Pebsham & Camber
My log book shows I flew out of Pebsham on 29th May 2000 having completed a flying display there on Enstrom G-SHRK. A Cessna 172 landed there the same day. We may have been the last ever movements.
I always thought Camber was a seaplane base alongside the sands.
Dennis, thank you for your input on Pebsham in particular. What was the state of the former Pebsham Aerodrome at that time? I understand that the condition of the surface was always its Achilles heel and that it has been largely football pitches for many years. Did they have to take the goalposts down to enable the Cessna to land and take off!
I don't know about Camber having been a seaplane base - although Sea Tiger G-AIVW was based on a flooded gravel pit in the area in, I think, the 1970s. My research indicates that all aerial activity there took place on the sands - the Ogilvie brothers before the first war and Zenith Airways joyflights, using one or more Avro 504Ns, in 1935 or thereabouts.
Whilst in that part of the world, one shouldn't forget the Eastbourne Flying Club aerodrome at Wilmington. In 1939 it shut for the duration and never re-opened - or so I understand. Does anyone know why or when the infrastructure on the site was removed?
Finally, Dennis, is the Sevenoaks aerodrome, mentioned in another of your earlier posts, that at which Prince Serge de Bolotoff had his aircraft manufacturing works in 1919 - which, I believe, produced the single SDEB 14 G-EAKC and then disappeared into the mists of history!
Last edited by fauteuil volant; 22nd May 2009 at 07:34.