On the FI weather, I arrived mid-winter about 11 months after the cease fire (fashionably late…) as part of the F4 det. I lost an engine after T/O on my split-crew theatre famil trip and never got further than 15 miles from Stanley, one straight in approach and landing.
Trip #2 was the first opportunity to have a look round, but we were out east of E Falkland when we were told to RTB as the wx was clamping. Sure enough, the cloud base got lower and lower as we headed home, and we agreed it was far too bad to go up into it as neither of us knew how good MPN11 and his colleagues were. Oh, and we had no viable diversions without launching the C130 tanker.
I still have a mental snapshot of weaving gear down through the ships in the outer harbour with the base now at 100-150 ft. Turned finals on the “about now” principle and, courtesy of some top info from my ex-mud mover nav who had the INAS spot on, grubbed my way in until the runway edge lights appeared. There were no approach lights, not a surprise as the undershoot was full of Argy mines and UXOs from Mog and his mates.
We weren’t lined up well but, encouraged by a nav reminder that we wouldn’t be going round, I managed to get us to a point where the combination of horizontal vectors, landing gear built for the deck and a choice of 5 cables was sufficient.
Interesting debrief followed, at which the duty auth admitted he should probably have recalled us a bit earlier! The MMU had predicted the deterioration but the timing caught everyone out. We started an informal rule of thumb which prompted decisions when the gap between the cloud base and the top of Mt Longdon reduced to zero. Happy days.