Aaarghh! Wretched place - home of 'Bulldog Standards Squadron' (aptly titled BS sqn!) and RNEFTS in the early 1990s.
We had to trek oop Nawrth once a year to have our UAS bad habits corrected and to listen to the poor sods doing their A2 groundschool sessions. Normal BSS sentence was about a week, then back to the UAS to carry on as before.
One snag was that there was never any accommodation on base for visitors. Normally, there were only the options of the kindergarten at Linton, or suffering the strange ways of the pongos at Dishforth. At Linton it was the annex, with barely enough space to do any preparation for the following day's fun and frolics; according to a chum who took the Dishforth option they were all expected to dine together and spend the evening discussing foxhunting or polo together...
Ah yes, the A2. No-one on our squadron had passed for over 2 years and even then it had taken them several goes. Mutterings about 'turning errors of gyros' and weirdly obsessed met theory - WTF do I need to understand about global circulation to explain why we're not going flying, Bloggs? I refused point blank to do my A2 until a proper syllabus existed, rather than the "I know more questions than you know answers" bolleaux of most of the BSS gang. But after getting back from Gulf War 1, I learned that a syllabus was indeed about to be issued. Oh good....
Thus it was that the following year, after one routine BSS week in the spring, I found myself swotting up all manner of stuff before setting off North for the joys of the A2. I'd just passed ATPL air law 1&2 for my R/BCPL/FI ticket, so had already had a bit of a head start, which helped a lot. Fortunately I'd also managed to get a room at Leeming, so was at least living with reasonably grown-up folks for the 2 weeks of Topcliffe hell. You had to be 'recommended' to take the assessment at CFS, which I scraped through after a misery had sat stone-faced in the LHS playing Bloggs for my final trip, the loathed 'Descending 2'. Groundschool hadn't been too bad though - but memories of explaining the theory of a machmeter over lunch to some staff chap who was swotting for his A1 and couldn't understand the notes struck me as being of
real relevance for a Bulldog QFI....
In fact I'd worked out that there was a line missing from the notes; when I explained, the poor bugger told me that he'd been up all night trying to fathom it out! About the worst part of the groundschool was sodding Met - some of the old buggers seemed to love to ramble on about obscure concepts such as 'thermal winds' and were really miffed when the sensible syllabus had slashed most of the crap we were supposed to learn.
Never was I so glad to see Topcliffe disappearing in the rear view mirror as I set off for Sunny Scampton!
Oh and the A2 test? Cancelled on Day 1 due to Wx (the reason for which I was obliged to explain....
), but I breezed it the following day (it helped that the PoW-ess was visiting Lincoln Showground, so our flying was a bit restricted
) and actually enjoyed the groundschool bit with the CFS chap who was very amiable.
Topcliffe might have had some odd weather, but so did Scampton. The duty liar for my A2 trip guessed cloud tops at FL40 - but we didn't come out until about FL70. Primary exercise was 'Stalling 2' - after the clearing turns, my jovial 'student' announced "Can't wait to see your aeros, 'sir'!". "I think you just did", I replied. But the gloomy weather had one advantage - the secondary exercise was IF with 'Bloggs' flying a 'radar to visual'. As we reached the instrument pattern from the West, I spotted the met radar tower at the old Ingham aerodrome, so knew exactly where we were (our aeroplane didn't have VOR/DME fitted...). But rather than taking control, waiting for the A15 and then turning 90° to follow it to right base, I wisely elected to let 'Bloggs' carry on, knowing that this would waste a fair bit more time, leaving less for whatever tortuous villainy he had in mind!
It seems that the weather-guessing knowledge of your days at Topcliffe must have been rather better than the bloke at Scampton that day,
langleybaston! After I finished the A2 session, the clag descended and I didn't escape it until Lincoln. In June!
Topcliffe - I have to say it wasn't much liked by those doing pre-A2 work-up at BSS!