SAS;

If you found the Decca 27 approach into Sumburgh interesting you should have tried the Decca app into Beccles! It was wierd watching the needle travel around a fish hook shape while you flew a steady heading and descended at the right rate.

I flew S61s in the South China Sea and they had Omega. First rain of the day used to unlock the lot, then you were on heading and time and hope the rig appeared on the radar after an hour or so. (Oh and HF to "communicate" with radio op at base and the rigs for the return loads.)

Odd thing was with half the kit we seemed to have a lot less incidents, and those we did have stemmed either from mechanical failure, or mis-handling resulting in either over-torques or hitting bits of structure.

I recently compared a NS operator Ops Manual from CAP360 days with a JAR manual. I was amazed at how good SOP's and practises we learned the hard way were gone.

SND

Zhuhai Heliport. You were so lucky having clear take off areas over the sea than having factories and tower blocks at each end like Xili.

VFR captains at Sumburgh would use a 300 ft. cloudbase to legally fly to the Shetland Basin at 200ft. and return at the same. At night IIRC it was 500ft. and 300ft. I came back one night and was told to hold at Boddom because a Loganaire Trotter was trying to land in the crosswind. The Trotter eventually gave up and said goodbye. After a couple of minutes I asked for onward clearance; silence.

I knew the terrain from Boddom to the field backwards and as we were in contact with ground the I routed towards the field. The cloud cleared almost immediately and there was the airfield. It was noticeable that there was a series of lights going up the tower as the controller clattered back up the stairs.

We then got landing clearance.