XL 573
8 sorties during May/June/July 1980 during the major Buccaneer grounding following the wing failure at Nellis. I was one of the very fortunate first tourists checked out on the Hunter during this time - we used the 2-seaters to keep the navs in practice and just had fun in the F6s. One particular sortie sticks in mind in 573 - just checked the logbook - 11 June 1980, Lo nav/GH, Flt Lt (name redacted to avoid libel proceedings, very experienced). Plan was to takeoff from Honington, lo nav round E Anglia/Lincs, pull up for some aeros, back home. Vis was surprisingly poor (but must have been at least 5 km, mustn't it?). Unlike on other 2-seat types, navs did the navigating on the Bucc, so I didn't have a map - but with an experienced directional consultant what could go wrong? Things stated to get a bit uncertain in the RHS as we headed southeast towards Ely from the Norfolk coast - never actually saw the cathedral, but vis was pretty poor, so turned on time to head towards Peterborough. By now great cloud of uncertainty almost blanking out right side of cockpit, so I was more tense than usual. Unexpectedly, we fly over some lakes, then what appears to be a large scrapyard, might be a car park, couldn't see much - then came the very large piece of concrete, about 9000 ft wide and 300 ft long, which was definitely not supposed to be anywhere near our track. Pulled 6 G, levelled at 6000 ft, explained to directional consultant my theory that his headings were all f****d up and we had just flown over Alconbury. DC offers stout rebuttals, but did give me Alconbury TACAN channel - needle whizzing round, distance indicates 1 nm - pretty good clue. I got the tower frequency out of him with a little elbow work, called up and apologised for the unplanned overflight , saying we'd had a nav equipment failure!
I learned about checking understanding of mag/true headings from that! Rest of the sortie was uneventful but quiet!