RN Historic Flight Heritage Day - RNAS Yeovilton
Saturday 14th May 2005

Organised by John Beattie, the Manager of the Historic Flight, and Michael Ryan the Senior Pilot of the FAA Squadron, some 200 paying public were expected to attend this day consisting of Flying Display, Lectures, Sea Harrier Simulator sessions, FAA Museum, Flights in classic aircraft and a Static Park. Twenty aircraft and crews were expected to attend to provide those flights in Tiger Moths, Chipmunks, Pitts Special, Piper Cub and others. The objective is to provide an exceptional day out for the guests and to raise funds for the Historic Flight.
Members of The Squadron were invited to attend to help with marshalling aircraft, guiding guests to various events, managing the lunch for aircrew, helping strap in and manning aircraft in the static park etc.

John Beattie happily reports:- The day was a complete success despite dreadful weather forecasts right up until Friday. The ‘actual’ on Saturday kept quite a few people away, - mostly cross winds at their strips or rain as close as the Devon border. At Yeovilton there was a perfect 10-15 knots down runway 04, a 6000ft cloudbase and 10K+ visibility. (on Wednesday the wind was ‘guaranteed’ to be right down 09 so the grass strip markers were laid out and the grass runway mown. On Friday night the forecast turned to quite strong right down 04 ! Markers quickly changed to a very small piece of grass parallel to 04 for the Tiger Moths, and others used the hard surface.

Some 102 guests were flown in a Bulldog,(Mark Grimshaw, Yak 52 (Will Hynett), Stemme motor glider (Barry Woodhouse), TB10 Tobago (Doc Holliday, Dave Mackay) Cessna 120 (Russ Eatwell, Dave Mackay) 3 x Chipmunk (Carol Atkins, Tom Stambach, Dennis Neville) 3 x Tiger Moths (Paul Groves, Paul Stone, Nigel Lemon) Stampe (Mark Garrat) Pitts S2 (Peter Borchert) DH84 Dragon (Torquil Norman).

Most pilots are not ex-FAA or Squadron members but flew about 110 sorties in all. Some fare paying guests paid half the rate for a second trip. Sally Gunnell the runner, flew in a small aeroplane for the first time (in a Tiger Moth with John Beattie) as a reward for giving us the unique photo-finish picture of her winning the Gold. We will auction it at a dinner in London on June 23rd. Twenty guests paid £30 each to fly (and crash ?) in the Sea Harrier simulator.
The static park was composed of the Sea Fury, Seahawk, Swordfish, Skyraider, Jet Provost 5, Piston Provost, Harvard, Lynx Mk.7, Sea King 4, Sea Harrier, Luscombe, and the Kittiwake, resplendent in her new paintwork, home again at Yeovilton.

The flying display was given by Skyraider (John Beattie) Harvard (Phil Shaw) Sea Fury (Paul Stone) Seahawk (Russ Eatwell) Sea Harrier (Craig Campion) and the Lynx pair ‘Blackcats’.
The FAA Squadron aircraft which flew in and joined the static display were PA-28 (John Ford) Beech Bonanza (Michael Bonham Cozens) PA-28 (Phil and Sue Moore) Pulsar (Tony Ashmead) Cessna 172 (Roger Bunbury) Jodel (Tim Nicholas) Stationaire (Sir Ray Lygo) Tobago TB-10 (Michael and Charmian Ryan) Gardan 80 (Peter Lovegrove).

The FAA Squadron wives, led by Charmian Ryan, provided an excellent lunch for over 130 people. A very substantial amount was raised for the Historic Flight and the day was judged a huge success.