XX145
I had my first ever Jaguar trip in XX145. I was holding with FJTS before starting the JAGUAR OCU.
We went up in three tank fit and equipped with NVGs and climbed close to Boscombe Down to 39000’. Yes you read that right! That was like interplanetary orbit altitudes for a Jaguar. It’s fair to say it took a while to get there.
Anyway, it was the clearest night you could possibly imagine. From overhead BD we could see blinking aircraft strobes at Manchester on one side and Paris on the other. There were also more stars above us than I had ever believed possible.
Anyway, my stargazing experience was brought to a noisy halt as we entered a very gentle turn and the poor old girl spluttered and wheezed and surged both engines. It was fun while it lasted though.
Thankully the TP (Brian48 - you know him very well!) calmly dealt with it in such a way that I barely realised there had been a problem. It was a great way to spend almost two hours though.
I will just add (as I shamelessly swing the lamp) that the next time I flew with NVGs was on my initial dual NVG qualification sortie. We flew up Windermere on a night that was on the very limits of acceptable light levels (2 millilux I believe was the limit). Through rain and low cloud we got to the other end and I was left thinking “WTF was that?!”
BV