Dounreay
Many thanks for bringing the Dounreay Airfield article to PPRuNe. Over the years there was quite a select band of Pilots who earned their spurs flying into that remote outpost of the UK mainland, most approaches being with a crosswind and associated turbulence created by the coastline and tall buildings.
Night approaches were a speciality and we had a company NDB cloudbreak procedure that involved a timed descent over the Pentland Firth followed by a procedure turn to minima and then a visual search for the lights on the USN transmitter for positioning onto finals for the Westerly runway or the lights of HMS Vulcan for the Easterly runway, but look out for the High tension power cables crossing this approach and maintain the steep approach to roundout and land on the upslope of the runway, all in a good crosswind of course. Good character building stuff!
Wick was our nominated diversion airfield but we rarely needed to use it, although by comparison it was a doddle.
It is a testimony to all the operators that the accident record was so low and speaks volumes for the high standard of airmanship of all those involved with the Dounreay passenger contract.
According to my logbook I was priviledged to fly the last scheduled flight out of Dounreay on the 28th June 1990 in G-VRES a BeechKingAir 200,departing at 1505 hrs, returning to Northern Executives Manchester base at 1655 hrs.
I believe that John Hall the ATCO sped south in his car as we disappeared over the Caithness landscape. ATC Dounreay had closed forever after an estimated 5.5 million passenger miles spanning a period of 20 years.
Not a bad record for a remote airfied that the FAA and the RAF did their best to avoid using.
Last edited by midnight retired; 23rd Nov 2009 at 19:34.