Originally Posted by
BEagle
Perched in the Duty Pilot's seat at Scampton many years ago, I was waiting for one of our Vulcans to return from a trip but there was nothing else going on. I was gazing out of the window whilst the local controller was busy with his crossword, when I was surprised to see a JP appear over the Lincoln edge at low level. It then flew a very steep 180° turn directly over the nuclear weapons storage area before Foxtrot Oscaring whence it came.
A JP5 with tip tanks could only have come from one place, so I rang the JP outfit at Finningley...
"Duty Pilot Scampton here. Nothing official but that was a most impressive low level steep turn by one of your jets! Fortunately neither ATC nor anyone important noticed, but if you Blyton was your target, it's about 10 nm north west of here!"
Perhaps not one of the better student navs?
Summer of '73 I was at Lindholme doing Area Radar. On a day off, I was exploring the airfields of Lincolnshire and started up a small hill to find a JP opposite direction coming up the other side at considerably less than 250ft agl!