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Old 14th Nov 2021, 19:30
  #62 (permalink)  
meleagertoo
 
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Central UK
Posts: 1,640
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I have happy memories of positioning Aberdeen-Sumburgh on BAF's Viscounts, huge windows, such a pleasant way to travel.
Many years later the AOC of the new startup I joined was piggybacked on BAF's and my 146 conversion was done in the proper way - chalk and talk - by an exceptionally wise old engineer whose name I have shamefully forgotten. Once airborne our early line training was under the auspices of BAF and often on their routes too. I recall one trip to some snow-strip in Norway (Dagali?) where as far as I could see from the jumpseat we were simply landing on a big unmarked snowpatch in a forest, though I was assured braking action was produced by the distribution of hot sand...The wonderful 146 coped just fine - as it always did.
The old-fashioned (may I swear here?) airmanship and self-reliance of those BAF pilots was all too short an introduction into how the fixed-wing mentality could be so similar to rotary before our own totally-civvy-inexperienced RAF derived 'training' department took over and practicality and thoughtfulness went south from there.
Good memories!
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