Nimrod AEW radar operators needed!!
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Nimrod AEW radar operators needed!!
I'm writing a book on the Nimrod called Nimrod Rise and Fall. I'm an author, Aviation Books and Mystery Novels By Tony Blackman, and by chance as a test pilot I flew 40 of the 46 we built at Avros. I'm doing it because I want everyone to know what a wonderful job the aircraft did and what a huge gap it leaves. I'm putting in a lot of aircrew stories of the things the aircraft did and the final chapters are about the Nimrod AEW and MR4. My problem is that there has been pages and pages of 'scuttlebutt' about the AEW aircraft's Mission System Avionics but no first hand description of the testing of the radar and how good and bad it was. I'm looking for actual operators of the AEW's MSA and if there is an operator who can compare its performance and the AWACS at the time that would be even better.
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Was there not a National Audit Office report dedicated to the Nimrod AEW. I would have thought it would have had a bit more than scuttlebutt in it????
You'll have seen this
BAe Nimrod AEW 3
You'll have seen this
BAe Nimrod AEW 3
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
I would have thought scuttlebutt would be more enlightening - like picking up trains and cars.
Just think, could have had a Sentinel capability 20 years earlier.
Just think, could have had a Sentinel capability 20 years earlier.
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An interesting article. The closing paragraph:
And there are those who think of UK defence as being underfunded?
Amazingly, the collective memory of the Nimrod AEW farce seems to have been completely ignored when it was decided to replace the Nimrod MR2 with the Nimrod MRA4. Astonishingly many of the same mistakes of attempting to once again adapt an airframe designed in the 1940's, have been repeated for the second time - but more on the MRA4 farce at a later date and I only hope the final bill this time around is less than £1 billion squandered on the Nimrod AEW 3.
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Not an AEW Nimrod man, sorry - but would add that I was flying with 8 Sqn AEW Shacks in the North Sea in 1986 when we were asked several times by the Nim crew out on a trial to tell them where an aircraft was. That seemed to be the measure of it at the time. A case of the blind leading the blinder.
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I'm putting in a lot of aircrew stories of the things the aircraft did
Closest I got to an AEW was volunteering and being selected as a Flying Air Radar Technician (FART) even although I was Nav Inst. Never heard any more though.
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Closest I got to an AEW was volunteering and being selected as a Flying Air Radar Technician (FART) even although I was Nav Inst. Never heard any more though.
I've still got my FRCs somewhere - I must look them out.
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nimrod awe
new to forums, but spent a long time on nimrods specifically aew at woodford with db1 through 3 and production models.
could have some usefull background on the flight trials results for yr book!
hartie
could have some usefull background on the flight trials results for yr book!
hartie
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I did a couple of test sorties in a Tornado F2 "controlled" by the Nimrod
AEW. I picked up the target on a "Y" list Foxhunter before the Nimrod saw
it!
"No, you can't have them - it will take our entire flying program for two days".
The aircraft were still not allocated to the trial despite the assurance of the FC that it was very important and that he had been instructed to get the aircraft "from high level". The FC then rang our trials people in MOD PE to report that Coningsby were refusing to release the F2s for the trials.
Twenty minutes later, the Flt Lt FC received a phone call - it was from the Station Commander at Coningsby who was ringing personally to apologise and ask where and when the F2s were wanted.
In the same vein, the trials team needed two radar consoles at SOC Boulmer for the duration of the trial. At first the consoles were refused because Exercise "Mallet Blow" was being held over the same period and the consoles were needed for that. We duly received an info copy of the signal that was sent 30 minutes later authorising us to have priority of the consoles over Boulmer staff with the final sentance "You have permission to cancel Mallet Blow if it proves too difficult".
It is not often that you received top cover at this level, but it was nice to have when it was!
Last edited by Wensleydale; 5th Mar 2013 at 20:36.