Remember the good old days late 70s and 80s on phantoms
 

Rememberthe apc,s and deci dets so much beer not enough time

Oh, god, here we go;)

No, unfortunately... :{

Is that the gate guard at MPA and the bird from which a chunk of wing is now a dancing platform in the Goose?

Before the days of desert camping, Fitness Tests, Health and Safety, IiP, Pink Wednesday, when EO meant electro-optics and not something else, before yellow jackets, when we toned things down, not lit them up. When Taceval was king....?

Yes. I was cr@p on the F4, but was briefly Operational.

Deci, 'the range, she's a-clos-ed', Enrico's, APCs...... Sqn pushes to Chris's... When there were lots of jets over the North Sea - and even at LL over the UK...

And fun was still allowed.

valley live missiles
 

We are of to valley to fire a sidewinder, @valley missle fired aircraft lands minus lefthand fletcher tank oops missile through tank,retire to bar and think it over ,no its valley and time to go time spent there, 2 days , proberly a waste of time but had a good laugh in those days .

I didn't get to fire my Sparrow, did I Impiger? 'cos 'someone' couldn't find the Jindi' plus sodding great radar reflector on the MCS.....

And then the range controller flew us out of the safety trace for the 'winder shot just as we got to the first call of "Firing......"

Bugger!

Never fired a Sparrow but did blast the flare with a 'Winder - well, it got within about 2 ft, which was good enough. And I never fired on the banner, but subsequently had plenty of time on the dart. The dart was (is?) probably easier as a) it was towed by another fighter and was therefore doing a sensible speed and b) a hit was a hit, so you only needed one bullet on target - and then you dumped the incriminating evidence. Is the RAF still using banners or have things changed?

The banner was great - I managed 52% on one APC shoot. About the only thing I could actually do.

Post-Malvinas we also did air-to-mud gunnery. Very ungentlemenly!

Ah, air-to-mud ....now you're talking. With tracer and HE and watch them twinkle at a hundred a second....... aaaaaaaaaaaah!.

Was that a REAL 52% Beags? Or did it involve a crate of beer, a couple of armourers, a cricket stump, a pot of paint, and 2 mins with the banner round the back of the hangar?

No - a REAL F4 52%!

I don't remember a thing. Too much beer can do that to a chap I understand!

You still can have fun Beags, you just need to be a bit more imaginative and find loop holes that the blunites neglect to fill!!

I for one bet that you old 'uns used to winge as much back then as you do now. It is still a damn fine occupation IMHO with plenty of opportunities for fun and "development" as well as operating some pretty good kit, albeit rather limited.

Maybe my 4 years counts for nowt compared to some around these parts, but do keep the good stories coming (the ones involving debauchary and nakedness) and try to keep your comparisons between old and new away from the fun!

Regards

DS

It was an F4 that once had the following r/t chat with Aberporth Range Control:

F4: Firing, Firing Now!

ARC: Confirm switches safe?

F4: Switches safe, confirm, playmate, dropkick, caravan

ARC: Wait one

F4: Umm, Aberporth, I think we splashed the playmate?

ARC: Confirmed, return to the gate and RTB, contacy me landline on return......


Oh many a happy evening spent on a hill looking over Cardigan bay watching the flashes in the sky!!!

Actually saw the last live redtop firing by the Lightning F6 MPC.
:{

crew
 

anyone remember a f4 aircrew g+10 a fine chap

Yes - a very nice chap indeed!

G+10 was on 229/56 a while ago. As for the F4- RAFG was the only place to fly 'em mind.

Beagle: How cr@p?

I've told it before, but I'll tell it again.

Mid 80's , Location between Corris and Dolgellau, Mid Wales in the Talyllyn Pass (A487) and I was sat on a motorcycle at traffic lights facing up the valley on the road which hugs the side of the valley. For those of you in the know this is part of the Mach loop and is a flowed valley.

Through the gap at the top of the valley came an F4 on its wing tip and LOW. Levelled out and came towards me.

For some silly reason I flashed my headlight at the rapidly approaching toom.

It went past me about 40 feet away, 100' above the valley bottom, fully loaded for bear.

And sat in the back was the nav giving me the "V"s with white gloved fingers.

I will never forget that........MAGIC!!!:ok:

APC Foul Up
 

I got "Null Pointes" for my exploits in Aberporth Range. The budget didn't run to operating out of Valley, on detachment, so we launched out of Coningsby. I was to do some 45 deg snap up Sidewinder shot on a target 15K ft above me. All went well until I fired without saying anything relevant to Control, so no telemetry ran; the missile roared past the flare and shot the Jindy down, which wasn't good, but what was worse was that it had just been fitted with some brand new, state of the art high speed rear facing camera, to take piccies of the missile. The whole shebang went to the bottom of Cardigan Bay without even being switched on. I couldn't say anything on the R/T for nearly 5 minutes as my Nav (Guy Woods in case you care) was laughing so loudly at what had happened. I thought silence was marginally more dignified that Guy's hysterics!