Another very successful group trip was undertaken on Monday the 15th August, this time to Wattisham airfield in Suffolk which is home to the Army Air Corps Apache attack helicopters. As is usual with the military visits the process began several months ago with letter writing, document forwarding, other bureaucratic niceties and attending a recce/planning […]
Friday the 29th and Saturday the 30th July were to be the second overnight stay fly out of the year. This was a lot shorter than our Spanish adventure at just one night but the Isle of Man is a lot closer than Asturias. The plan was to leave North Weald and stop at Welshpool
Following closely on from the Spanish adventure, this fly-out was pulling in the reins a bit to allow the bank balances of those who took part to recover. This was to be a ‘farm strip’ day where the idea was to visit hopefully new airfields around East Anglia that certainly most of us wouldn’t have
Saturday April the 9th was the group’s planned day to fly to East Kirkby to visit the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centres wartime airfield museum collection and resident Lancaster Bomber NX611, ‘Just Jane’. The TAFS were very good for the whole day and departing from High Cross for the quick hop over to North Weald was
The planned five day group trip through France and along the northern Spanish coast to Asturias airport was to be the most ambitious yet undertaken and was given the codename ‘Operation Matador II’. Seven aircraft were due to take part with eighteen members and guests and as you can imagine had been a long time
Goodwood was the new destination instead of the originally planned (Blackbushe & Biggin Hill) due to their expensive landing fees. So Goodwood it was, one of the group’s favourite grass fields in the south of England. There are always interesting types there and the airfield, which apart from being surrounded by the old perimeter track
After a few evenings where we have managed to complete most of the night flying refresher flights at Andrewsfield, the evening of Friday the 21st January approached. This was not only a planned group night fly but also the first fly out of 2011 and should have taken us to Oxford. Needless to say despite
Sunday the 17th October was planned as the fourth annual ‘Bomber Day’ group competition. Taking off from High Cross in the Archer ‘VB’ to head over to North Weald to meet the competitors and reveal the target locations it occurred to me that this event has so far never been scuppered by the weather. Today
The fourth attempt for the North Weald Flying Group to fly out and visit the Great Dams of the Ruhr Valley in Germany – the previous attempts all being scuppered by bad weather and poor forecasts. The story of the famous ‘Dambusters’ of 617 Sqn RAF attacking and successfully destroying both the ‘Mohne’ and ‘Eder’
Monday saw the dawn break on the third attempt to visit RAF Cosford and its museum. The two previous dates had been cancelled, the first by the RAF who had got their opening dates slightly confused and the second by all the MOD’s UK airfields being closed due to the Volcanic ash cloud. Now there’s
