LB, your excellent story has awoken a few memories of events that occurred whilst flying Hastings aeroplanes from RAF Colerne alongside my friend and colleague Chugalug 2. I trust you will remember the vine that grew in or just outside the Met offices in Nicosia? One tendril of this vigorous plant was trained to grow up the wall inside the office and then across the ceiling, back and forth, with little notices suspended at intervals recording world events of importance. This lasted for some years, growing ever longer and garnering many more little notices, until one day it vanished, never to be seen again!
Nicosia was the general place at which we Hastings crews would recuperate after a long flight out via Luqa (Malta) from Lyneham (that we had to use for clearing Customs before leaving the UK). I recall being there, in the city where our hotel accommodation was located, when we received the news of President Kennedy's assassination. Two days later we flew on Exercise Solinus II that involved some 30 Beverly, Argosy and Hastings aeroplanes flying in trail at night around most of the Cyprus coastline before depositing our loads of parachutists or stores on (or near) a remote DZ. If you have never taken part in such an exercise then you haven't lived!
When back at Nicosia we were supposed to land in the same numerical order in which we had been 'in trail', and the first aircraft did just that. However, someone on board left his transmit switch selected to 'transmit', and so everyone else on that frequency was treated to the somewhat critical thoughts on the conduct of the exercise expressed by the pilots, navigator, flight engineer and signaller/air electronics officer! Yes, it was a crowded flight deck, but we could all voice opinions when we wanted to. With the Tower frequency blocked out, the second Hastings crew decided not to chance a landing and went around. Then another crew, seeing an opportunity to do so, snuck in to land well out of sequence. Thus there developed a fine old mix-up of Hastings processing round the circuit until finally some order was restored and the last aircraft got down safely. The after-show party went on quite late that night!
One other memory, triggered by reference to Constable clouds, was whilst I was flying Hercules C130 A Models on an exchange posting with the Royal Australian Air Force in the mid 1960s when we staged through the Cocos Keeling islands en route from Pearce (near Perth, Western Australia) to Butterworth (Malaya) to avoid Indonesia and 'Confrontation'. These flights involved flying through the Inter Tropic Front or Inter Tropical Convergence Zone that was generally marked by an East-West band of cumulus clouds of varied descriptions. We had a flight engineer who was a gifted artist, and he would depict the shape of the clouds in forms worthy of Botticelli, the results being given to the met staff on Cocos Island for their information and entertainment. I wish I had kept one! Of course after leaving Cocos we had to stay well clear of Sumatra before changing course for Butterworth, but due to a longish over water track coupled with low clouds masking the land mass in the gathering dusk, there were times when we got a little too close to the forbidden territory. Then the 75 megahertz airways marker beacon might start to flash, picking up harmonic signals from, as I was told, Indonesian gun radar, thus a very early form of electronic warning system (?). A gentle turn towards the West sorted this one out. Aah, happy days!