Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
That can happen when you have to fly visually and spot a large marquee with lots of people and car parked around. Not the first time this occur , albeit probably not for them before . Surprisingly they say they did not have someone on the ground to coordinate the slot and make sure no other aircraft is in the display box. We normally all do this . But according the Swiss press it was only a fly-over, not a full show.
Too right Watcher -
It happened to a formation consisting of a Victor K1A tanker, Sea Vixen and Buccaneer flying past at Bournemouth Airport to support Sir Alan Cobham's Flight Refuelling celebration. Great excitement as Tankers didn't do low level usually.
There had been a practice run the week before with another crew - mainly to practise the low level RV with the Navy jets. I was Copilot on this one too. We did it at over 500 ft but there were big nav problems on the run in to BOH as the H2S was pretty useless down there and the Plotter, facing rearwards with no window, had to rely on his NBS nav computer. My suggestion to use the backbeam from the ILS would have meant installing a non standard X-tal and was not taken up.... Fortunately we were high enough to see the RW and line up visually.
On the big day we had the following crew:
Captain, Copilot (me) Nav plotter, Nav radar, AEO and a further Nav plotter in the bomb-aimer's window Canberra trained, with a map. I also had a 1/4" map on the knee. What could possible go wrong? After the RV the boss decided we should get a bit lower to do the job, at which point the nose Nav could see below but not ahead, once again the H2S was vague and showed off to the Right and the NBS to the Left. From what I could see of ground clues we were a bit right of track. Plotter has to coordinate and decide. By this time the receivers are plugged in and no large heading changes can be made. Nose Nav suddenly identifies a roundabout (the wrong roundabout according my map) which confirms the Plotter in his belief that we are left and he gives a slight Hdg change right. We are too low to see the RW and go blasting over Bournemouth town a couple of miles or so south of the field.
At the subsequent Tea and Biccies the Captain was told that the crowd just saw the top of the fin and were not too impressed.
Just for fun here is a pic of the gaggle on the practice over the Dorset countriside just after the RV but before the run:
