The Middleton St George Triangle
There must be something strange about MSG and Vampires. In mid 1964 I had an incident involving MSG and a Vampire whilst doing my Advanced Flying Training at Linton on Ouse.
I was doing my Final Handling Test with a Sqn Ldr I did not know and half way round a loop he shut the throttle and said engine failure. I did all the checks and came to the conclusion that the problem was the bloke in the right seat closing the throttle! I put out a Practice Pan and was given a steer to MSG not realising that I was virtually in their overhead. But straight ahead on the steer heading was an airfield (nearly on the horizon mind you). So I set off calling MSG on Flying Training Common which was the only frequency crystalled that most stations monitored - everyone else in the RAF being on UHF. After a very long glide and at a very worryingly low height I realised that the airfield had a lot of Jet Provosts in the circuit and twigged it was Leeming. Quick change of call and Leeming answered. I only had enough height to land on the cross wind runway and Leeming obligingly cleared the circuit for me. Jet Provosts started zooming off in all directions and my checking instructor said OK you'll get in overshoot and you've failed - we'll do it all again tomorrow.
I am glad to say it all went OK the next day. I now know that it wasn't really me be the hex affecting MSG and Vampires!
ACW