Blackbushe Memories (Merged)

[atb1943]

I'd love to see the photo, Viscount Fan. I really wonder if there were not a couple taken, the one I have in mind would have been shot from the terminal car park. I was about to write to Bob to ask for a copy of 'his' photo, and will now reword my request!

Do we know each other I wonder?

brgds
Alan

[flameout2011]

WOW, such happy memories of the Bushe

OMG guys, such wonderful memories reading this forum. I only found this forum last night, what a joy!!!! I joined 3CAC on 12.7.73 and went for my my first 'jolly' that very day with a fantastic part time instructor from 3CAC called Peter Watkins in a PA19. Anyone remember him? He got me solo in 5 hours within 5 days. I fondly remember DJ and, of course the famous and fabulous REG in the tower. I didn't know he was no longer with us, God Bless you Reg, he was so kind to me. I'm going to trawl through all the posts and try to answer some of the un-answered questions. I have some old 8mm footage of the Bushe in '73 and me spinning in the Pup taken from the cockpit and also landing the PA19 on my first solo and if anyone is interested, I'll get it converted to a CD.

DA officially took over the place just after I joined 3CAC but I met Wingco Bennett before the official handover was completed. I'll have to dig out my first logbook as a memory jogger for any of you who are interested.

Such wonderful memories guys

Keep it in your pants boys
Kind regards
Flameout

[Gulf4uk]

blackbushe manager

hi

Stuart Marshall has retired as manager but can be found there nearly
every Day and posts a movement Log every day on my Farnborough -Aviation-group BLACKBUSHE forum (approved link back further in this thread ). The Blackbushe of old Picture thread has got bigger and bigger
All on here are very welcome to view and post comment but You will have
to sign in due to an Idiot section that caused problems .

Tony
farnborough

sign in click blackbushe forums
Farnborough-aviation-group.co.uk - Login

[flameout2011]

Stuart Marshall

Thank you GULF4UK, I remember Stuart so well when he was the SATCO at Fairoaks when I was doing my Instructor Training with Syd Parker, God Bless him too. I used to visit Stuart every day in the tower after my lessons wiv Uncle Syd to fly back to BB in my PA28. Anyone remember Syd Parker, he had 13,000 instructional hours on Moths alone during WW2. I recall when he used to visit the Shell building in the Strand to revalidate his licence he used to take 2 Revelation cases full of his logbooks, and say "Is that enough for you cock?"

Stuart, if you're out there, thank you dear friend, for all you did for me, contact me if you wish. I remember those hot days in mid summer when you were in the tower at Fairoaks and under the finger of DA.

More later guys when I can get into the back of my brain, if there's anything left of it, that is........

Flameout

[flameout2011]

Draglift

To Draglift

I remember the occasion very well when REG grounded the poor boy, when he made a re-entry and not a landing.

I was in the cafe in the main terminal building at the time with Peter Watkins my instructor after just landing in poor weather after IMC training prior to my PPL. I was enjoying a coffee and a Cornish Pasty with him and we noticed the poor chap at the next table, shaking like a leaf, with a cup of coffee in both hands but not able to drink it as it was going everywhere but not in the chap's mouth. We both went over to him and joined him. Reg came down and scolded him, and Peter my instructor told Reg to go easy on him as he was clearly in shock. Reg turned to Peter and said, "Peter teach him to fly FGS" (For God's Sake). The poor unfortunate had to leave his club aircraft at BB and we drove the poor unfortunate back to London after tying a few on at the pub/hotel just down the road (the name I forget) to settle his nerves, not my instructor, the student. It transpired that the student had been sent on a short X-Country but had become dis-orientated with the clamping weather and decided to dive for earth when he saw an airfield, he didn't even know that he was at BB.
The following day, we picked up a cheerier and more self-assured young man from his home and proceeded to BB where we went straight to the canteen where we had the statutory coffee before flying, and as Peter said "to check that at least the 'unfortunate' could P1 a coffee cup again".

Peter spoke to REG and told REG that he would accompany and instruct the student back to Booker and that I would collect Peter from Booker by car, which I did. The student is a friend to this day and has never flown again. I used to fly the student several times to Aldernay for his business purposes. Before anyone gets uppity, I did have my PPL then.

I will pay my respects later to my great and wonderful instructor at a later stage. He taught me things at 36 hrs that 500 hr pilots didn't know. Anyone who knew Peter Watkins (Watters) to his friends, was an amazing guy and his ability to teach and transfer information in an understandable manner was beyond reproach. If anyone knew Watters, he had an Auster, and took it to Abu Dhabi, where he was a Physics Teacher in AD under the pyramid scheme to sift the intelligent students there. He flew his Auster back into BB after 2 weeks of flying and fuel stops in '73. He told me that on one occasion on this return whilst flying over Palestine, he was faced with an enormous headwind and was watching the cars on the ground overtaking him, Palestine Radar called him and asked him 'to confirm he was a helicopter'. Peter replied "Negative Sir, just Palestine Wind!"

Anyway Draglift, hope this closes the door on this one, stay safe

As always, lets pray for NO Flameout

[chevvron]

Stuart wasn't ever 'SATCO' Fairoaks but WAS senior FISO/Deputy Airport Manager, this being after he had a 'falling out' with Doug Arnold in about 1977 and was his second 'stint' at Fairoaks. Years later back at Blackbushe (he was headhunted back to be Airport Manager again under Phil Cardew who was Airport Director/Chief Pilot BCA when BCA bought it off DA), his FISO licence had lapsed but CAA said if he passed an Air Ground Radio practical exam, he could use it again so I went over and did the test, (I was and still am an authorised A/G Examiner) and he got the licence back!
I thought the Pups at 3CAC were great. I only flew G-AZCP as the other one had landed in a field in mid 1976 and was never returned to use. People called them 'underpowered' but it's my firm belief it was just switching from a C150 with the same power/weight ratio, the Pup had a smaller wing area and took a bit longer to unstick. In the air there was a world of difference; you had to 'fly' the Pup more but its control response was far superior.
When Tim Steggles checked me out in it, (I was hoping I would get Ellie Messer instead as she always wanted to take me up and show me some unusual attitudes!) he said 'well you took to that easily'.
I remember when it spun, it seemed you were 'over the vertical'!

[Mypyrex]

Mike Hobby

I knew Mike Hoby back in about '70 - 71 at Blackbushe.

Nice bloke. Enjoyed a beer or two !! I have no idea what became of him.

C.

And I'm still alive and kicking. Living in North Wales. Nearest I get to flying is cattle class in a 737 or whatever

Who are YOU Mr_Grubby?

[flameout2011]

Mike Hoby

Nice to know you're still around Mike, I remember you when I was doing my PPL at Blackbushe with Peter Watkins my instructor who introduced me to you. Where in North Wales are you? You were a great inspiration to us all youngun's at the 'Bush'!

Coming from a farming family, what breed is 737 cattle?

All the best

Flameout

[Mypyrex]

Mike Hobby

I'm in Colwyn Bay. What's your real name?

[flameout2011]

Stuart Marshall

Thank you Chevron, I stand corrected! To me in those days, all guys in the tower were SATCO's, ahhhh the enthusiasm of youth !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Pup ID seems to ring a bell but have not found my first log book yet, but I agree, it did spin as though it was over vertical. I've found the 8mm film of me spinning in it which I will get converted to digital if you're interested.

Flameout

[flameout2011]

Mike Hoby

Its Peter Clarke, do you remember Peter Watkins? He introduced me to you when I had about 30 hours.

Flameout

[Mypyrex]

Mike Hobby

One of my latest ventures was to climb to 18000feet near Everest in October 2010

(Me on the left - Everest behind)

[Mypyrex]

Its Peter Clarke, do you remember Peter Watkins? He introduced me to you when I had about 30 hours.

Flameout

Can't say I do remember. Old age, memory, etc.,

[flameout2011]

Mike Hoby

Haha, I know what you mean! Peter had an Auster which he flew out to Abu Dhabs and brought it back into BB 6 months later, he was a part time instructor at 3CAC.

Very impressive on the 18K feet. That height reminds me of a flight I did from Jersey to Geneva in a Cessna 182. I had to climb to that height to get over some very high cold cumulus to avoid turning into a snowball. I remember it was hard to breathe. Geneva Control were incredibly kind and allowed me to circle twice over the lake to lose height so I could land in a reasonable fashion.

Peter

[chevvron]

The other Pup I mentioned which I never flew was something like G-AWDW. It took off from Blackbushe late one day, and (you remember how you had to ensure the doors were locked by positioning the handle past a mark) both doors popped open, so the pilot put it down in a field. As it was undamaged, the resident Army Air Corps Squadron at Farnborough tried to lift it out intact using a Scout helicopter, but it was just too heavy so had to be dismantled and was never returned to 3CAC service.

[Mypyrex]

I Know it's not Blackbushe

But I thought Ppruners might be interested in this:
It's Lukla, in Nepal, into which I flew in a Twin Otter in Oct 2010 on my way to Everest

No. 1 Most Extreme and Dangerous Airport: Lukla Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal - YouTube

It has the reputation of being the most extreme airport in the world. There's no overshoot; you land uphill and take off downhill.

I've got a shot which I took on finals which I'll try to upload later.

[Dave Barnshaw]

Blackbushe Memorries.

On the 3rd.of May 1964 I had a 15 min.flight in Prentice G-AOPL,can anyone remember the machine?,a rare bird nowadays.

[chevvron]

Mypyrex:
Courcheval in Switzerland is identical and a lot closer to home.

[Vigne]

chevvron

I was very interested to read Chevvron's post of 5th Jan about the Pup which came down near Blackbushe, as I happened to be the police officer who received the first report about the incident. At the risk of boring you, I'll tell you the story from a non-aviator's (never lived the dream!) point of view. If nothing else, it will add a little to the rich tapestry of reminiscences in this thread.

The aircraft was a Pup 100, G-AZCP and, as an aside, I see it survived and now
sports a rather smart dark blue and yellow livery:
Photograph of Aircraft G-AZCP

I've also found a photo of it in its livery at the time of the incident:
Aircraft G-AZCP (1970 Beagle B.121 Pup 100 C/N B121-158) Photo by Rosalind Thorne (Photo ID: AC636397)

At that time I was a young bobby stationed at Hartley Wintney and on 23rd June 1976, a pleasant sunny evening, I was looking after the station, which we opened to the public for a couple of hours each morning and evening, when a passing motorist came in to say he'd seen an aircraft flying very low near the M3 motorway and he thought it had come down. He gave me a rough idea of the location so, locking up the station, I set off in my van, letting my Control Room know of the report. No personal radios for us out in the sticks in those days! They told me they'd just received a couple of 999 calls reporting an aircraft low over the motorway.

On the road to Fleet, opposite the entrance to Elvetham Hall (locals will know it) I saw some farm workers in the field and called over, asking if they'd seen an aircraft in trouble. The reply, as if this sort of thing happened to them every day, was "Yeah, it's over there - damn thing nearly took our heads off!" and just carried on working....

Looking through a gap in the trees I could see the aircraft, tail in the air, a couple of hundred yards off the road, in the middle of a field of ripe barley, on rising ground, with a figure standing by the wing.

When I reached it, the pilot, although uninjured, was looking very crestfallen and he explained that the doors had come open in flight and he'd had to make a landing. Unfortunately, despite approaching across some nice flat fields, he touched down on rising ground and ripped off the nosewheel which brought him to a fairly abrupt halt.
Everything was shut down and he was happy that there was no risk of fire.

I'd reported the location to the Control Room and within a short time, the cavalry started to arrive, together with a few inevitable onlookers. Now, up to this point, the only damage to the field was a furrow about 40 yards long leading back along the track of the aircraft's arrival.

Farmers, as many of you will know, are quite sensitive about their crops and Mr. H, the farmer who owned this field, wasn't exactly known locally for his sense of humour. He turned up, striding across the field towards us, at about the same time as the Range Rover crash tender from RAE Farnborough made a grand, two-tone horn-assisted entrance on the other side of the field, leaving a swathe of flattened barley in its wake and depositing silver-suited firemen at the aircraft.

Mr. H turned several shades of puce and attempted to persuade us all to leave with words along the lines of the immortal, "Get orff my land", but to no effect. It was left to me to whisper the magic words 'insurance and compensation' in his ear and he calmed down and stumped off.

Back to the matter in hand and I felt I had to do something in my official capacity, so I asked the pilot, Mr O... for his flying documents. He produced his pilot's licence and I realised, by sheer coincidence, that he was an RAE scientist I'd regularly performed work for when I was an RAE employee some years before! It's a small
world.....

I wasn't content with just his licence, so using the Ways and Means Act, I issued him with a Form HO/RT/1, usually issued for motorists to produce their driving documents (for the youngsters, I think it's called a 'producer' these days.....no sense of decorum any more, sigh), requiring him to produce the Certificate of Airworthiness and evidence of insurance at Yateley Police Station within 5 days.

Sure enough, a couple of days later, I got a phone call from a bemused Station Duty Officer at Yateley telling me, "There's a bloke at the counter with a HORTI, producing documents for an aeroplane. What the hell am I meant to do with them?" "Damned if I know", I said, "just record the details and send them through!" I'd done my bit......

Anyway, back to the Pup. With due consideration for the farmer and his crop, it was decided to try and get it out with a minimum of further damage to his field, so someone had the bright idea of ringing RAF Odiham, to see if they'd like to get one of their nice big helicopters to lift it out. It would be an interesting and useful exercise for them, we thought, naively. I didn't make the call but I'm told the response was a rather sniffy, "We don't do that sort of thing........"

Unabashed, the Army Air Corps was contacted and they jumped at the chance. Later that week. I went up to the site when they brought in a Scout to make the lift. It didn't look to be much bigger than the Pup and, sure enough, despite a number of valiant attempts, and with the hairs on the necks of the observers rising slowly but surely, they eventually had to admit defeat. I took a small camera with me and I've dug out three rather poor quality prints that have been tucked away for all these years.

The first one shows the Pup in a rather undignified pose, with a fortuitous gap in the trees through which it had passed, the treeline on the horizon marking the M3 motorway just south of Fleet Services.


The second shows the first lift commencing. The Scout was able to lift it just a few feet from the ground and it swung to the right, the third photo showing it being deposited back on the ground:



This was the sort of incident it was a pleasure to attend - something

different from the usual dross and nobody harmed!

On a wider note, Blackbushe has some memories for those not actively involved in aviation, too. I never encountered him but DA's reputation spread far and wide. Fortunately, it was the Yateley bobbies' patch and we were happy to leave them to sort out the problems that arose. It was reputed that he had crates of brand-new Merlin engines in one of the hangars at the back of the field.

I remember doing traffic control for the Air Festival. IIRC, the highlight for me was seeing Sally B doing an exceptionally low flypast, the props clearing the perimeter fence at the western end by not a lot! The raw power of the Sea Fury making the ground throb at the start of its take-off run near my traffic point is also unforgettable. The memory is a bit hazy, so if I'm thinking of a different event, I'd stand corrected.

'Picnic at Blackbushe', the pop festival staged there in the late '70's, is a whole story in itself. Plenty of fun and games that weekend and we didn't even get onto the airport!

Of course, things weren't always as light-hearted and much later in my career I was involved in the melancholy incidents involving a Cessna 441 in 1987 and the King Air in 2000.

Well, for a first post I've gone on a bit, haven't I? I'm not sure I'll have been been able to upload the pictures onto the post but, if not, they are available at: BeaglePup pictures by vigne - Photobucket

[treadigraph]

Great stuff, thanks Vigne!

Reminds me of Neil Williams being asked by a policeman to produce his PPL after a forced landing in a different sort of Pup which was also associated with Blackbushe!