Dung-Eaters? I appreciate your upset Beagle but......
Ok, so they way we are going, we'll be closing everything south of Catterick. So what?
The airspace in Southern England, is getting more and more crowded by the day. Da Government , is looking to create more runways/airports to service the increase in air traffic, and frankly, do the FJ's want to be operating in an envioronment where a lot of the workload, is taken up looking out for conflicting traffic?
This is a tiny island, and free airspace is rapidly becoming a precious commodity.
So, how about this.
How much would it cost, for us to LEASE an airbase, from one of our new NATO allies? I'm thinking of Poland here, especially the North. If you get your TPC's out, you'll see the area below the Baltic, and west of Kaliningrad, which includes an ENORMOUS area of absolutely nothing. I flew over that, in an Iskra some years ago. Absolutely nothing for miles, no farmers to upset for the muddies, and a lot of very clear airspace up to FL400 for the Air Defence gods.
Cost of lease would be cheap, and certainly less than opening/re-opening a new airbase in the South. If anyone flying a MFI bomber in the big house wants to know more, I can certainly get some info.
Failing that, let's look at bases in the former colonies for the same sort of exercise.
At the end of the day, it's all about space to train, and there is still a lot of it about, well within one Tanker hop.
Tony
