Special Memories
In the spirt of the season I was wondering - what are your absolute favourite memories from your time in military aviation? What made it so special? The jets? The mission? The noise? The burning avcat?
Despite being a WAFU I think mine probably begin in my first experiences of the North Sea ACMI, watching the light dim over either Coningsby or Waddo, feeling the air cool as you did the walk round, passing the Lincolnshire coast outbound, seeing the lights on the rigs in the North Sea, checking in with Freddy or one of the GCI chaps - and feeling the blood pressure go up as they called out the first picture as the other guys came out of Leeuwarden, Leeming and Leuchars - all with a bit of mischief up their sleeve.
Getting home to state of the art debrief - finding out that your SA was..errrr...incomplete...and then heading off to see if the Lincoln run ashore had changed significantly in the last twelve months.
I have fond memories of being sat on the back of a war canoe with all the cockpits crunched together, salt in the nostrils - watching the ship heel with a certain amount of trepidation. Wondering what everyone else was punching into the up front controller, suspecting that the ops room was listening into the aux frequency, hoping the f##king kit would align at some point and that Havequick would weave its magic.
And of course the thrill of watching the Afghan dawn in the winter months knowing that 'You are in support of TIC....etc' was only a matter of minutes away.
Anyone else care to share theirs?