Tony Benn was war time RAF therefore more than likely RAFVR than RAF. I think he flew Spitfires in the mid east somewhere.
Norman Tebbit was RAuxAF at some stage in his career and flew Meteor 8's from North Weald on 601 Sqn (I think, though it might have been 604). Not sure however if he learnt to fly in the RAF as a NS or regular pilot, and moved to the RAuxAF at a later date.
Nev Duke was the CO of 615 Sqn at the time he was testing the Hunter and winning the world air speed record on it. Most of his Sqn had flown it ( very unofficially) but the government closed down the flying sqns of the RAuxAF on the pretext that the "new" Hunter was too advanced for weekend pilots to fly. The real reason of course was to save money because UK LTD was bankrupt in the mid 50's.

National Service Aircrew
 

One further memory, being sent on Astro navigation exercizes from Bishops Court to North Scotland in mid June,when at 15000 ft the only visible thing in the sky was the moon. Gee fixes were converted into sextant star altitudes.

Exnomad, glad you had set a precedent for twilight astros! Fifty years on it doesn't make me feel so bad about those fudged fixes.

Nav Aids
 

Exnomad

Does anyone else remember Consol - the German submarine fixing aid for the N.Atlantic ? It relied on rotating signals from three transmitters, in Norway, N. Ireland and Brittany by the time we were using it, the Germans of course used Spain in lieu of N.Ireland ( I don't know what that says about Spanish neutrality),

The signals were pushed out on MF and the fix obtained from where they overlapped. The bearing was obtained by listening to each signal and noting the equi signal.

It was dead simple and a lot of sailors used it plotting via the bizarre Consol chart in later years. Not sure about its accuracy

I'm meandering, enough

Bushmills was blown up by the IRA. Stavanger Consul was still in operation in the mid nineties. The Aerad book even had the instructions on how to use it. A few pilots, including me, used to while away a Shetland Basin trip checking the bearings. The co-pilots would look at you strangely whilst you were counting the dots. The book didn't mention the Brittany one though.
I believe it was intended for Uboats who could send up a floating aerial whilst submerged and work out where they were.

consol
 

I think the Brittany beacon was at Quimper, I remember Quimper Pluenier, (quite probably the wrong spelling)

Consol Beacon
 

Papa Alfa Whisky :- It was at Ploneis, between Quimper and Douarnenez I think. Its station ident was TRQ and I think it transmitted on 266m. Oh dear I feel quite nerdy.
Cheers

On my Ternhill (Piston Provost) and Swinderby (Vampire) Course in 1955-57 we had 11 Regular and 8 National Service U/T Pilots. Three of the N.S. students were University Graduates (2 Chartered Accountants and 1 Solicitor) The other five joined straight from school and left the RAF after the wings parade to join BEA or BOAC.

1950s nanigation
 

I think we only used consul on ground exercises, Astro only taught me great respect for those that had to use it in anger in WW2. My best efforts were cocked hats about 10 miles across airborne, and about 5 on the ground.

Oxford trainng
 

Was anyone out there based at Dalcross 1952-3.
Approach from one direction was over the railway, and we had orders to overshoot if there was a train coming. Apparently the train drivers were upset by low approaches. The other reason for leaving the circuit was if there was a BEA DC3 from the Orkneys on approach.
One other prohibition was low flying pass Cawdor castle as the Thane thought we were looking in bedroom windows.

Consol: Total electrics failure while above cloud over a lumpy part of the country in a Prentice, with a trainee signaller in the back.

I received a poke in the ribs and he passed a note to me, it said "we have had an electrics failure". He was clearly one of our brighter students.

After a short while he managed to get the intercom and some of his gear working and volunteered to get me a bearing.

I sat there with my half mil. topo of central England open on my lap ready to get some idea of my position, and he came up with a Consol bearing from Stavanger ! :D

Consol
 

Bit of info on Consol at
http://tinyurl.com/396a9k

No wonder I got lost. I was counting the dots instead of the dashes.

Consol Beacon
 

Ricardian

Thanks for the reference. Most interesting. The beauty of Consol was that one only needed an MF receiver ( and a Consol Chart ) to use it. Anyone used it at sea ?

Consol
 

mstjbrown, Used whilst yachting having first laminated the consol chart. In the channel often found Bushmills hard to receive, so not getting a good fix, never trusting a poor cut of two lines.
To continue the thread creep, you count the dots & the dashes as check sum to determine how many you lost in the equisignal. In some sectors dots were first in the others dashes, a bit like As & Ns on a range.
There were other sets of stations mainly Soviet with I think the last to be withdrawn fairly recently on the Pacific coast.
Heaven help us all rambling on about 50 years ago when I can't remember where I left the keys 10 minutes ago!