Callsigns during the 80's
 

Sitting here having had a few red wines I was trying to remember some of the callsigns we used to work with.(sad I know)

84-88; I can only recall a few and if doesn't break any rules I was hoping some of you fine people could fill the memory loss.

We worked with 1 Group types for the main. Along with a lot of colonial cousin types and the odd Air Defender God.

Sad to say I only recall Tahoe and Saxon. Saxon being 617 I think. Tahoe might have been 48TFW callsigns.

Upper Heyford and Lakenheath were our main customers but A10's out of Bentwaters were common.

I recall 617 sqn, shortly after changing from Vulcans to Tornado GR1s, had certain callsign which had to be changed shortly after to the less contentious "Black Dog" no prizes for guessing what it was!:ok:

FB:)

Rubic
Bobcat
Tartan
Tarzan
Zenith
Jester
Kayak
Madras
Kebab
Magpie
Raider
Huge (A10 but may have been 2ATAF)

The JPs on the Low Level Trg Sqn at Finningley always caused ATCOs problems with callsign "Darley"; read-backs ranged from "Darlek" to "Darling". Although by the sound of some of the girlies at Eastern Radar the latter wasn't a bad thing!

The B Word

PS Never did work out what a "Darley" was and Google makes me none the wiser.

Well, am I sad or what?

The Guide's Internet Callsign list - United Kingdom (GB)

Darley's was a Brewery in Thorne.

DARLEY

Darley's
 

Also known as a pint of "eye of the needle" in the OM!

Brain

Thank's mate, mystery solved.

Taxydual

They've mis-spelled "Darley" as "Darly" in your list...:8

The B Word

"Wellard" was a good callsign until some spotty pratt on Eastenders named his dog the same thing...

As an aside. When 25 Sqn formed at Leeming with the F3, one of the NATO callsigns allocated to it was TIMID. Suprisingly, it was never used!

Sea Harrier callsign 'Polecat' was normally referred to as Poll Tax, which sort of dates me!

On 72 we used to use Swallow on detachments. Funny how it used to end up as "Swallow 69" :D

At Leeming on JPs, we had a formation callsign of "Resign". ATC didn't quite hear our check-in and queried the callsign, to which our leader replied "Resign, you know, as in PVR..."

Linton JPs - formation callsigns "Jericho Red" & "Jericho Black".

Periodically a batch of new trigraphs was sent to ATC for allocation to their home based Squadrons. Selecting a suitable trigraph for an unpopular squadron was fair game. So if you ever used something like DIC, TIT or NOB, you now know why! ;)

Dalek was a 230 callsign in RAFG; have you ever tried explaining what one of those is to a German controller?

However, same airfield, now with Tarzan as the callsign - "Tarzan, this is Jane, you are clear to land".

Horseman was used on the F-3 OCU. Check-ins went "Death, Famine, Pestilence, Plague....London Mil, the 4 Horsemen with you!" Any more than a 4-ship and anything went, Flatulence, etc....

Linton JPs in the early 70's...I recall a trigraph of Foxtrot Uniform Xray and formation callsigns of Sputum Yellow and Sputum Green....!

Callsigns
 

Marham 94 had the Canberra's using FO2 as a trigraph, app controllers had to say 'FO2 54 you are cleared to Foxtrot Off !'
Pilot said , huh, thanks, we did'nt think of it.

80's Callsigns
 

I think that the most ignominious callsign I was ever allocated was in the mid 80s when we were operating into Aldergrove with VIPs on board. The ‘powers that be’ had decided that going in with an ‘Ascot’ callsign was a security risk as the balaclava clad Paddy with a SAM launcher over his shoulder would listen into ATC and identify the incoming target. The brilliant idea was that inbound over the IOM you would switch from ‘Ascot’ to the secure callsign. It was presumed, I guess, that someone listening in would not have monitored the change over and the same voice with a different callsign. When I checked in as ‘lemon’ :bored: even the ATCO felt inclined to say, ‘………..and who on earth picks these callsigns?’ I am sure that Paddy never realised that the gleaming white Andover with the RAF roundels, callsign ‘Lemon’ was not an interesting target – much!

An aside; in those days I always wanted to get the opportunity to say ‘Andover over Andover on handover, over’ managed it just once going into Boscombe Down. Not strict RT, and silly, but what the heck.