I was at Brize 72-92. It never ceased to amaze me that some of the locals, who made a very good living from the RAF, used to phone up Eng.Ops in the terminal as soon as they heard an engine. Good old Mr Giles ( the original,be about 90 now), the one that owned the biggest toy and sports goods shops in Oxfordshire. Without the Base with an audience average age in the 20's he'd still have been in his news agents.
We had a "B" shift (30-40 blokes then)bet one night to see how quick Mr Giles would be on the Phone. F.S. i/c "B" shift LSS Told the Eng. Controller to keep an eye on the time he phoned, a kite needed a late ground run with slam check, Oh goody! It was after 11.30pm and the latest bet was 1 min 50 odd seconds, The winner was the Line flt sgt (I wont mention the name) with 23 seconds! Obviously the run had to carry on, the kite was on route early next morning with extra slams!
Carterton looks about twice the size it was when I left and all those poor people must have been shocked to find there was an airfield next door.
When I moved out of MQs and bought my own place in Carterton, the people opposite (civvies) were asking for a Rate rebate and double glazing because of the VC10s (we only had 13 VC10s and a couple of Tristars then and one Herc. for the baby paras) He'd only been in the house a month but knew the airfield was there before they moved. He didn't get anywhere with it. Funny thing was he'd just moved from Kidlington ,next to the airport! Which had highest number of movements in the country at the time.
We have Hercs flying over every now and again. They're over 20.000 ft the noise goes on without change for over 5 minutes, the noise doesn't change, it doesn't creep up and die away either, its constant. Its not that easy to pin point where the plane is the whole area is bathed in engines, where as a Turbofan is easy to pick out.After reading this thread I know why! Noise or not, I'd move back there in a flash!
Last edited by vc10617; 5th Oct 2013 at 21:41.