2019 yearly reviews

[graham]

Please feel free to tell us all about the best bits of 2019 for you, thank you

[billsamuels]

Well chaps here’s my review of 2019... 

January:
Well 2019 started so well on the B737Max front, ET-AVK on the 1st (thankfully not the doomed machine) with SE-RTC, then CN-MAX on the 4th and SE-RTB on the 6th - they were going into the log at a steady pace but of course this grounded to a halt in March... The continuous ‘scrapes’ of Ryanair machines started to accelerate plus EasyJet and NAX continued at a pace... Some notable frames for the month were AP-BHD Ce550 at Hurn, OM-BYA A319 Slovak AF, F-ZBMB Beech 200 Securite Civile both at FAB.
Made 93 frames and 49 scrapes.

February:
3rd saw my first EJ- registered aircraft (ADMI, Gulf 650), United B787X’s started to go into the log, Hungarian AF Falcon 7X (606) was a nice scrape, 95-00123 Ce560 USArmy on 13th, French AF Cougar 2233 on 21st and my first USN P-8 on the 23rd and a C-40A on 25th.
Made 104 frames and 79 scrapes.

March:
First visit to Toulouse on 5th, along with the STN boys. Loads of A330’s, A350’s and A320’s, to many to list but the nice ones are Hainan, Rwandair, all the Chinese, Vietnam, Latam, a constant stream of Qatar, TAP and Air Senegal. The first two Virgin’s Made an appearance and an ANA which are never likely to see European shore anytime soon... The trip to Francazal was undertaken and a nice rarity was a FAF CN235 but mainly ATR’s, a few A320’s were all present, as usual. Popped up to LTN twice in March plus an annual visit to Elstree - always a great welcome here. Hurn hit the log, this time to capture UR-WRR Bae-125, nice XA-JBT Falcon 2000 into FAB on 21st and 4 lovely B-52’s (potted) at Fairford on 22nd. Kemble on the same day for the 2 Capital A319’s and Air Asia A320. At the end of the month Graham and I had a day out down in the West Country, Yeovilton, Yeovil and Dunkeswell. Pot of the month was the Philippine Navy Wildcat- sadly only carrying ZZ550.
Made 246 frames and 95 scrapes.

April:
4th was the visit to HMS Sultan at Gosport. Been before but managed to clear most of the based stuff, 17 frames, zero scrapes!! Did Redhill on the 17th. 2 Italian AF C-130’s (15th & 19th), fairly constant stream of USAF C-17’s and my first Uzbekistan B767-3 frame. Cosford visit (with Dean from STN) on 25th for the base tour, made 5 Jet Provost’s, 25 Jaguar’s and 9 Tornado’s. Great day out. Pot of the month was Egyptian AF C-130 into BZZ.
Made 243 frames and 67 scrapes.

May: 
First visit to Lanham and Odiham making the US Army Chinook gate guard, then off to the Popham microlight fair - plenty made there. 7th was my first ever hangar tour (incl control tower access) of Farnborough - not much potted but great behind the scenes visit. Had three really good days at home; 12th 23F & 14S, 13th 15F & 8S, 14th 13F & 6S... Second visit to Hurn and made just 1... My second visit to Toulouse on the 16th, this time with Dave (Basing) and two other likely lads, but as well as Airbus hunting at TLS and Fracazal we also visited the ‘Tiger Meet’ at Mont de Marsan, which was brilliant, and Tarbes, with loads more Airbuses - mainly old ones. 22nd we were off to Geneva for Ebace this time with the STN boys, lovely weather, lots of pots and first flights on the A220-300, which is a very nice airplane. Just before the end of the month we did another day trip this time to Riga, for the museum (or scrapyard) at the airport. Pot of the month Honduran AF Emb190...
Made 489 frames and 181 scrapes.

June:
Went to Duxford for the much talked about ‘Dak’s over Duxford’ day on the 4th, and then a quick dash across the Channel for ‘Dak’s over Normandy’... Sadly the latter turned into a slight damp squid with pretty nasty weather which toned down the expected 75 Cub’s to a mere 9... Really disappointed but that wouldn’t be the first time the weather let us down... Aeroexpo at Booker was pretty good but the numbers are still pretty disappointing for this event. First visit to Turweston’s Air Britain fly-in, again numbers were slightly disappointing but a good day out which included Luton and Kidlington. 28th took us back to Toulouse, again with Dave (Basing) and the chaps, this time we did Pau for the stored Noratles and Puma, Dax for the helicopter museum and then Cazaux for the French AF show, which was outstanding... With Toulouse and Francazel we had a remarkable weekend.
Made 414 frames and 128 scrapes.

July:
Several more really good ‘weather’ days meant multiple double digit potting days. Big event for the month was IAT Fairford, Friday 19th sadly was a bloody wash-out!! But a good day with Jeff, Graham and Frank (FX) was had even though Graham bailed early!! Last day of the month had me up at Mildenhall and Lakenheath for the Saudi F-15’s and a few tankers at the Hall... Apart from many business trips, this was my first solo visit spotting. Pot of the month, all of the F-15’s at the Heath.
Made 316 frames and 101 scrapes.

August:
Another gliding competition at Lasham on the 7th. Then off to Spain with the family. First visit to Almeria and 10 nights on the beach, brilliant weather throughout. Pot of the trip and month was ZK-IUH Bell 429 Global Ranger. Close second (but only a scrape) was Bangladesh AF C-130J 5479/S3-AGE. 28th I was up with Sean (Osprey 65) and finally got to see (from 1,000ft) XV344 Buccaneer which, for years, has been eluding me... I closed the month at Sywell for the LAA fly-in - this time with Viv, Jeff, Sean and his son James. Fantastic day out.
Made 206 frames and 64 scrapes.

September:
Some more really good days spotting from home, many in double figures. 11th had us out to Toulouse once more, this time with the STN crew. Took in Francazal with the usual bucket load of 320/330/350 and another ANA A380... 12th had us off to Fairford for the B-2’s, potted all 3, popped into Kemble where we met up with Sean, and his flying machine - in fact there were two! 13th we were off again, this time to catch the Cobra Warrior meet up at Waddington. Whilst up there John (Jargon) and I took in Cranwell, Barkston Heath and Coningsby where we also visited the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight hangar - our tour guide was non other than Dave Maltby’ son, who showed us his dad’s actual flying log... So sad that his son never knew his dad, who perished returning from a raid just a few months after the Dam raid... Lovely man.

October:
Went to Luton on the 2nd, airport visit of course but also dropped off my Opticron binoculars into their Luton offices for repairs... 7th took us off to Hamburg for the Airbus factory tour, loads of mainly 320/321’s but a few 330 and only 2 380’s - which are really dwindling in numbers now. Another great catch were the 6 ‘MO’ F-15’s tanking off a KC-10 heading South on the 10th, fantastic bit of luck. 18th took me and Mrs S off to the other side of the World - Swiss was our chariot of choice to Australia via HKG (with a connection to Cathay) to Cairns. 5 nights in Port Douglas, flight on chopper VH-ZPH EC-130 from the Barrier Reef to Port Douglas and an aborted Balloon ride on VH-OHA... We then dropped down to Sydney for 3 nights - which was bloody marvellous, then 12 nights aboard the Celebrity Solstice heading for New Zealand. Then 3 nights in Auckland before we started to fly home via Singapore, with SIA. Managed several airport visits in NZ including Dunedin, Omaka, Blenheim, Picton, Tauranga, Rotorua, Auckland, Ardmore and lots of ott’s in between... Thoroughly enjoyable time was had by all.
Made 847 frames and 185 scrapes.

November:
Managed to get up to Luton, Opticron visit plus airport, of course, and Northolt to collect Trump’s choppers. Rest of month at home.
Made 290 frames and 39 scrapes.

December:
4th we were off for our last Toulouse trip of the year, with the Stansted mob, lots of A320/330/350’s plus quite a few ATR’s... Francazal was packed... Got out to Biggin Hill on the last spotting day of the year.
Made 196 frames and 120 scrapes.

So can’t complain about my results, approximately 3500 frames and 1100 scrapes...

Cheers boys.

Bill

[graham]

Blimey, can anyone follow that?...;-)

[Jeff]

I can't lol, so am going with this, not a great year number wise with only 1619 hitting the book, broken down as below



Sighting of the year for me and a type I'd never seen close up before but always wanted to was OV-103 a Rockwell Shuttle Orbiter



Onward and upward, to infinity and beyond for 2020 😁

[lordevanelpuss]

January 1st 2019 saw my first visit to Popham's New Year fly-in since 2013. Just about every New Year inbetween 2013 & 2019 was dogged by wind & rain! At 31, it's not the biggest total of visiting aircraft that I've recorded but, at least four were new sightings.

April 21st, June 29th & August 25th: All long weekends off work, which I spent with my sister and her hubby. Usually at some point I get taken to a wonderful pub at nearby Bedfont called The Green Man, which they first put me onto in 2014 when myself & my (now late) father were taken here for a pub lunch. It is a good place to see aircraft either departing or landing at Heathrow, depending whether LHR are on Easterly or Westerly ops. I prefer it when they are on short finals over the pub as, then, I seem to have longer lists at the end of the day!

July 14th: An extremely productive visit to Farnborough (higlights being Legacy PR-CBY & Falcon 2000 VT-BVV) Another couple bagged at Blackbushe, and seeing my first A321 NEO over home in CS-TJJ.

I've mentioned one August day already, another one to mention is August 11th, the day of Popham's motorcycle mega-meet. It certainly wasn't a 'mega-meet' in terms of aircraft! in the time that I was at Popham I saw 4 aircraft, all bagged, almost certainly the first time I've had a 100% success rate there (or anywhere else for that matter)! Why have I picked such a slow Popham day? Well, one of those four aircraft was a glider, the only time these land at Popham is when they are unable to make it back to their base airfield. Since making gliders carry proper reggies, seeing them on the ground at Popham has become a very rare occurence. Some 10 years separates G-CFWU seen on Aug 11th 2019 and the previous one G-DBJD seen in May 2009! Previously gliders were much more frequently seen, but then my visits to Popham were also much more frequent, which may well have something to do with it!

September 7th-9th: When I hit the big 6-0 and two birthday treats, firstly to Sywell with my sister & her hubby, staying at The Aviator, a nice place to stay and only a short walk across to the viewing area and also alternative food areas, this is not to say that our meals at The Aviator were unsatisfactory. A very good place to see vintage aircraft. rather cloudy & cool on our day of arrival, more in the way of sun and feeling warmer on the next day. On day 1 (7th) I noted 17 aircraft & next day 42.  A couple of asides from this trip. I never knew that you could have an Alexa device in your car, well, you can and my sister does, and to demonstrate this Alexa was asked what the weather was likely to be like on our journey up to Sywell, and we were told that it should de dry. Not too long after this we ran into a rain shower and I said that Alexa has been telling us fibs. Sister then put that to Alexa, who's response went something like "I may get things wrong sometimes but I do not tell lies!", which made us all laugh!. While I was mainly interested in the aerial comings & goings on 8th, there was also a dog show going on with many Cavalier King Charles spaniels to be seen.

Birthday trip no 2 was a few days after my actual birthday (9th) and was to Amsterdam with Martin Harbor. On September 12th We made our way down to LGW. It is many years since I was last here, so made many, including BA's G-GAT* Airbuses ( though we didn't go to AMS on one of these - we had G-EUUO) My first Westjet aircraft seen this side of the Atlantic, it certainly seemed unique to bag one of their B737s at LGW (C-FWSK). First full day at AMS was 13th, far too many aircraft to list but I had been looking forward to filling gaps in my KLM short haul fleet and seeing my first dreamliners, B777 & A330 300 series which I did manage. Next day we went to Lelystad where we wondered down to do all the hangers and then the Aviodrome museum, where we went on board retired B747 PH-BUK which I seem to remember bagging at Toronto many years ago when it was srs 200, it had yet to be converted to 300 standard. Then back to Amsterdam via a small gliding strip where the tug is a British registered super cub G-CUBJ. The final day was on 15th where we bagged a few AMS departures from our hotel before we made our way to the airport itself for the rest of the day before flying back to LGW on G-EUUS.

One conclusion that I have drawn from my experiences at The Green Man, The Aviator and my trip to Amsterdam is that beer and aircraft do go rather well together!