Brian 48nav, yes, 'cold war' is frequently used these days as a sneering description of those who flew in the 70s and 80s, it seems....
Leaving aside Ken Scott's irrelevant personal insults, I have to ask why the C130 visual circuit
has to be any tighter than the VC10/TriStar visual circuit? Of course because it's slower and can use larger angles of bank in the circuit, it
can fly tighter circuits more comfortably than can a VC10 or TriStar. But just because it can doesn't necessarily mean it should.
Maybe Lyneham should be available by NOTAM as an RLG for C130s, with just a local controller and crash/rescue crew? Or would that be politically unacceptable?
The jet circuit at Brize was always a compromise between training needs and noise; it used to be
much busier in the 1980s than it is now; we also flew low level circuits until they were banned in about 1985.
(Incidentally, PTS departures are usually from the intersection, so low level turns over Alvescot were certainly noted on many occasions. But that's water under the bridge.)
The VC10/Greenland saga is still available on line if you look hard enough - and is a classic example of poor CRM from getting out of bed onwards!