BOH

Brilliant pictures, that might be Bpurnemouth with the Air Traffic Control college in the background (now a secondary school I believe)

rapidex

That is indeed the HS748 at BOH. Is that a young C-W-S disembarking as he builds up his empire?

ironmouse

I still have a couple of packs of Dan Air playing cards

steve170461

Yes it's the college of ATC. I spent many frustrating hours in that building trying to understand the black art of procedural control, or otherwise what happens when the radar fails. Just hoping you had brown trousers on when it did fail was actually reality!

bisonrav

Thanks for the airport ID, that is very helpful indeed. I couldn't remember the name of the pupil in the foreground, except that last night the name "Stretton" popped into my head, and that may very well be who it is.

For those who are at all interested, and for some more visual identification requests (see below). I have a full trip report directory set up, which includes the aviation related photos from the trip as well as my full written account, carefully scanned yesterday. It was a curious period in Jersey, the wartime sites weren't really valued, in fact the locals I talked to said they'd like to see them removed, as the privations were in living memory. But it was great to be a 10 year old and exploring them before any concept of health and safety.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u9ujbnwkq...WuhtOsDOa?dl=0

I do have a basic structure for the flights worked out from the 1974 Dan Air Timetable which is online:

24/5/1974 - DA110 MAN CWL 08:15 09:10 -> DA110 CWL BOH 09:20 09:50 -> DA350 BOH JER 13:10 13:50 (G-ARMW and seat 1D for at least part of this)

31/5/1974 - DA391 JER GCI 17:10 17:30 -> DA391 GCI BOH 17:50 18:30 -> DA111 BOH CWL 18:55 19:25 -> DA111 CWL MAN 19:35 20:30

The return matches the journal very well, all the stops are noted. The outbound nominally leaves MAN earlier than the journal suggests, and I don't mention Cardiff, so I'm wondering if that stop was skipped and MAN departure was delayed, or whether we may have been on a charter rather than scheduled flights (unlikely as the routing on the return is exactly as used for the scheduled routing). Anyway it does seem reasonable to infer that this was a daily circuit, in which case it would have been G-ARMW all the way through the outbound.

It is truly amazing what you can work out when you really focus. I've been doing quite a lot of this on various trips over the past few weeks, and memories do come back in surprising ways.

Regarding the pictures:

1) There's a nice full length photo of G-ARMW but this isn't my trip, it's from an aviation site. Please don't distribute this, it's not my copyright. Similarly the seat designations is from DanAirRemembered and is not for distribution here or elsewhere. I don't care about any of the rest of it.

2) The "getting on" photo is probably Manchester. Yellow trucks or tenders seem to be in the far background. If this happened instead to be Bournemouth it would prove I was on G-ARMW all the way through, so observations here would be very useful.

3) "Getting off" photo just identified as Bournemouth, which is great, thanks so much for this. Interestingly I'm taking photos of people getting off via the rear door which makes me think it's unlikely I was at the front for this leg, unless I sprinted out while they were sitting down or they unloaded front to back for the school party which I guess is possible.

4) There's a one-eleven photo, I think BEA, I didn't fly on this. A sharp eyed friend spotted the floodlight gantry and pointed out there were similar ones at Manchester. I don't really need to know where this is for my detective work, but it would be interesting to get opinions.

5) "Airport" written on what looks like a multi-storey car park was probably Manchester I think.

6) I think the steps against the building is Jersey, the building style matches certainly.

7) Don't really need to know where the light aircraft is, but I'm assuming that was Jersey too

8) Same sharp eyed friend identified the "RT" photo as Jersey from another photo.

BOH

My parents ran a hotel in the Boscombe suburb of Bournemouth in the 70s and during the winter months we had an arrangement with the Air Traffic Control college at BOH whereby students stayed at our hotel, around 6 at a time IIRC. I would have been about 14-15 in the mid-70s and remember some great times tagging along with those students at weekends, playing footy and them taking me (underage) into a pub...in the days when no ID was required.

One memorable weekend night they decided to have a challenge to drink our hotel bar dry and they succeeded. It culminated in them all doing a streak for a bet around the block at midnight one winter night, a distance of about half a mile - in the days when streaking became a hugely popular pastime for many people. Great days - I wonder if any of those students are still in ATC, they were about 6-7 years older than me so would be 65-ish now.

Exsilver

This is a Dan Air York at Lasham in 1962. I am the small boy under the propeller. This aircraft is now in the museum at Duxford

BOH

Great nostalgic picture. Lasham was known as "Lashup" when I worked in the aircraft TPM industry.

The airfield is in the middle of nowhere in the middle of farmland between Alton and Basingstoke and when my wife and I moved near there in the late-80s were were house hunting one day. Driving on the A339 we saw a very low flying Air Europe airliner with wheels down at tree-top height - not knowing Lasham was nearby I remember saying to my wife, "that is going to crash-land, there is no airport or airfield anywhere round here". We pulled over in the car and waited a few seconds, expecting a loud bang and a pall of smoke but of course there were neither. Later that day (pre www) we discovered we had been on the approach path to Lasham

vintagepilot

A similar era - either boarding somewhere in UK or disembarking in Naples. I was lucky enough to 'work' on the educational cruise ship SS Uganda a couple of times in what is now called a gap year, and this must have been on the way out to a mediterranean cruise over Christmas 1979. I seem to remember we flew back from Malta on a Freddie Laker Skytrain DC-10.

We also shuttled up and down to INV with Dan Air a few times in 1985.

bisonrav

Another picture of a wing, enough to surmise I was in row 6 or 7. May 27th 1972, over the Alps in a Dan Air 1-11 300 or 400, from Manchester.

Are those features at the wing tip static dispersers?

Prospero

This isn’t a real Dan Air experience but it was as close as it got for me. I have a vivid recollection of a flight from Gatwick to Aberdeen, not long after BA picked up the route from Dan Air. The aircraft, a 737 inherited from Dan Air, was in a disheveled condition with an incongruous collection of seat covers and smelling musty. We took off but as the clouds had descended over Dyce only made it as far as Edinburgh.

The aircraft wasn’t equipped to land in foggy conditions, so we sat at EDI and waited for the skies 130 miles north of us to clear. Several business travellers around me conferred, then decided their fortunes would be better served via a taxi up the A90. Others, like myself held out hoping the flight wouldn’t be cancelled.

Luckily though, we were eventually informed BA would get us to Aberdeen after all and not long after the doors were closed and we pushed back. This just ten minutes after the business men disembarked. The short jump up to ABZ was super quick with no time for an extra bar run.

bisonrav

Got a high end slide scanner (not just for this, I have about 1000 of my dad's slides to digitise for my siblings) and have been playing with the settings. I managed to get this from a tiny section of a small slide, one size down from 35mm, whatever that is. Quite pleased with it - the Comet 4C that took me home on 11th June 1975 from Corfu.


A bit longer ago, May 27th 1972, I was in row 6 on a Dan Air 1-11 over the Alps on the way to Corfu. This was the photo I posted above, but in full hi-res glory it looks rather good. You can even count the rivets, should rivet counting be your thing.

Concerto

Was wondering what slide scanner you got. I have about 1,500 slides to digitize once I have completed all the family prints. Will certain have some old airline pics among them.

bisonrav

Concerto The hi-res scanner is a plustek - it's very good, extremely expensive, but takes a while to get good results. My recommendation is to get a cheap scanner from Amazon with a feeder, LCD screen and SD card, you can rattle the slides through that very quickly to see which ones you want to spend more time on or possibly get done professionally. You will get quite reasonable results from those too.

One tip is to drop them into the feeder one at a time when scanning, otherwise it can jam.

bisonrav

PS: it turns out that that was a Laker 1-11 in the wing shot, not Dan Air