My friend Nick and I flew up to RAF Cosford on Friday to visit the excellent RAF museum there. The museum is a must-see for any propellerhead and the RAF were very welcoming and friendly. There’s a bit of paperwork to do and there’s an interesting ‘centreline’ join – down the centreline at 1,200 feet then turn downwind descending to 800 feet – but nothing too daunting. Highly recommended. Nick made a great video of the flight and a few of the highlights from the museum.
Nice video. I've never been to the museum, but looks rather good and now inspired to visit.
Be interesting if you ever had an article about flying into RAF bases, I tried without success to get into Coningsby for a magazine launch at the BBMF operations there the other week.
Everyone very helpful, except got caught in a catch-22 security issue: was allowed to land, allowed to park Extra in their hangar overnight, but not allowed to be driven from one part of the base to other in MoD vehicle because they are not insured anymore for civilians. And not allowed to walk as that would be a security risk – unless I had a 'sponsor' on base who knew me and would be responsible for me.
Even the very helpful Flt Lt. did say it was all a bit barmy – especially as been there a few times and once signed in, was allowed to wander around as I wished pretty much.
But that was a few years ago before H&S and new rules I guess.
Mungo
My mate Nick does great videos of our trips. And this one was a good 'un. It's an excellent museum and we only saw two-thirds of it before the weather started closing in. ATC called us to say that it had started to rain – how nice is that?
But the paperwork is a chore. We had to fax our insurance docs and generally fill out forms in triplicate. But everyone was super-nice about it.
I've flown into Coningsby before and there was no trouble at all with that. I also went to RNAS Culdrose last year and was driven around the base by the people there with no problems at all.
I think I'm going to try to visit some more military bases and see what happens and perhaps write an article about it.