Originally Posted by
teej013
I was sitting on a Jammer, (weapon loader) at the 27 threshold waiting to cross to the other side of Stanley's runway, when I was a little suprised by a Nimrod appearing out of the murk and setting down in front of me. Turns out a Mr Heseltine had hitched a lift down in one of his cabs for a visit. Got a rather grainy blurred pic somewhere from a battered old 110 camera I used to carry. As far as I remember That Matting runway was a little shorter than 6000 ft and it used to "walk" a little every time one of the F4 landed on, the RE's used to have to hitch up some large diggers and tow it back to it's correct position every few months...
The AM2 matting runway was 6,100ft in length with - initially - 5 cables (3 x Bak-13s, 2 x RHAGs), Phantoms for the use of. The predominant runway was 26, so we used 08 as often as we could (from memory up to 5 kts tailwind) to try to even out the 'walking' effect, which was more than anyone ever thought it would be.
(The first time the RE's were going to do the 're-shift' of the runway - they were waiting for the 'GO' on time - a F4 returned from a 'Presence Sortie' and proceeded to bash the circuit in some rather skoshi weather conditions beyond the 'GO' time, which didn't endear him to the REs. Losing sight of him on his final "Downwind - Land" call, said F4 then appeared out of the murk in a particularly sporting attitude, made a heavy landing that burst the main tyres, at which point the, now naked, mainwheels performed an excellent impression of a can-opener on the AM2 matting
. Removing the now seriously U/S carcass* off the runway further delayed the REs' start time and they now had to replace a significant number of AM2 slabs as well as conduct the original brief. One side effect of this additional work was that the AM2 planks couldn't be replaced in exactly the same position, so the centreline markings were disrupted with a random 'spotted' effect resulting in the touchdown zone. * I believe it had to be cargo'ed back to the UK - it certainly sat (unflyable) on the apron for a long time, together with the broken 'John Nott arrested landing demonstration in red weather conditions' airframe.
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