cocks of 43 Sqn will disband shortly, and as off september, only 12 F.3 will continue to fly, all with 111 Sqn...


The special c/s Tornado of "Treble one" Squadron. Huge clouds were in the vicinity, but we only had sunshine....


The Rafales also landed in time for some pics, we went for the F.3s, but the French were a very nice bonus!


All in all, a really great trip, we managed to get loads of GR4s, but more important to us, quite a few F-3s and Nimrod MR2s, our main aims as both will gradually disappear over the next two years or so. Many thanks to the local spotters we met, they were very helpful with pointing out locations etc...


Grtz

[Jimi]

Good show, Polecat!

Regards,
Jimi

[Piet Luijken]

Very nice pics!

Conditions are better than with east wind and the late afternoon sun, then during the day, as we had.

Really a shame the Tornado's are about to be axed and do not fly that much in the mean time.

The flower by the way is the Wild Gorse (E), Ulex europeaus (L) or Gaspeldoorn (NL).

As I was also in this area, and saw this shrubbery everywhere, I just wanted to know its name as well.

Grtz

[Polecat]

The flower by the way is the Wild Gorse (E), Ulex europeaus (L) or Gaspeldoorn (NL).

As I was also in this area, and saw this shrubbery everywhere, I just wanted to know its name as well.

Thanks Piet for clearing up this botanic mystery, The stuff was really everywhere, and we got some nice pictures with it... we asked, and someone said "heather" but we thought that wasn't correct... I just googled Gaspeldoorn, and indeed it's a member of a heather family....
What bases did u visit by the way?

As a bonus some more shots from Lossie , all taken monday, the Tucano in te morning, the rest in the afternoon... (i'm editing stuff right now, still "in the mood" so to speak..)


Though many aircraft make a back-track, the taxitrack from the 12 Sqn area and the 15 Sqn flightline makes great pics in the afternoon.



detail from the cockipt... pilot waving, nav doing the work


This one just did the back-track and is about to make a 180 turn...