Happy New Year!

Well, it's a bit late for that, but it seems no-one else has posted in here this year.

I am a new member. My name is Tim Collins. I am an airline pilot with a major British airline, and ex-RAF. I've been flying for some 41 years, and I'm the son of an RAF Lightning pilot (AVM Pete Collins) and the grandson of one of the RAF's earliest recruits and a pioneer of Electronic Warfare in WW2, Sqn Ldr FW 'Collie' Collins. In the RAF, I flew JP3/5, Hawk T1, Hunter FGA9/T7, Lightning T4/5 (only briefly!), Jetstream T1, Hercules C1/3, Bulldog, and Chipmunk. I was based at or regularly flew from Henlow, Linton-on-Ouse, Curch Fenton, Elvington, HoSM, Dishforth, Topcliffe, Valley, Mona, Llanbedr, Lossiemouth, Wick, Binbrook, Finningley, Gamston, Sturgate, Lindholme, Lyneham, Keevil, Kemble, Brize, Fairford, Hullavington, Colerne, Cosford, Woodvale, Turnhouse and probably a few others. As a 'brat', I lived at Waterbeach, West Raynham, Coltishall, Leuchars, Wattisham, Gutersloh and High Wycombe. As a C130 pilot, I visited pretty much every active - and quite a few retired or inactive - airfields in the RAF's inventory in the 1980s and 90s, both at home and overseas.

Airfields have been an interest ever since I can remember, and I have a fairly good collection of historic referencees. I also, with Flt Lt Nick Stein, in 1989 completed a flight to 'survey' 70 WW2 airfields in Yorkshire, North Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire in one day, landing on (IIRC) more than half of them. I still have the records of that day, which was flown as an entry in the BAC Dawn To Dusk flying competition, for which we won the Pooley sword.

These days, my UK airfield visits are few, though I often pass or travel over disused fields close to my home in Suffolk on my regular cycling routes. My job takes me to the world's major airports, but none of them have the nostalgic and wistful feel of our sites. I find myself sometimes looking over the former RAF Sudbury, imagining the Liberators and Fortresses taking off on one of the frequent big raids late in the war, and wondering how my Grandad (who flew in 100Gp's ECM Fortresses from Oulton) would have felt as part of those operations.

Fairly soon, I'll be retired from professional flying and I'll have more time to indulge my interest. In the meantime, I'll occasionally dip into here to see what people have found, and to maybe add a relevant memory or two. Thanks for having me!

Welcome to the Forum Tim I am sure you will find lots of posts to interest you the Forum .
If you have any pictures & photos that you might want to share with us we would love to see them .
Regards ,
Bomber .

Hi Bomber, and thank you. I have quite a lot, but at the moment it's all in hard copy in albums - though I have digitised some of my father's stuff. Over time, I hope to digitise all of it and I will share it as and when I've done so. The physical records of the Dusk to Dawn flight will probably go to the Yorkshire Air Museum, though I've yet to talk to Graham Pitchfork about that (he was involved on the day!), but I'm quite certain they'll be of interest here.

Welcome Tim, I look forward to seeing your inputs. It's useful also to have the view of an aviator during some discussions.

Ah, I should have added Ascension (Wideawake), and RAF Stanley and Mount Pleasant to the list of my bases - I spent over 2 years in the South Atlantic! But these places are pretty well documented compared some other overseas locations.