Had a good laugh going to Google Earth to have a look.  

14 hours ago, Chock said:

It's also where I keep my horse, Snorky. 🙂

Go on - we must have a photo! 

3 minutes ago, Petraeus said:

Go on - we must have a photo! 

Snorky:

Flying around rural England and France in a Steam Gauge aircraft is interesting. it id often hard to work out which one is the cow paddock and which one is the grass runway,.

If you think EGCC's runway 23L is bonkers, try going to Camphill just to the E-SE of Manchester and landing on that. If you like coming in through windshear, you'll love that place.

Oh, and have you noticed the road which goes under the runway at EGCC? Yes, really. And if you like ghost stories, there's loads of weird stuff at EGCC. Some people I know who work there won't even go in certain buildings on their own.

Edited May 2, 20215 yr by Chock

1 hour ago, Chock said:

Snorky:

What sort of V speeds are you getting for your horsepower/ airframe with that?

6 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

What sort of V speeds are you getting for your horsepower/ airframe with that?

If you think I'm bad at flying helicopters, you should see how cack I am at horseriding. 🤣

Actually, she's a pretty good jumper for her age (22, not that you'd know it from her appearance and demeanour). She has a nice temperament although if you let her take liberties, she will do so, but you can ride her without the reins and even bareback if you are so inclined and she will do what you command if you know what you are doing. She has a fun cheeky personality and although I daresay I am biased, I do genuinely think she is one of the nicest horses I know, with loads of character. Love her to bits.

16 hours ago, Chock said:

 

Originally, it was built to expand upon the capabilities of Manchester's first airport, which was Barton Aerodrome (now City Airport Manchester - EGCB - and one of the fancy detailed ones in MSFS). EGCC Manchester International used to be called Ringway Airport (and still is by some locals), which is the name of a small area up the road from it near Wilmslow. In WW2 it was RAF Ringway and was a training base for paratroops and used for other operations with training SOE agents for clandestine parachute drops into France (i.e. the spies and secret agents in WW2), as well as being a main construction site for AVRO Lancasters and several other types, since a lot of aviation industry was in and around the North West (hence all those bombers having names of northern towns, including the Lancaster originally having been the twin-engined Manchester.

 

 

Very interesting post Chock, particularly about the SOE agents in WW2 as my oldest uncle was an SOE agent during WW2 but I never got to speak to him about it very much before he died, Although he did tell me some things, He didn't talk about it too much, I bet he had some tales to tell, if he ever felt like retelling the stories. I wonder if he practiced parachuting from RAF Ringway?

Edited May 2, 20215 yr by eaim

7 minutes ago, Chock said:

If you think I'm bad at flying helicopters, you should see how cack I am at horseriding. 🤣

Actually, she's a pretty good jumper for her age (22, not that you'd know it from her appearance and demeanour). She has a nice temperament although if you let her take liberties, she will do so, but you can ride her without the reins and even bareback if you are so inclined and she will do what you command if you know what you are doing. She has a fun cheeky personality and although I daresay I am biased, I do genuinely think she is one of the nicest horses I know, with loads of character. Love her to bits.

She looks great. Looks like she has a little Exmoor in her but a little too big to be one?

Edited May 2, 20215 yr by Will Fly For Cheese

Specifically, she is a 'Bright Bay Connemara' and not very big, technically if she was a couple of hands shorter she'd be a pony rather than a horse, but still big enough to be a long way down if you fall off. 🤣

Photo's of the day, that BEA Airbus, and Snorky! 
Who knew where a thread about UK airport strangeness would take us!  

@Chock; Fascinating reading, thanks very much!  Nice gee-gee too.

To the OP;  as has been mentioned - we're old europe and much of our aviation infrastructure has been developed piecemeal over decades on largely ex-military airfields or major airports in or around capital cities that are nowadays simply in the wrong place.

The UK is a classic example.  We're 65 million people crammed into an area roughly the size of Texas and Oklahoma.  Heathrow - by far our most important airport - is a historical anomaly which has been a blight on south east England and our capital.  

12 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

historical anomaly

Pardon me for asking, but why a historical anomaly?

2 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

@Chock; Fascinating reading, thanks very much!  Nice gee-gee too.

To the OP;  as has been mentioned - we're old europe and much of our aviation infrastructure has been developed piecemeal over decades on largely ex-military airfields or major airports in or around capital cities that are nowadays simply in the wrong place.

The UK is a classic example.  We're 65 million people crammed into an area roughly the size of Texas and Oklahoma.  Heathrow - by far our most important airport - is a historical anomaly which has been a blight on south east England and our capital.  

Yes, this is probably true, but some of the items seem like newer construction.  For example there is a weird Taxiway S, very short and oddly located.  Also Taxiway JE and JF, why the grass island divider on probably the busiest concrete at the place.

Thank you for your comment.  You may want to keep in mind your land area comparisons, you are actually smaller then my single state here in Oregon (99k sq miles), and we a somewhat of a mid-sized state.  Texas is at 270k sq miles and Oklahoma at 70k for 340k total.  The UK clocks in at 94k max.

I have driven the equivalent of the length of your country and back again for a single day at work.  However it was pointed out to me by Englander that though it may be true in miles it is not the same in time.  I did my trip in 8 hours, he said you cant even do the M25 in that time (he may have been joking though)

2 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Pardon me for asking, but why a historical anomaly?

Don't know if it is, really. Heathrow started life as a grass airfield for the Fairey aircraft company in the late stages of WWII. The government requisitioned it under wartime powers with the intention of never returning it, as the requisition powers said they should do. Instead they wanted to develop it into a replacement for Croydon Airport which at the time was the main civil London airport.

Over the decades of London's expansion, what used to be a relative trickle of flights filled Heathrow to capacity - before covid it was at something like 98% of its theoretical maximum. The location means adding a runway or new terminal involves bulldozing large amounts of neighbouring houses and industrial units, with all the opposition you can imagine to that.

Because it's on the western side of London and the prevailing UK wind is sou'westerly, about 80% of approaches during the year fly over central London at a few thousand feet. Not great from a safety or noise point of view, especially for the outer West Londoners who have commercial airliners pouring down the ILS or thundering off the departure runway every minute or 2. (In fact you can hear a Turkish Airlines jet during the 2 minute silence in Prince Philip's funeral, held in Windsor just below the final approach/departure path for the northern runway)

They alternate arrivals and departures in the mid-afternoon to give the locals as much relief as they can but night flights are almost completely prohibited; by 11pm traffic's usually stopped.

On the flip side it supports something like 40,000 jobs in the aviation industries we all love.

The vast majority of British airfields and airports date back to WWII Air Force construction. If you look at Google or Bing aerial imagery of a UK airfield you can still see the old A layout from the wartime runways when all airfields had a standard triangle pattern no matter where in the country they were built. Squinting very carefully at Stansted will reveal one of the wartime cross runways, still just about visible in the modern taxiway layout.