First flight at 621 at Weston on the Mud in the barge WB991 and several subsequent AEG flights in Mk3s before solo in WB922 (The Royal Barge) at Syerston after 4 days training on 12.8.81...
Went on to be a Staff Cadet at 621 VGS for 6 years... We used the Barge(T21) for AEG and all training was in the Mk3. At our peak we had 4 Mk3s(XA310, XA308, WT877, XN240) and one barge(WB991).
Someone mentioned Dawn to Dusks: I think we did 303 launches in '83(?) as a 2 winch school. This included a fair amount of normal training with landing all over the field as well as 'spot landings' for the AEG stuff. In the last hour I think we did 53 launches by which time we were landing on the waiting cable and keeping the same crew to break the 300 barrier. I think my total was 48 launches with the first one at sunrise and one of the last at sunset! We lost some time early afternoon due to a snarl-up I seem to remember... I also remember someone had wired up the rubber headsets to play music from a Walkman so we took off on the first launch with 'To The Unknown Man' playing in our ears
I also remember one of our Landys used to be a hearse and had a hand-throttle which meant we could set off with the Mk3 trailer on the back, set the hand throttle and climb back onto the trailer and influence direction(steering is too grand a term for it
)by using winch strops wrapped through the steering wheel.
Happy days...
Strangely enough, our 621 Vintage group still has WB922 flying and XA310 too!