I never spoke to Ulster, tried to hand over a southbound Vulcan at FL410 to Midland one day... that didn't go away quietly. At least it made a change from them refusing because it was either in their overhead or at the edge of cover, two areas which seemed to almost overlap.
Well, schoolboy error there ... MRD weren't allowed to control traffic above FL245. That privilege was reserved to NRD/ERD in that area!
LAZI was the enemy, resented because they got all the gucci kit.
I'd never heard it referred to as LAZI before! Anyway, it may have had the kit but it didn't quite have the 'attitude' of NRD and ERD - they could be as bad as MRD in some ways, with remarks like "I haven't got a flight plan for that". As I once said, "I don't care, there's the radar return and that's the aircraft. Now take the bloody handover!"
The only other unit I remember talking to regularly was Dutch Mil.
Dutch Mil was, of course, bread and butter for those of us working the FIR boundary.
The scopies had their own world of Buchan, Boulmer, Staxton Wold & Neatishead. At Northern we had a tie line to 1ACC but I can't remember who that was for.
1ACC [then at Wattisham] did occasionally control the Lightnings out of Wattisham and Colishall, presumably to keep their staff in practice. It was a fairly infrequent occurrence, though.
Cotswold was really just Brize approach ... Was Brize a Centre back in those days MPN11?
Oxford Radar/Cotswold Radar was aways an odd one. Yes, it operated from within the Brize approach room, and was largely concerned with Lower Airspace traffic [and a bit of CAC]. But it was a MATO Unit ... while the rest of ATC was a STC unit
BTW ... have you ATC chaps found
This Website yet?