The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

That reminds me of the old "Silk Purse" operations by the USAF EC-135's out of Mildenhall....with their trailing wire antenna.

Much used by aircraft of Bomber Command but a problem if crews forgot to reel them in before landing!

Hello All,
I have just joined, and a few words about myself :- I am a retired specialist building surveyor, and restoring vintage motorcycles has been a passion for about 35 years. I was born within earshot of Tollerton Airfield, near Nottingham, and when I was at school in the 1950s/early1960s, there were quite a few Canadians in my school who were the sons and daughters of RCAF personnel serving at Langar, which straddles the Notts/Leics border. When they all left in about 1962, Avro took over at Langar, servicing Shackletons for several years, but these days it is mostly just parachute training aircraft.
For a while I was in the RAF Regiment as an anti-aircraft gunner in 2729 Squadron at Waddington, Lincs. A relative, Flight Sergeant Hewerdine from Grantham, was one of those killed with the Duke of Kent in an enigmatic Sunderland Flying Boat crash up in Scotland, where there was one survivor and more bodies than people listed in the flight manifest.....
My son is retired from the RAF after 23 years service, and he was a Chief Technician (Airframe). He worked on everything from the BBMF Lancaster to the Eurofighter Typhoon. So, you can safely say that I am interested in planes and the places they operated from !!
Cheers,
flatusmaximus

Welcome . I am also interested in HF...both from the POV of a radio amateur(G4OTU) and HF aeronautical . I use mostly a FT1000MP MkV TXRX and also have an AOR 1000 for VHF/UHF.Here on the edge of Dartmoor with its various military areas , and Lyme Bay with firing ranges/danger areas , there is a lot of UHF activity.

Early days were with an R1155 RX listening to Shanwick and ECAR mostly.

Im Wally Bennett 69years young never been in the forces but both my brothers are ex RAF.
I spent 12 years working in the Broughton Airbus factory mostly on thr hawker jet but also on the 600 and 320.
I am trying to find out about a couple of Americans who lodged with my parents in the 50,s and Randy Sloan(e) the man was stationed at Sealand Camp but i have hit a brick wall and cant get no info about him I thought he was Army but could have been Airforce i jus cant remember. Can anybody point me in the right direction please.
Wally

Hello, and a very warm welcome to the ARG forum.

Welcome to the forum flatus. Do you have any photographs of your time with the RAF to share?

Presumably you were equipped with Bofors L70s?

Hi Wally, welcome to the forum

That's probably going to be a tall order going by the information available unfortunately, especially with the time that's passed as well...

No, not Bofors, (but they were still stored 'for a rainy day' in a corner of the hangar). We had Oerlikon 35mm twin barrel guns, radar controlled. Some had been 'liberated' from the Argentinians during the Falklands nastiness, brought back to the UK as spoils of war, then overhauled, recalibrated in English, and then issued to 2729 Squadron at Waddo. Later on some new ones were purchased I think. The set-up consisted of a truck, then the radar trailer, and then the gun on the back as another trailer. They towed OK at lower speeds, but would start to snake at higher speeds without too much provocation. One truck, radar trailer, and gun, got jack-knifed on the motorway, doing a lot of damage. Sadly the radars got purloined from 2729 Sq, to be used for monitoring alleged low flying complaints, and the squadron was disbanded.
flatusmaximus

There seem to be rather more of those Oerlikon 35s around than I had first thought. I knew that a few had been brought from the Falklands but if they were supplemented with new buys that explains why they keep turning up!

In Borneo we used ex Navy Oerlikon 20mm on pedestal mounts but manned by RAF Armourers, not Regiment.

There is still a place for LAA guns for airfield defence even with SAMs in my opinion.