The date was set, the days off were booked and the transport was arranged. The destination was Birmingham Airport, the time was
9am the event was the last flight of the Biman DC10 and last passenger flight
of the type in the world the question was would
we make it ? The answer was only just but more on that later but first let’s go
all the way back to the start of the day.
The day started early with us departing at 4.30am to
ensure we could fit in a few other destinations before our arrival at Birmingham.
Our first port of call was to visit East Midlands Airport to log and photograph
what we could on the deck. We arrived there around 5am to be greeted by a few
nice items with one being a Southern Air 747 N400SA and another being EI-FDP Belgium
Air Force Airbus A321 which was sat outside the paint shop after being
repainted into Belgium Air Force colors after spending around 30 minutes at
East Midlands we moved on to our next destination which was Coventry Airport.
We arrived at Coventry just as the sun was rising at around 7am which made for
some lovely photos of the based aircraft which are left outside and we were
also lucky to be able to bag the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire air ambulance
G-RSCU as it was pulled out of its hanger ready for another day of life saving.
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| Southern Air 747 N400SA |
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| Warwickshire and Northamptonshire air ambulance
G-RSCU |
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| Avro Shackleton WR963 |
Everything was going to plan at this stage and running
to time so we thought we could spare an extra 5 minutes at Coventry to try and
log as much as we could, how wrong where we after planning a stay of around 30
minutes at Coventry which turned into almost an hour we left heading direct Birmingham
and For the Biman the sole reason for our trip, now Coventry is only a 20 minute
drive from Birmingham so we thought we would have ample time to comfortably get
to the airport and be set up in time for the departure of the DC10 well this is
where things started to go wrong we departed Coventry at 8am and thought
everything was going well until we hit the queue now at this point we were
still thinking we would get there with time to spare until we got around the corner,
then we saw this queue went on for miles and we were not moving an inch now we
were starting to panic a little as the time was now 8.30am and we were still 20
minutes from Birmingham, so we started to make plans to rearrange our schedule
and go for the 12pm take off but then we had some luck and the traffic started
to pick up speed and soon we were out of the queue heading full steam direct Birmingham. The time now 9.50am and still over 15 minutes from the airport we hear the
Biman call up on the scanner requesting taxi to the runway at this point our
hearts stopped, thinking that was it and we had missed the opportunity we then
drove past the end of the runway and saw him taxing to the active we still
thinking it was too late were preparing to come back
for the 12pm take off then our driver remembered all his training and turned
into Colin Mcrae taking less than 20 seconds to get to the top of the multi-storey
car park at Birmingham airport. We could see the DC10 lined up at the end of
the runway and like men possessed we whipped our cameras out and ran, Hearts
pounding and still in shock from hair raising ride the Biman took off and like
a majestic bird lifting into the gloomy Birmingham sky, we made it just in time
being one of the most intense moment in my spotting career. After our hair raising experience for the take-off
we thought we needed a safer way to catch the landing so this time we left with
plenty of time to get to a new location however this was not without problems
as we got lost and still only just made it for the landing just not our morning
but we still bagged both landing and take-off so we still achieved what we set
out to do.
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| Biman DC-10 S2-ACR |
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| Biman DC-10 S2-ACR |
After the landing it was straight back in the car and
direct Half Penny Green or was it despite having a sat nav in the car our
driver thought he could take a short cut over the middle of the roundabout
narrowly avoiding the bollard in the center. After another brush with death we continued
our journey now for those of you who do not know spaghetti junction is located
in Birmingham and yes you guessed it we had to navigate it thankfully there was
not much traffic and we had a simple route around it so we survived this leg
without incident and arrived at Half Penny Green safe and sound. Our main aim
here was to simply collect registration’s and move on but me being me and
loving Police Aviation and it being the home of NPAS Half Penny Green I just
had to get some photos and we were lucky they were on pilot training and went
up twice in the short time we were there making me a happy chappy indeed.
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| NPAS Half Penny Green G-HEOI |
After our short visit to Half Penny Green it was
onward and upwards to RAF Cosford another straight forward trip that started
far from it, with the main road that we had to use being closed for access only
and after much debate we took a risk and went down it anyway we could see the
road we needed but our access was blocked by no more than 200 yards so we
contemplated going off road, but then we found another road leading to the road
we needed and the rest of the trip to Cosford went uneventful. We arrived at Cosford
at around 2.30pm and we planned to stay around an hour that idea quickly went
out of the window when we spotted that there was two jaguar’s sat on the apron engines
running. We dashed over thinking they were getting ready to do fast taxi runs we waited theres for something to happen for around 15 minutes excitement
building then we saw the chocks get taken from under the wheels of one of them
at that point we thought all our Christmases had come at once we watched as he
taxied out and then parked to let two grob tutors past but then to our disappointment
he taxied back to his original position and shut down.
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| RAF Jaguar xx119 |
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| RAF Jaguars |
After waiting a few more minutes we decided to go tour the museum and hopefully have time to catch a few late
returners to RAF Shawbury. Things were going to plan and then we were
approached by a nice member off staff who told us a lot of information on the Dornier
17 aircraft they have which they plan to conserve including its possible
registration and crew, after a nice chat for around 10 minutes we then proceeded
to go around the remaining areas of the museum. We then departed Cosford but not
before finding the best petrol station in the world which had its own subway
proper spotters food !
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| Dornier
17 |
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| Dornier
17 |
After our refuel at subway we headed off for our final
destination of the day RAF Shawbury with the hopes of bagging a few late flyers
unfortunately for us we were 5 minutes too late to see the last aircraft land
for the night but we proceeded down to one of the crash gates still with the
hope there would be something in the area but unfortunately that was it. Now this
is where the fun and games starts as we were standing around waiting we had a
visit from the military police to check us out and see what we were doing,
thankfully they were nice chaps and they just let us get on with it. Seen as there was no flying we decided to call it a day and head for home
but on our way out of Shawbury we spotted a very spooky looking building which
turned out to be Moreton Corbet Castle so we spent about 5 minutes there taking
photos before headed off home finally arriving back for 9.30pm after a long but
enjoyable day.
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| Moreton Corbet Castle |
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