Perranporth
 

It all fits the 'Perranporth' jigsaw in so much that you could actually access the runways quite easily. As alluded the runway ends were quite broken and one of the reasons was that's were the gliders were winch launched ( or auto towed) from, and the steel cables and connectors chipped the runway ends until the cable lifted off. Once you progressed 100 yards or so into the runway the surface was very good. There is no other substantial airfield near there where access was easily available.
In fact there were two entrances that both started with a very untidy track one at the Cligga Head end and the other at the St Agnes side .The St Agnes side had been the main entrance and that's were the Camp,guardroom, and small tower were located. When the Korean war started RAF St Mawgan had to stop civilian commercial flights, and so Perranporth was given a quick tidy up which is why some of the tarmac leading to the tower was quite intact. As a matter of fact when the CAA Licensing visited Perranporth in the 90's. they considered the runways quite good with only light patching and side vegetation clearance required. This was all done with volunteer labour and a four wheel drive Zetor tractor that also cut 3 grass runways. In fact the CAA Lic and RFF staff were very helpful, as opposed to the local Carrick Council who spent thousands of pounds trying to stop it. A public enquiry sorted that out with them having to pay all enquiry costs, and the airfield had no restriction placed on it. After removal of years of cow dung and general rubbish the control tower was given a concrete skim over the exposed brickwork and a set of double glazed single pane windows fitted (cost only by local enthusiast) A genuine war time anemometer finished it off, donated by Staverton airport when they had a refurbishment, and a former taxi (Pye) radio 119.75 gave us a superb comms system for many years. IN fact the whole exercise was a great example of volunteers and self help, and even the Landrover fire truck was a self help conversion utilising a powerful Godiva pump off the PTO, with all the crews (unpaid) being trained by ourselves.

Thanks POBJOY. I'm convinced now that it was Perranporth, by a combination of that's what I remembered it to be, plus your contemporary description fitting my memory also.

I've been scanning photos from the trip, which were few because I had only just (days before) inherited my first SLR from my brother. (I shudder to think how many photos I would take if we repeated the trip today!) All I have from that day is a few from the now defunct Cornwall Aero Park (which was closed for the winter), and a distant shot of a line of Nimrods at St. Mawgan. We did have a neat experience near St. Mawgan which I wish I could have captured on film. We were still trying to locate the base and the weather was pretty misty. We were driving along a straight bit of road when suddenly out of the mist up ahead loomed a Nimrod at what looked like a couple of hundred feet! It was quite obviously on approach and at that point we knew we were close! :)

A classic of St Mawgan is the day when they were having a practice emergency for a Nimrod come back with it's bomb bay on fire, some flares had ignited inside it's bomb bay thus a practice emergency became a real emergency.

Then there was the time a 7 Sqn Canberra suffered a rudder top hinge failure and the nav ejected and landed near St Columb, while the aircraft landed safely.

MRCA ... Fighter / Bomber / Reconnaissance


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....583f2675e9.jpg

There was no “practice emergency”, the aircraft departed as an exercise Search and Rescue sortie and the flare ignited in the bomb bay shortly after departure from RW 31.

The radio and intercom transcript can be found on the internet.

YS

Nimrod emergency
 

The radio and intercom transcript can be found on the internet.

Now we have sorted Perranporth YS has reminded us about the above 'real emergency' at St Mawgan. As an example of (dealing with the unexpected) the actual crew response to this event was quite incredible, as the 'emergency' was a rapidly changing scenario, and indeed the transcript is well worth the effort to track down. A classic lesson in CRM.

Amazing effort
 

The radio and intercom transcript can be found on the internet.
Thanks for that O not Bold, i had seen it some years back and marvelled at the way it was handled, especially with the rapidly changing scenario.
Wonder if it had ever been a simulator exercise. Certainly made the case for 'multi crew' .