"There is, apparently, talk of extending Waddo's runway to the South."
WW statement stired up memories of the first Nimrod R take off at 109,000 lb ZFW. I can't rememeber when probably 1990 somethin. Bill Bateman was our weight and ballance engineer and suggested selling tickets in a grandstand by Burge's Garage. Bill was brilliant. I remember taking the a/c down to Boscombe to weigh it post a big mod we had completed. he was only one pound out and quite close to the CoG. (so much of the weight was electric string)
All this talk of flight refuelling probes is getting me down. Should the need arise I am sure the treasury would spring the cash. Marshall turned the C130s round in 19 days back in 1982. It may take a month now!!
Oh and most of our radios in those days were of US origin. Have Quick WW and even the RC HF9000 (first use of fibre optic on an RAF A/C) we used the GPS to time the radios. it took an age to get clearance to feed the twin Carosel IN and Tacan from the GPS. had a similar problem on the C130 a couple of years back (with clearances) so as back in Nimrod days declared UDI and fitted a stand alone system.
DA