Memories of Topcliffe
I attended RAF Topcliffe as a, AEOp student on No 21 Air Electronics and Air Engineers Course during 1969/70. Our Flight Commander was a chap called Flt Lt Peter Fownes - a great instructor and sound human being. Everyone on the Course thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.
Being an Ex Air Radar Fitter and a qualified private pilot I found the ground school technical and airmanship subjects a doddle. However, mastering the art of Morse communications was, for me, a real challenge. However, perseverance paid off and I was considered competent at 16 words-per-minute and allowed to progress on to the flying phase.
The Varsity was, I suppose, and ideal training aircraft - not too fast and not too complicated. On each trip we would normally fly 2 AEOp students, one to work the STR-18 HF and the other to act (and I mean act) as the pilot's assistant. Positions would be swapped around from flight to flight. We flew a number of different routes. Some focussed on maritime operations and the other focussed on route flying.
Maritime routes took us out over the North Sea where the HF operator would worked hard sending fictitious messages thought up by the AEO instructor and receive base weather broadcasts. As I remember it the Pilot Assistant who sat in the co-pilot's seat had very little to do other that make a few V/UHF calls, answer some technical questions though up by the pilot and pass out the rations and tea.
The flight plan for the overland was: Topcliffe, Whitby, Aberdeen, Bonar Bridge, Leuchars and back to Topcliffe. at FL80 - about 4 hours total. This route required a bit more V/UHF work by the Pilot Assistant but the same manic level of work by the HF trainee.
The HF station at Topcliffe was, as I remember it, manned by a somewhat geriatric team of instructors including one that suffered from arthritis in his hands. You can imagine the shock when, having settled down for my first HF trip in the Varsity and opened watch with the ground station, I received what can only be described as the strangest Morse I had ever heard; a sort of slow-slow-quick-quick-slow rhythm that scrambled my brain. Somehow I managed to stumble through the HF flying phase and before long I graduated with my Course and was sent off to join 42 Sqn at St Mawgan. The training I received at Tocliffe stood me in good stead and I was happy using Morse regularly in the Nimrod MR1 and occasionally in the Vulcan B2.
Unlike others that have submitted to this forum, my memories of Topcliffe are great. The sun never seemed to set, the beer and roast beef sandwiches at the Shoulder of Mutton were fantastic and the friends I made on the Course followed through into my time on Maritime and the V Force. If there has to be a downside, it was the Wendy House sized married quarter that my wife and I were allocated at nearby RAF Dishforth. My daughter couldn't have a cat as there was no room to swing it!
If the instigator of this thread wants a potted history of RAF Topcliffe from the time it came into existence until 1969, I can forward one to him.