No jets!
 

Having spent the last 10 days at my humble Scottish holiday home, I'm disappointed not to have seen/heard a single jet. A far cry from the F1-11's et al from the 80's who used to rattle my chimney pots.

Please can you fix this, I'm here til Sunday.

Pm for a location/grid :)

Sorry, this has to be done:

It's (or rather was) the F-111.

My apologies, yes the F-111, it was a long time ago in my defence.

That was when air forces had aeroplanes; now they just have simulators.

I saw one Tucano today during a very long drive up t'North :{

Just spent 2 days in the Moffat and seen naff all. :(

Wednesday late afternoon treated to a C17 from direction of Cardiff heading towards Severn Bridges lowish and slowish. Week before a Jet Provost heading for Swansea makes a change from all the Civil stuff out of Cardiff and Bristol and the Police Helicopter.

Err. Either it was civil, or we've entered a time warp. Nice though.

Grew up in a bottleneck in LFA 14 in the 70's / 80's & it was the almost daily activity that gave me an interest in military aviation. Back then there wasn't much from the western / allied inventories that I didn't see, from Gnat's to B-52's & everything in between - even occasional US carrier birds.

From my humble Scottish home (no holiday involved) things have been exceptionally quiet for a number of years now & only seem to have gotten more so since the GR4 left Lossie. A couple of Typhoons or Tornadoes maybe once or twice a week, a C-130 once a fortnight & possibly the odd hawk, Tucano or F-15 pair once a month at most are about all there is now...... Highlights in the last year have been a couple of A400M flights & an exceptional low Voyager


At least the incoming SAR S-92's from Inverness, Prestwick & Stornoway are something to see on a regular basis.

Sitting in my study on the north shore of the Holy Loch, every now and again a large RAF transport aircraft will come by at around 200 feet and around 200 knots on a low level exercise. Since my study is itself at around 200 feet above the loch and these aircraft are no more than 300 yards away - I get a side level view - its fun. The latest was an A400M - a very impressive flypast. So I'm afraid Flying Cop - you're in the wrong bit of Scotland.

Lived in the back of beyond SW of Aberdeen in the early 90s. Early morning peace and tranquillity regularly disrupted by low flying Buccs. Didn't mind really.

Hmm, in 1990 the RAF had three Tornado GR.1 wings (Marham, Honington and (sort of) Cottesmore), three Tornado F.3 wings (Leuchars, Coningsby and Leeming) and one each of Jaguars, Harriers, Buccaneers and Phantoms in the UK alone, as well as three training establishments with Hawks. Add to that the Royal Navy Sea Harrier squadrons and the USAFE presence of two A-10 wings and two F-111 wings, and there were rather a lot more fast jets around then.

The equivalent now is three RAF wings (2x Tiffie, 1x Tornado), one Hawk training establishment and one US F-15 wing.:{

I realise I bang the same old drum all the time but talking purely in terms of numbers of FJs does not paint the whole picture. I loved the Jag and would fly it again in a heartbeat but a single Typhoon can carry the payload of a four ship of Jags and self defend. Modern weapons are also far more accurate then they were even in 1990.

I know most people on this forum love to reminisce about the past and how much better it was but the current RAF is really not as bad as many make it out to be. A frontline RAF of seven Typhoon Sqns and some F35s (maybe one maybe two Sqns) to replace the still very capable GR4s may not make for brilliant flypasts over Buckingham palace but is still bloody capable. I'm not mentioning Reaper since I'm purely talking in terms of FJs but it also plays a big part nowadays.

I love flying at low level as well but as much as I hate to admit it it's just not as necessary now as it was a few years back. Modern FJs don't need to be down there to do their job. It's a crying shame and I would happily tool around at low level until I'm old and grey but it's just not the way of the world any more.

The price of progress I'm afraid.

BV

Out sailing with friends today on Loch Earn - we had a Tuc low flyby,a Typhoon low tight turn,A Gyrocopter flyby and an Air Ambulance chopper flyover - noisy bu66ers :)

I'm not dissing the capability of our favourite service, I was just saying how quiet it has become. I've been coming up here for near on 37 years now and never seen it so quiet. Last year we had a few hawks up the valley, and a couple of hercs at LL round and about.

As a young teen, I used to look forward to coming up here, seeing Jags, Harriers, Tornado, hawks, and some very low F-111's. Now i love coming up here for different reasons, but I can't help looking skyward for even the slightest suggestion of something flying past.

My only thing of interest to report was last November, when what i suspect to be an A400 flew over me at LL as i came through Tebay on the M6. I say suspect as all i saw were the nav lights :)

BV, i completely understand the abilities of these new airframes, and the lack of need to skim the hedges, it just doesn't make for the same spectacle :) cheers.

Haven't had owt military over Barnsley for 20 years.
We used to have all sorts over when I was at school. A-10's were ten a penny lining up on the pit as an aiming marker.

In the days of the old low level route in 1970 I once took my unsuspecting wife to Aysgarth Falls in North Yorks as it was a noted beauty spot. Having just done a low level nav course on JPs I knew it was also a turning point on said route. Spent a happy couple of hours sitting in the sun as a succession of aircraft including Vulcans, Buccs, JPs and even the odd Varsity passed overhead at 500' heading South, with the wife remarking that there seemed to be a lot of aircraft around today!

Living in the middle of the Midlands we have a very vanilla flavoured sight of military flying, F-15s either going East - West from LK to the land of my fathers for a spot of low level or going home again vice versa and that's yer lot, apart from the odd Wokka. If the Yanks packed up and went home it might be years before I'd see a military aircraft around here again.

The latest platforms are indeed far more capable and therefore numbers are not the issue.
However, the more bells and whistles you put on something the more likely it is to break.
10 jets on the ground does not mean 10 jets available.
Capable yes, more reliable? Not so sure.

Watched two F-35 platforms descending into L'heath yesterday afternoon - didn't take long though, then back to mowing.

:ok:
:cool: