Abingdons Alive still & Abingdon Fayre Air event
 

I wish to hear from anyone who used to be based at RAF Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
I ( & 4 others) now organise an annual Air & Country Fayre show Charity event each May on the former base (now under Army occupation)and we have a website set up to promote our expanding event.

Any pictures you would like to see on our website from 'RAF Days' can be sent via our website to be included on our RAF Abingdon tribute page:

www.abingdonfayre.com

and go to the contacts page.
Make sure they have your copyright on them!
Our events can also be viewed, our most recent being 4th May 2003.
Abingdon is still used by the RAF in the form of 612 VGS with Vigilant motorgliders most weekends and used by Merlin / Pumas at times from nearby Benson.
Nice to keep the aviation spirit alive here!

Just a quick one to say how good the fayre was this year, keep up the good work, and you'll keep the spirit of the old place alive and well.

Cheers for the free advertising for the VGS too! :ok:

Just make sure that they don't call it "Dalton Barracks" in the NOTAMS any more.

We all know where Abingdon is, but only the Army know (or care about) the names of barracks. :rolleyes:

Anyone wishes to look at an official 'Abingdon Fayre' report, heres one by Damien Burke on our latest 2003 event held in early May:

http://www.f4aviation.co.uk/airshow0...n/abingdon.htm

On this report, you'll see an air to ground photo, it shows you what it looks like today, not much change altho across RWY 26, theres now an Army peri fence across it & so length reduced by 1300ft to now 3500ft approx, and main 18/36 (long dark coloured runway on air to ground) has been shortened to about 6000ft and both are in reasonable shape (would need to be as i got a JP in there which incidentally is the first Jet to land back at Abingdon since closure in 92).

The Control Tower is boarded up but who knows, could end up being utilised again being as airfield still used by the RAF (so seems daft to close the place really).

If any RAF personnel has photos of the US Navy F14 Tomcats, F18 Hornets, A6 Intruders, S3 Viking (yes the one that overshot the runway & ended up on peri road! - rumour has it a policeman slapped a ticket on it as on double yellow lines!!!!), EA-6B Prowler from the cancelled Battle of Britain 88 airshow (due to RAF Phantom crashing whilst practicing its routine day before), please get in touch as would like to aquire images :
contact [email protected]

What a shame that the idiot dung eaters have ruined the aerodrome. Why couldn't we have given them Machrihanish or somewhere instead?

1st Jet to land since 92....
 

Hiya Neil,
Sorry but not quite spot on on the intel there.....
The JP was the 1st to land intentionally at Abingdon since it closed, but we did have an exec jet in a couple of years back one Saturday morning (foreign pilot mistook us for Oxford). Other than that, I can't think of any others though.

Chinchilla 612 - do i know you?

Must say its good to have the resident RAF unit involved in my event each year - gives the locals a close look at the Grob and the role 612 VGS play at ABingdon.
Ever thought of fitting dummy sidewinders on the wingtips and call it the new RAF Ground attack aircraft??? - that'll confuse the buffs at my event!

Do you still have problems with tresspassers ie: Dog walkers, Army families etc on the airfield???

I tried to get a fence put up from the rear guardroom to the Mil gate on end of RWY 36 to help stop idiots crossing the active but no joy there.
Silly to have the Mil gate on the end of a runway anyway, remember the C130 Ex in 93, and was stopped by a guard cos of an outbound Herk - shall i say very exciting (scary!!) to see this thing hurtling towards you.
I guess when the Army had the gate built, they thought 'no more planes' - wrong, its been used by the Benson Helis for 10 years and what ever else ie: C130's, AAC heli's, Para dropping aircraft, AH64 Apaches over the years plus now our aircraft for my event.

You should have the authority to throw Dog walkers etc off shouldn't you being as its MOD property.

Pity RAF Benson did not take over the airfield part fully for its Heli force for training properly.

I am groundcrew on the Grobs at Benson. Just about everyone who is involved would like to relocate back to Abingdon. We are constantly bombarded with noise from those infernal Heliocopeters and they get in the way somethin` `orrid. The pilots are always complaining of having to hold off whilst a chopper on a ten mile radar approach does his stuff. By the time he gets in and clear, our man could have landed, reloaded and been lined up ready to go again. The alignment of the runways at Abingdon is better too.
London and Southampton UAS`s could be relocated there as well which should make the whole thing viable. We have to have new accommodation built for us at Benson anyway so why not build it at Abingdon and do us all a favour.

Mike W

Enjoyed the show Neil. Thank you.

Further to my message earlier re the US Navy aircraft, here is the S3 Viking that arrived for static display for the 88 'cancelled airshow' and proceeded to run of the end of RWY 36 and ended up on barrow rd!

This shot was taken on being pushed back onto the airfield side!!!

http://www.angelfire.com/ab7/abingdo...f/SAVE0044.JPG

(piccy taken from our website 'RAF Abingdon tribute page')

As you'll read on the piccy caption, i heard that the following week the S3 flew a test flight to confirm all was ok, for it to burst a tyre on landing, hence a C2 Greyhound flew in with a new tyre!

All US Navy aircraft was from the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Can anyone shed any more light on this subject??:cool:

Quality shot Neil - especially with the low flying aircraft sign in the shot like that :p

I fondly recall lazy summers in Abingdon from my youth whilst it was an RAF airfield. Excursions to 6 AEF as a cadet in the 80s and then later whilst on OUAS. I also have stayed there since it has been changed to Dalton Barracks.

To whomever was moaning about the name and stated that only 'the army cares' about the names of barracks. I suppose that RAF Mount Pleasant and RAF North Front are the names of places are they? Come to think of it isn't Innsworth not in Churchdown, Glos not actually Innsworth? Maybe you need the place names because it is too difficult to remember where they are otherwise.

Jesting aside though. It is hardly our fault that we had to take over Abingdon. Though admittedly at least it is near to one of the country's most wonderful cities. However to blame us for not maintaining it is a little harsh. We don't have quite as much money to spend as the RAF seem to have on facilities and certainly can't afford to maintain airfields that we hardly need. Real aircraft only needing an H painted on the grass and the odd nav aid would be nice.

Hmm I feel some banter incoming....:ok: :uhoh:

Vortex....

RAF Mount Pleasant - could it have been so named because the nearest high ground is called Mount Pleasant.

RAF North Front is er ... in front of the North end of the Rock.

When the Gib Regt took over the camp they changed the name to Devil's Tower Camp because there was a fortified tower was called the Devil's Tower and it is just off Devil's Tower Road. The tower was demolished during WW2 because it blocked lines of fire for the defenders.

Appear to have missed my point. The fact is that they are named after something symbolic which happens to be nearby not necessarily the place name of where they actually are.

i.e. it's is not like RAF North Front was going to get confused with all the other nearby RAF stations had it been called RAF Gibraltar or even RAF La Linea or RAF Andalucia (come on I'm asking for it now!!)

If you are allowed quite sensibly to name a station after a nearby phyiscal feature then shouldn't you have a go at the MATLOs for naming ships after places that don't even have docks ala HMS Coventry or HMS Sheffield. I mean the crew aren't from Sheffield and nor is the ship?

My point was actually that we imaginatively name our barracks from tradition and give them the name of someone, that someone somewhere thinks is important. As opposed to habitually just name it after the nearest feature.

A bit like schools or hospitals (yes Eton, Harrow and Gordonstoun are but a few exceptions) more often than not have names of people its called tradition.

As some services on the have only been around long enough to have habits instead of traditions this may well be why it is so difficult to understand. :ok:

Vortex Thingy


So why, when you lot took over RAF Hullavington, did you name it "Hullavington Barracks"?

Where's the tradition and creativity there?

Well it's like this.....

We have had so much creativity since we began naming barracks in 1661 under King Charles II that the creative namers have had to take a break. Post Operational Creative Tour leave.

To this end as an interim measure Hullavington has been given the temporary name of Hullavington Barracks. The actual reasons are two fold. It is so that the RAF personel who are still collecting equiment from the site can find it now it is in the hands of the Army and also to allow us to use your stationary and road signs for a few years.

What we'll then do is give it a name like Camilla Parker-Bowles Barracks or some such in true army tradition. :D

Or maybe we are just cso creative that we did excalt ywhat you didn't expect us to do by changing the name to Hullavingotn Barracks knowing that you'd look it up anyways not really believing that we'd actaully name a barracks after a geographical feature. (Unless it was in NI, BFG, Cyprus, etc)

LOL:ok:

Getting back to Abingdon, have a look at the piccy i have attached, any Jaguar Fanatics out there may like it.
Basically i was invited to watch a Jag undergo Engine test in the Detuner facility.
A 'Tech' asked me to look through the side window in the facility whilst the engines were run up to various stages of afterburner - heres the result!! - even tho the back end was in this facility, it was still bloody noisy!!!

http://www.angelfire.com/ab7/abingdo...atAbingdon.jpg

Jaguars in 'F' Hangar were a sight to behold, i think there were 18 at least at any one time on various states of Servicing.
'F' Hangar in its own right is hugely impressive, i went in there during my time as an RAF civvy employee to see it 'empty' just before closure - a sad sight indeed, makes you wonder why the RAF could give up such a big Hangar when, for example the 28Sqn Merlins at Benson are being shoved into various hangars because of lack of room!

Someone mentioned about the state of the airfield - i can remember in the first few years of Army occupation, many exercises took place on the airfield involving trucks etc, part of the fun was to 'run over' the existing runway lights and Traffic lights!.
So a group of us 3 years ago removed all remaining lights and traffic lights so to be a safer enviroment for the likes of the resident 612 VGS and other users.

I think a ban is in place for Army vehicles etc to not drive down the runways so to keep them FOD free although odd civilian cars do tend to blast down the strips (even when the VGS are operating!!! and do not read the keep off signs).Thats what you get when theres an entrance on the end of a runway.

prOOne - Hullavington Barracks was renamed Buckley Barracks about a month ago. Now that won't cause much confusion....

On 11 May 1857 at Delhi, India, Deputy Assistant Commissary Buckley was one of nine men who defended the Magazine for more than five hours against large numbers of mutineers, until, on the wall being scaled and there being no hope of help, they fired the Magazine. Five of the gallant band died in the explosion and one shortly afterwards, but many of the enemy were killed.

http://www.chapter-one.com/vc/award.asp?vc=146

JB

More brown job inconsistency!

Where is the pride and tradition in Waterbeach barracks? You lot took over RAF Waterbeach in 1967.

RAF Bassingbourn became an Army base in 1969, known as ATR Bassingbourn ever since! BTW the other 4 Army Training Regiments are called such exciting and inspiring things as ATR Lichfield, ATR Glencorse, ATR Pirbright and ATR Winchester, makes your heart swell with pride does the grand and historical title of Winchester.

Perhaps the pinical, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst?

PrOOne,

As you have aptly pointed out, all of theses establishments, obviously including the venerable old RMAS, are training establishments.

It should be clear that one cannot understand the traditions and comeraderie of another glorious day in the Royal Regiment of X, Army Air Corps, or any other of God's own 60 regiments until they have been taken to one of these establishments.

At these establishments we break them mentally and physically and remould them in a soldier like fashion to be finely tuned instruments of warfare and loyal warriors to the crown (Not the government. Tony, beware the revolution). Members of a family that those outside revere and respect only looking on in awe at what they could have been had they also been able enough and lucky enough accepted.

Before recruits have had the opportunity to be touched by CMSR or worse (RMAS) they could not possibly have the breadth of knowledge and parallelism of thought required to understand the concepts outlined in my last post and thus to give them a onetime shot at the title we let the names of training establishments reflect geographical locations so that they can find them and then and only then when we have them where we want them we expand their minds and show them their true selves and the real world.

Having been thus enlightened we let them back into the realm of other people knowing that they will not reveal the age old secrets of how they know where these darned hard to find barracks are:ok:

But dear Vortex Ringy Thingy,

Waterbeach is very much operatonal, has been since you marched in during 1967, dont the RE count?

As for your airfields............................

Royal Air Force Station Wattisham, you have renamed "Wattisham Airfield"

Royal Air Force Dishforth you have renamed "Dishforth Airfield"

Royal Air Force Netheravon is now "Netheravon Camp" (is there a story behind that?)

Dont the AAC need tradition and spirit and history?