EGD206
 

A bit baffled about this one, it seems to be active all weekdays and has been for quite some time, I have seen that silly airship outside once but never flying (how many hours has it flown in the years of its existance, or should that be minutes?)
Is the ridiculous 6000ft danger area just in case someone forgets to tie the bleedin waste of money down when they leave it outside, or what?

Honestly the impact on safety is out of order, It's bad enough squuezing between Cranfield, Old Warden and Drone tests whilst looking out for gliders without having completely silly danger areas put up just because some business is too lazy to generate a NOTAM for the rare occassions they take their toy out to play

Cardington Danger Area - again; we've had these discussions before.
Try looking up as you fly past not down. The notification isn't for the Airlander airship, it's for the tethered met (barrage type) balloons they fly from there, the cable being the hazard; a vertical steel cable 6,000ft long just might do a bit of damage to a powered aircraft which flies into it. It won't just wrap itelf round your wing by the way, more likely it will saw it off.

Don't think the Airlander's at Cardington any more. Reported to have moved to a 'new production facility, also in the Bedford area'.

It was nothing to do with the airships.

The DA is used by the Met Office Research Station about a quarter mile from shed 2. They regularly fly tethered balloons with various instruments hung on the wire. They also do UAV testing.

The station there is a longstanding research base, an outstation of a Met Office department called Observation Based Research, run from their national HQ in Exeter.

And you can always ask Cranfield if the DA is hot or cold on 122.855; straightforward enough as they're the local basic service provider.

G

Forgive me if I have already told the tale but my memory is not getting any better. In 1962 I was droning around the Oakington area with my patient instructor in a Varsity. ATC called us and asked us to set off in a NE'ly direction to see if we could see a balloon that had broken loose from Cardington. After a while and no contact my instructor asked them what was so important about the balloon? "Apparently, the Met Man is still in it" came the reply! I believe he got down somewhere in East Anglia undamaged just before he ran out of England.

I don't think they do that any more!

G

In my spare time, I used to have a great deal of interest in flying activities at Weston- on-the-Green (both gliding and para). The first jump students from 1 PTS at Abingdon would usually do their first 2 or 3 jumps from the cage suspended underneath a "barrage balloon" from 800 feet before they got round to jumping out of a real aeroplane. The balloon organisation was based at Hullavington and when they arrived at WOTG, it was laid out on the balloon bed (on the west side of the airfield) and initially inflated with compressed air to make sure it didn't leak before they put expensive gas in it. One day I was invited to join in this procedure. It was a case of take your shoes off, have your socks checked for foreign objects and then enter through a flap in the bottom of the envelope and step inside. It was quite an experience for me.

Did they move it by road?https://www.pprune.org/images/icons/46.gif

Cranfield APP recently suggested to me that the area is now cold every weekend. It's good to know either way since the zone is an easy Gotcha as you route to either arm of the 21 RNAV approach.

Didn't think Cranfield APP worked weekendshttps://www.pprune.org/images/icons/46.gif

You are very well informed Chevvron, or bad news travels fast! Cranfield ATC won't be working weekends at all from Oct 20 until "at least the end of the year". The closures relate to the need to train ATC on the procedures associated with the new digital control tower...