RAF Shawbury Tour

Four lucky winners took part in a base tour at RAF Shawbury thanks to a winning raffle ticket at the Helicentre fly-in at Manley Mere last October.

One of the lucky winners Chris Hall, has written this interesting report following their visit in January this year. Many thanks to Chris for his very informative article.

We met Capt Guy Cowper of Helicentre along with three other lucky winners at 12:00 and was greeted by the Community Relations Officer (CRO) Mark Vickers.

Our first stop was the control tower where we visited the ATC room where all aspects of the operations were explained.
It was interesting to watch 6 military jets transiting through the Litchfield Gap, travelling at 450kts they were a four ship formation followed by a two ship formation. The four headed in the direction of the Mach Loop while the other two headed for North Wales. It was explained that it was a training exercise were the two aircraft would locate and intercept the other four. Of the many blips on the radar screen, the majority were GA aircraft squarking 7000.
Next it was upstairs into the control tower which gave superb views of the airfield and surrounding countryside. Here we were told that the airfield handles around 280,000 movements a year, making it one of the busiest airfields in the UK, amazing as there is no flying at weekends.

We then had a break for lunch before going to the Defence Helicopter Flying School where all the Squirrel HT1 are based. We were then taken to the Squirrel flight simulator where we all took turns having a "flight" where we took off, made a few turns then landed in a field. Having never flown a helicopter, I asked the other members of our group, who were all pilots how it compared to the real thing. They all agreed that the control responses felt identical to actually flying a helicopter.
I felt quite pleased that my "first flight" finished with a "landing" that we were able to walk away from

We then visited the School of Air Traffic Control were they had a mock up of the ATC room where the students do all their training. We were told that this room will soon appear in a TV documentary. The Discovery Channel are using it to re-enact the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Then it was onto the Control Tower simulator which had an identical layout to the real tower but with a 180 degree screen. The demo tape that was playing on the screen shown a Hawk taxing, a Seaking flying over head, a formation of four Tornados overflew before breaking right and landing, an F-15 taxied out and departed and a VC-10 doing a touch and go, all of this with very realistic sound

Next stop was the 60(R) sqn hanger, home of the Bell 412EP Griffin HT1. Most of the Griffin's were in the hangar undergoing maintenance or with technical problems, only three of the nine are currently active.
 

We then crossed over the airfield to the Aircraft Maintenance & Storage Unit hangar's. Inside the first hangar were two Hawk's XX219 & XX311 being prepared for service and will join the Red Arrows, former Red Arrow XX237 was being striped of it's smoke system having reached the end of its fatigue life. There were several Tucano's also being prepared for a return to service. The next hangar contained four Tornado's, a Tucano, two Puma's and over a dozen Hawks including three ex Red Arrow machines. All the aircraft in this hangar had reach the end of life and will eventually be disposed of or scrapped.

 
We did not go to the other two storage hangars, but I was informed that little had changed when I did the "spotters tour" in January 2010 and all the Harriers have been shipped to the USA. Also the Assault Glider Trust hangar was "out of bounds" as they are repainting the floor, but their DC-3 G-AMHJ/KG651 was parked outside.

CRO Mark Vickers informed me that although all the spotters tours are fully booked, there are often last minute cancellations he can be contacted via the details in the Airbase visits thread http://derbosoft.proboards.com/index.cgi....lay&thread=8095

Finally a big thank you to Capt Guy Cowper and all at Helicentre and to CRO Mark Vickers for a very informative tour.