As this is my first post let me start by saying hello. I have been a member here for a while, but have never contributed, feeling it's not really my place to. I am not a pilot, but since a child I have been compelled to gaze skyward whenever I heard the sound of rotors cutting through the air, and this magic has never really left me. However, as this is a post about nostalgia I feel that I can share my memories.
I grew up and still live in Chester in the north west of England and most of the time, as a boy, when I looked up to see who was flying by it was usually what I know now to be G-TALLY, or another star of this thread G-JLBI. It was John Broomes craft that I saw most often as it must have visited somewhere near to our house on a reasonably regular basis, I would suppose at weekends. One of the two girls who lived in the house opposite to ours was at school with John Broomes children and I remember being extremely jealous when she was one of a very select few invited to a birthday party, at where else but Alton Towers, chauffeured of course in G-JLBI.
It was TALY that I remember liking best tho, a real beauty, and I really do remember not seeing her for a long time and wondering to myself if she had been replaced by the squirrel that would occasionally fly past. That squirrel never really did have the same appeal to me. Now I know that must have been TALI.
Thanks for all the great photos in this thread. I just love the original paint jobs and the skids with emergency pop outs on those old 206s and for me they have never looked better.
I will end my trip down memory lane with a couple of photos. Firstly G-JLBI, I know not where or when. Secondly, excuse the state of the old polaroid, a helicopter not yet mentioned in this thread G-BBBM. I remember my Dad coming home from work, bunging my brother and I into the car to drive back to a nearby hotel he had passed on his way home where this was parked up. I'm the taller of the two chaps in the photo, I think my face says it all...
All the best, Simon.
