aef – Fooyah – Ian Parish

August 24 2025August 22 2025

I Found One In The Wild

Every time I see an aircraft type that I know I have flown in I check its details with this website. I have a couple of pages covering my flying while in the RAF Air Cadets. Powered flight is covered on this communication. Recently on a visit to the RAF Museum, Midlands, at Cosford I found out two things. One, there is a VC-10 on display that I have been inside and flown with. Secondly I got the serial numbers wrong in either the communication or my original log book, F3822. The VC-10 at Cosford was serial XR808. In my communication I had put XV808. Now, it turns out that XV808 is a Harrier and I have NEVER flown in a Harrier. So, XR seems to be the correct letters. Whoops.

This particular aircraft has a long and interesting history. I found this page detailing her life. My two hours on 26 August 1987 were spent mainly trying to catch up on sleep – summer camp is a very tiring week!

April 29 2016

EGSU

I was meant to be visiting EGXT today but it was called off so I detoured to EGSU. If you want more details of EGSU then you can, of course, JFGI, I have a map here.

I don’t have a great deal to say about the day, I will just leave you with a gallery of “different” photos rather than the usual full on full frontal.

October 4 2014

Location, Location and a Camera

I spent the day at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire and while there an RAF Tornado flew past at high speed. I was fortunate enough to take a few photographs, of which the following is the best. I haven’t cropped it or anything. [the other 5 photos were ok-ish].

My favourite thing about this shot is that you can see the Navigator/Weapons Officer looking at the ground as they fly by.

October 3 2014October 4 2014

Cambridgeshire Sun

In a slight contrast to the fog in the previous communication I give you a view of St Ives in the sun.

Here’s what my view looked like a little later in the day.

October 3 2014October 3 2014

Essex Fog

This communication is much unlike Ronseal products. This IS Essex fog but Ronseal products don’t do what they say on the tin [great marketing though!].

July 22 2014July 22 2014

Powered Flying Log

I know, I know. This is just another list of stuff!

So very true, but this is the biggie. This is why you join the cadets. If you want to see the other communications in this series then click here.

Just before I enter the list you may or may not be interested to know that aerobatics really messes me up. I positively enjoy the experience of aero but it will make me sick and turns me into a useless lump of cells for a few hours as my body recovers. I will go green and then white, I have headaches and everything spins for ages. After anything up to five hours later I will become very hungry, that signals the start of my recovery. I really enjoy flying and aerobatics but I just have to be aware of the consequences.

My total time is just over 21 hours. That’s not bad even if it includes two flights to Cyprus which I’ve counted because I was flying “on duty”.

I also recently had a flight in a Grob Tutor while on camp at Brize Norton. I got around a 40 minute flight, it was a much better experience than the chipmunk.

July 11 2014July 22 2014

CCF Camp BZN

I spent a week at RAF Brize Norton recently with the Combined Cadet Force RAF Section from work. I had a great time but more importantly all of the cadets we took had a good time. We were very busy and it was extremely tiring but I got so much from it.

Here’s a list of things that we did (mostly because I can’t be bothered to compose prose for this):

5.56 shooting at the outdoor range. After over twenty years of not shooting a weapon I was very happy with my twenty shot grouping.
Grob Tutor air experience flying with 6 AEF at RAF Benson.
RAF Section Visits to:
- Air Traffic Control
- Fire
- Armoury
- JADTEU
- 47 Air Despatch
- Survival Equipment
- SERE
- Dog Handling
- DMTS
- Support Eng Flight
- XXIV Squadron
- Parachute Training School
DCCT – I managed to pass my RAF shooting test with a score of 65/75
Low Ropes
High Ropes
Laser Target Practice
Ten Pin Bowling

The Officers’ Mess was a delight and a wonderful building that overlooked the runway about half way along. My only problem was that the Friday of camp was the Officers’ Summer Ball and while my room overlooked the runway it also was directly above the bar and next to the funfair that was set up for the ball. That night I slept in the cadets billet as a supervisor rather than not sleep in my room in the mess.

Here’s a selection of photographs I took during the week. I can’t share some of the really cool stuff we saw because it’s covered by the OS Act.