Ho Chi Min trail ?

[OLNEY2d]

A quick question from an interested Civvy...

As the monicker suggests I live around the WPT OLNEY just in Bucks. Most days I'm treated to some fast jets travelling East to West at low level and travelling at quite a clip. The a/c are almost always a whisker south of the town of Olney itself and occasionally some heavy transport lumbers through on the same track too.

Is this what is lovingly referred to as the 'Ho Chi Min' trail? and is it some kind of low level east/west transit route?

It seems too co-incidental to have all this mil traffic routing this way without it being a recognised track?

Cheers

[Gainesy]

No, "Trail" runs (or used to) north to south just off the east coast. Its just a nickname for the well worn rut from East Anglian bases to Spadeadm range.

[Tamaze Man]

Gainesy,

you will find this may be a different trail. The 'Ho Chi Minh' runs from (roughly) Cottesmore, south of Birmingham and across to Tewkesbury. It extends down to the Brize area and upto the Cosford area.

OLNEY,

hope this helps.

[OLNEY2d]

Sounds like the one !


I'm told its used to transit from the Eastern bases to the training areas in Wales - would make sense.

[BEagle]

That takes me back!

Before the Low Flying System was revised at the end of the 1970s, the main LFAs were much smaller and most were interconnected by narrow 'link routes'.

To fly from Wittering to Wales and back, all at low-level, you set off on a link route down towards the south west and entered LFA 4 (?) then routed through there to another link route to the Welsh LFAs (7 and 10?). Many people drew up a standard route from Wittering to Wales; originally there were (I think) 2 link routes to Wales but another one was added later which went near pork chop lake.

The route was nicknamed the 'Ho-Chi-Minh trail'; so a typical LL task would be "4-ship, Ho-Chi-Minh north, targets here, here, and here, reverse Ho-Chi-Minh south, standard break" or similar.

Unfortunately I lost my old 58 Sqn Ho-Chi-Minh map years ago, so please excuse any inaccuracies brought on by senior moments!

[trilander]

Olney Church was always a turning point in gliding competitions, proberly because only a complete idiot could mistake it.

[OLNEY2d]

Indeed - the church is very distinctive and visible for miles.


Funnily enough we had an RAF Super Puma blatting down the Ho Chi Minh not so long back who was actually flying below spire height - which was quite exciting to witness.

Not sure if there's a minimum transit altitude for Mil Helis in peacetime (?) if there is - I'm guessing he was below it :-)

[JNo]

"Super" Puma - We'd be lucky....

[Gainesy]

Ah well, I sit corrected.:)

[Background Noise]

OLNEY2d, just to say that the rough routing is referred to as you say. There are obviously other routes which become well trodden paths and become equally well known to other users - in the same way that there are many instances of 'sally's t**s'. There is no specific routing though (post link-routes) - it is just that there are not many variations on the general flow through fairly tight airspace constraints.

[OLNEY2d]

Well it makes for good viewing and a change from the LHR and LUT outbounds streaming over the WPT here :-)

- usually a couple of flights a day, - most often Tornados it seems, used to be more variation but not latterly - not sure why that would be?.