Was interested to learn the actual figures from Uncle Ian - which confirm my estimate of considerably dropping figures over last few years. As I said, I believe this is primarly a result of the considerably improved road access as total attendees and the amount of corporate hospitality increases yearly.
I am sure Uncle Ian's assurance of the present operating standards is accurate - but I know some consider it more than advisable to be locally experienced and/or initially supervised (it is one busy piece of airspace even at today's figures).
Is it a Cat C airfield (ie previously authorised/demonstrated) - please excuse me if my definitions are out of date (long time since I was involved in ops)?
I recall flying an Aztec in there back in 80 or 81 - claggy as hell, 1550-2000' cloudbase, all sorts of fixed wing stuff (with widely varying circuit and approach speeds) in 'visual circuit' and no real published procedures if I remember correctly, lots of 'VFR' traffic trundling low level under Daventry, Upper Heyford launching projectiles (on a different frequency obviously) and a batch of our foreign cousins in a confused state out of Oxford. It certainly frightened me - and the 'overshoot and divert' policy on a fairly short runway (becoming shorter as aircraft held at far end awaiting an instruction for a 'mass backtrack' if/when a gap appeared), based on 2 minute slots (I think), certainly got the adrenelin flowing. Frankly - that was bloody dangerous !
PS - this post got my nostalgia going, so went and checked - July 13th 1980, won by Alan Jones in the Albilad Williams FW07B (Cosworth powered - as they generally were then), Nelson Piquet (Parmalat Brabham) second and Carlos Reutemann (Alan Jones' teammate) third. Gerry Marshall crashed his Vauxhall Firenza in the saloon car event and was badly injured (my brain cells are slowly coming to life)
Last edited by TimS; 19th Jul 2005 at 17:41.