Flying Mickey


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NEARING THE END IN SCOTLAND Written: 21 DECEMBER 2007
The end is closing here in Scotland. I had my last rostered flight in the Jetstream, but because I'm standby throughout Christmas, I expect to get a couple of more flights before I get on the plane and move home to Norway on January 3rd. There has been alot of different flying around the UK in November and December, and even though it has been alot of positioning around, I've enjoyed the variation. I flew the inaugural flight for our new corporate shuttle that we fly for Babcok from Edinburgh to Plymouth via Glasgow and Bristol-Filton. Babcock is an engineering company which is building parts of the two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy. The flight starts at 0700 from Edinburgh and is in Plymouth around 10. Then we have a dayroom in a hotel in town before we fly back the reverse route at 1730. Plymouth is situated on the southwest coast of England, and the airport has the shortest runway I have landed on with a Jetstream (1161m).	Plymouth with its 1161 meters Plymouth Down by Plymouth Hoe where Sir Francis Drake set sail to defeat the Spanish Armada
I've also finally got Coningsby and Marham in my logbook, which we fly to from Warton. Coningsby is apparently the worlds biggest Eurofighter base, while I think Marham mainly have Tornados. One of the days I flew into Marham, a search and rescue helicopter was scrambled as we came in. It turned out that a Tornado navigator had fallen out of the cockpit while being inverted during a test flight. The ejection seat had not been well enough secured, so he and his seat fell through the canopy. He was later found dead in a field.
Coningsby	Marham
Last week I flew a charter between Hawarden in North Wales and Wick in North Scotland. Hawarden is run by Airbus and is where the wings for the A380 is built. The Airbus super transporter Beluga flies in here daily, but unfortunately we came 30 minutes too late. At least now I know where they come from, cause they can frequently be heard on Manchester frequency, and one day it came straight across just above us.	G-CCPW in front of the Airbus factory at Hawarden
Based on my limited knowledge of russian fighters, I believe this is a MIG-23 between two MIG-21. The owner apparantly has a whole bunch of old russian planes parked aournd Hawarden	I'm guessing this means something like "Danger"
I wish you all a Merry Christmas. I will be spending Christmas here in Inverness, but because I get the worlds best xmas present by getting to move home after New Year, I think I'll survive.
Between SYY and BEB Approaching Benbecula Another day with pretty lights in the Western Isles	Sunrise on my way to Marham The airport can be seen on the right of the furthermost island Landing in Benbecula