Plane Spotters Heaven

[pjw4118]

I have been known to visit a few. I ran across this one at RAF Waddington just outside Lincoln.
Alongside the main E/W Runway approach, plenty of parking and even a snack bar with chips and bacon butties. It was BYO though and no pies.





Behind was Waddingtons Bomb dump



and across the road, plenty to see








Can anyone post their favourite spot so we can all add it to our holiday detours list.

[suthg]

Fancy having a wheat crop in England! Can the get the moisture content low enough for harvesting? I see it was sunny that day - and with some heat haze in the long zoom shot too. Surprised! Thanks for pics

[machpants]

Ah memories, my better half worked for North Kesteven District Council and we had our first house in Digby! RAF Lincolnshire is well named, and if you go into the rest of Lincs you have Coningsby, which is not so good for spotting, but does have the shiny new Typhoons. 617 Officers Mess Bar at the Petwood Hotel is always worth a visit too (Woodhall Spa, just of to the East)

Ex Nomad 2001 at Waddo, just after this was taken I had to do my Combat Ready Op Pot, involving a mix of all the favourite booze brought by the participants Belgian F-16s (beer), French Mirage 2000Cs (red wine, claret?), Spanish EF-18s (more red wine, rioja), RAF Tornado F3s (Pewter Mug and banter) and RN Sea Harrier FA/2s (Sea Harrier Zoider from Zomerzet). EDIT: I think the Swiss F18s were there too, and added some sort of liqueur!

It was also my first flight using the AMRAAM (not full up either, the F3 lacked mid flight guidance for AMRAAM for a long time) and I managed to shoot down the Boss... I was a bit maxed out from the jump to 2v2 or 4 using Skyflash to a eight or a dozen v similar using AMRAAM!

[skyhawkdon]

The threshold at Coningsby is quite good... there is a dedicated spotters car park just down the road, but no where near as flash as the one at Waddington at the start of this thread! These were taken with my phone so not great quality







Sharee took these further back (spot me in the first one taking the photos above!)





View of the hardened aircraft shelters through the fence

[baronbeeza]

I was working at New Plymouth Power Station in the late 1970's. It was a small section doing boiler instrumentation and 3 out of the 6 guys in our group were ex-mob. I got to hear many stories from Perry and Grump and there were a few others about the plant that they knew also.
One day Grump was chatting with Bill and I thought they mentioned the Blue Steel bay at Wigram, a new one on me. Oh, no - we are talking Waddington. Ohhh.
Anyway I did find it a little strange that less than two years later I was on my second posting and at Number 7 on the map. We would drive up the A15 and back down the A17 back road every week or two. Such is the small world of the military I guess.

All the chat in the section back at the power station must have been playing on my mind and somehow given me the urge to go and sign-up...

A few weeks ago I was writing on a thread here how I had seen Spencer Flack's G-FURY looking very sad after crashing just short of the threshold. That was actually very near this plane spotters maimai, it ended up about 300 metres away on the diagonal on the other side of the bomb dump.

I think the bulk of the wreckage is now in Aussie, again close to home.

[machpants]

Yeah that is better than I remember it Don, I used to ride on my motorbike from Digby to CGY when I was on the F3 OCU ~ 56(R) Sqn. I guess when you are in the gate you feel that some of the spotter spots are worse than they really are!

[pjw4118]

Enjoying the thread , Don dont worry about the image quality , I can just imagine the sound . Wonderful.
I saw on another forum a post about a series of connected valleys in Wales set aside for low flying and the prime spotters site was above the action. Does anybody have more details.?

[obiwan27]

Aug 26, 2014 9:34:53 GMT 12 pjw4118 said:

Enjoying the thread , Don dont worry about the image quality , I can just imagine the sound . Wonderful.
I saw on another forum a post about a series of connected valleys in Wales set aside for low flying and the prime spotters site was above the action. Does anybody have more details.?

I think it's probably the Machloop. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_Loop

machloop.co.uk/

[pjw4118]

Thanks , I will check it out , and machpants op pot , I bet it had a sting to it. I think here on 5 squadron the basis for their tipple for visitors was Purple Death.

[nuuumannn]

Terrific to see these. Great photos PJW and Don, nice to see the Vulcan. That's XM607 used in the Falklands war.

Ex Nomad 2001 at Waddo, just after this was taken I had to do my Combat Ready Op Pot, involving a mix of all the favourite booze brought by the participants Belgian F-16s (beer), French Mirage 2000Cs (red wine, claret?), Spanish EF-18s (more red wine, rioja), RAF Tornado F3s (Pewter Mug and banter) and RN Sea Harrier FA/2s (Sea Harrier Zoider from Zomerzet). EDIT: I think the Swiss F18s were there too, and added some sort of liqueur! It was also my first flight using the AMRAAM (not full up either, the F3 lacked mid flight guidance for AMRAAM for a long time) and I managed to shoot down the Boss... I was a bit maxed out from the jump to 2v2 or 4 using Skyflash to a eight or a dozen v similar using AMRAAM!

I remember many years ago as a youngster going on a base tour of Leuchars and having a beer in 43 Sqn mess, then we were let loose in a HAS and got to play about with an F.3.

[machpants]

Vulcan 607 is a great book, Rowland White IIRC. Admittedly a bit over dramatised and cheerleader-ish. I, to my shame, always liked our sister Sqn's Op Pot. 111(F) had a small pewter mug and a large pewter mug nailed to a board. Your Flt Cdr drank from the small one and the newly Combat Ready Pilot or Nav drank from the large one, the pace set by the Flt Cdr

Initiation rituals are frowned upon tho...

[beagle]

Aug 26, 2014 10:40:22 GMT 12 pjw4118 said:

I think here on 5 squadron the basis for their tipple for visitors was Purple Death.

certainly was, complete with farm drench gun.

[nuuumannn]

Vulcan 607 is a great book, Rowland White IIRC. Admittedly a bit over dramatised and cheerleader-ish. I, to my shame, always liked our sister Sqn's Op Pot. 111(F) had a small pewter mug and a large pewter mug nailed to a board.

Rowland White's book also mentions little about XM597, the Vulcan that diverted to Rio de Janeiro; that tale deserves a book on its own. I missed going to the Tremblers' ops room. When we were there we spent most of our time in the sergeants mess playing pool!

[pjw4118]

Here's a shot from Machloop by a friend whose son is in teh hot seat of the Tornado.
Must be quite a climb to this spot

[pjw4118]

Another spot is Proud Bird at LAX on the thresh hold of the Southern runway.

A mixture of replicas and real aircraft, a huge gallery of wartime photos, great steaks and live ATC feed via a table speaker or head phones.
Proud Bird is one of the specialist chain.
Owned by David Tallichet of warbird fame.

[Dave Homewood]

Or at least owned by the family of the late David Tallichet. Great photos though Peter, it's nice to see these shots. Which are the replica aircraft and which are real?

[pjw4118]

Dave , I couldnt tell except by tapping the skin as some replicas were fitted with genuine engines and under carriages. . The C47 was genuine while one of the two Grummans had a mix of fibreglass and aluminium panels. I am sure that the Spitfire and its Hurricane mate were entirely fibreglass.

[shorty]

Dave Tallichet was the force and finance behind the New Guinea expedition that me and Monty Armstrong worked on.

[pjw4118]

Did you post photos of that trip Shorty