The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

I spent two years working for European Air Charter who were based at Bournemouth and I flew from there a few times in the 747, it was quite something taking off on that runway in something that big! I last went to BOH last year to visit the aviation museum which is really interesting.

Welcome to the forum

Rich

It is a nice museum there, not half of what it was when it was airside and had live heritage aircraft based and maintained there. But that is no fail of the musuem, the airport ended the lease and built a car park on some of the land, letting out the hangars to more modern aviation companies.

The runway at Hurn is an incredible length now and is regularly used by a 747(sp).
Sadly it lots most of its airlines due to increasing costs when they built the new terminal. Hurn is pretty much a local aerodrome now, used by flying schools, maintenance companies and a few other company fleets.

Peter, a 50ft camera pole would be fairly dangerous! But very handy for the shots you want.

Welcome to AiX Enginmaneer,

Being in the New Forest area and that part of England in general means that there is a great deal of mixed military heritage from WW2 in particular.

I expect you have already browsed the threads applicable to your local airfields so will have a better understanding of their history. Current photographs and comments on remaining structures and features are always welcome.

Have you considered a tethered balloon? There is a big book of aerial photos of archaeological sites on Crete: "The Aerial Atlas of Ancient Crete" by J.W. Myers, E.E. Myers and G. Cadogan (Thames & Hudson, 1992). They began with a spherical balloon but moved on to a 35mm Canon plus a Hasselblad, on a frame under a bigger balloon and with radio control of the shutter release. There is a chapter describing the technical details, including the rather large balloon: a 4-finned blimp of 1000 cu. ft capacity and 34 feet long! It looks about half the size of a WW2 barrage balloon. One can see the tethering rope in a few of the aerial photos. Most of their images were from heights below 200m.

With modern high-end compact cameras I would have thought that quite a small (?helium, weather?) ballon would do for more modest altitudes.

Martin

Now that is a clever idea!
The only problem being, there are restrictions for use of balloons under the CAA, the same as there is with drones. I'm sure that 50ft is no problem, but you would have to judge the altitude yourself.

Plus, if you were on Ashley walk range, it is very close to Stoney cross, a main air navigation route through the south! Very heavily used at various altitudes.

Evening All.

My name is Andy, I live in Leicester and have had a fascination with military aviation, airfields etc since I was knee high. I'm an HGV Driver by trade and also a member of the Army Reserves, which does get me onto abandoned airfields from time to time, if still under MOD control. I have a 'thing' about abandoned airfields, call it a curiosity, and I work from what used to be Bitteswell Airfield and still remember seeing some of the old buildings before ASDA and other buildings were built on them!

77andyb;154744 wrote:

Evening All.

My name is Andy, I live in Leicester and have had a fascination with military aviation, airfields etc since I was knee high. I'm an HGV Driver by trade and also a member of the Army Reserves, which does get me onto abandoned airfields from time to time, if still under MOD control. I have a 'thing' about abandoned airfields, call it a curiosity, and I work from what used to be Bitteswell Airfield and still remember seeing some of the old buildings before ASDA and other buildings were built on them!

Welcome to AiX Andy,

I expect that you have already browsed the airfields of Leicestershire section of the forum. Feedback on any extant original buildings at Bitteswell would be welcome.