I do miss going on my holidays...always turned up at the airport at least 4 or 5 hours early cos I enjoyed just watching the aircraft and all the rest of the airport activity. Had some great experiences...and some not so great, such as being left on the aircraft having been forgotten that I required assistance - Munich is especially bad for that but then perhaps it was due to the building works being done.
I have been very lucky in that I have been able to visit so many wonderful places around the world by air and by ship.
That is all over now. Since a stroke and becoming housebound, all I can do is watch FR24 and come on here to keep intouch with my favourite pastime.
When I left school all those years ago I desperately wanted to join the RAF and get up to my armpits in engines. I even passed all the entry exams and medical....but then my hopes were dashed by my mother who refused to sign the paperwork (working on engines was not, according to her, a job for a lady). I went into construction (towercranes) and then truck driving instead, she was not amused.
I have always had an avid interest in aviation...spent every weekend at Cranfield tween 1977 and 1983, end up helping in the flying school (Rogers) and occasionally in the hangars or helping as observer on post maintenace airtests.
My typing ability is a tad rough now and very slow so on occasions there is overlap and sometimes I don't always respond quickly enough, so then I get frustrated....brain no longer speaks to fingers very well. I ask questions out of genuine curiosity, not to be annoying or to be difficult...sometimes that curiosity is met with consternation, sometimes it is ignored....but it is genuine curiosity and nothing to be angry at me over.
I live in a sheltered accommodation flat under the flightpath to Humberside airport, it is the closest I get thesedays to anything that flies.
I sorely miss the ability to fly....being on here is the next best thing....it is how I can learn things as a mere pax...of former pax. So sorry if that offends, it isn't intentional...I just like to ask questions and exercise my curiosity and where better to do that than getting information from places like this site. But I guess a mere pax like me is seen as a nuisance that doesn't belong here which is a shame
