Ah, Swinderby.
Not many places where a 63-yr-old would pitch up to work on a motorcycle and proceed to beat you to death in the air for not grasping the finer points of flying after 4 hours of staggering to the aircraft as an 18 yr-old with a parachute swinging around your arse and a shiny silver helmet adorning your cloth RT skull-cap (assuming you were enough of a short-arse to wear both). After all, he only had 6543 hours on type, and he could do it, why couldn't you etc....blah blah progress review..head on chopping block etc...
Golden days. How rewarding to learn that the main runway, so often used for death defying "first-solos" under the gaze of a bunch of course-mates, desperate for your success for the "solo-yard", is now a gas bottle storage facility.
I recall going to Swinderby for the evening of the closing ceremony and "scaling", through the use of an aircrew knife and much heckling (drunken) from Plt Off Tomlin et al from below, the windsock from the airfield, whereupon it was decided (from those not clutching on for dear life from 30 feet in the air from a flailing windsock) that the only way to release said flacid orangatum was to cut it from the hoop above my head (thereby releasing the sock and the pilot officer hanging beneath it) and allow it to come to rest on the sod of the Swinderby field. The landing was more gracious for the sock. The pilot officer was surely relieved that his drunken youth had allowed him to relax (with aircrew knife between teeth) for the ensuing fall to earth.
Ah. Golden days!!
H
Any more golden moments from Swinderby apart from the joyous met lessons from Pickers, the claims from Sqn Ldr "I was a lightning-mate, what do you mean you\'ve got a cold and you can\'t make your ears go pop" Hudson or the Ruddy-faced Trotty\'s port/red wine (delete as applicable) challenges in the bar?
Great.
Henn
