Portsmouth Airport for FSX

[DaveB]

Cheers Trev

I forgot about downloading it (memory lapse) so that figure will increase by at least one

ATB

DaveB

[Filonian]

D/L it now Trev. Many thanks.


Graham

[bobmay]

Thanks for the excellent scenery Trevor. Brings back some memories. Back in the late 60's I was briefly a member of the Portsmouth Flying Club. They had a small fleet of Cessna 150's, the original carburettor engined models. For flying lessons ( I was the student pilot) we had to clear the area because the nearby RAF Thorney Island was operating Herks then and they did their circuits at 3,000 ft over the area. The C150 was so slow and climbed so badly with two on board that by the time we got out to the Petersfield area at 4,000 ft, clear of Thorney traffic, there was only time for a few manoeuvres before half of the one hour lesson was up and it was time to set off back. Flying lessons were £6 an hour in those days !
Some time after that I was in Portsmouth on business and returning home in the evening I was caught up in the huge traffic jam caused by the two Avro 748's crash landing on the airfield. One couldn't stop and went through the perimeter fence and skidded across the Eastern Road on it's belly ( the pilot had pulled up the wheels in an attempt to slow it down) the other one skidded on the wet grass and slid into a ditch on the northern edge of the field. As I recall there were no fatalities.

Bob.

[Trev Clark]

Hi Bob, it a shame I did not pick your brains on the airport layout, the south side is very much a compramise layout, using the few photos available. Still, almost 800 people have DL it, although I suspect many people across the pond would be expecting the airport of the same name in the USA!

You are correct about the 748s, I have a couple of photos of the accident and there were only minor injuries to one or two people. Both aircraft were repaired on site, but 748 operations stopped with that day. The HS780s Andovers from 46 Sqn at Thorney used the airport in the early 70s as practice for operations on unprepared strips.

It seems to me these forgotten airfields are very popular (my two most popular projects are Portsmouth and Hamble), so I have a few more lined up over the next few months.

[DaveB]

It seems to me these forgotten airfields are very popular

Indeed Trev.. especially the likes of Portsmouth where the airfield has to all intents disappeared under housing e t c. Don't suppose you have enough to do Ryde do you or Walsall Aerodrome in the West Midlands??



ATB

DaveB

[Trev Clark]

Don't suppose you have enough to do Ryde do you or Walsall Aerodrome in the West Midlands??

I'll have a look Dave, but I have not even heard about them before now, so it might be a struggle to find info easily! Do you have anything??

At present, I plan Hatfield, Wisley (with help from Toby V's hangars), RAE Bedford and RAF Bicester as I have Airfield Focus books on all of them. Still would like to do Ford too and a few more after that.

I have a rougue flatten at Hatfield at present (just outside the boundary) and the traffic (default, I think) drive off the Gen X roads alongside the airfield, so that has put a small spanner in the works. Bedford will probably be next, in a month or so, because it is a big place!

[TSR2]

Really looking forward to Bedford

[DaveB]

I'll have a look Dave, but I have not even heard about them before now

Walsall Aerodrome was a bit of a curved ball mate. Most folk haven't even heard of Walsall let alone Walsall Aerodrome (those outside the leather industry or football fraternity) so it's hardly surprising you haven't
Ryde is a slightly different matter. It pre-dates Sandown by 12 months and was used by Spartan Air Lines for the Portsmouth-IOW route from 12 Apr '33 until 3 Oct '36 and from then by Railway Air Services (RAS) until 24 Sep '38 then by GW&S (Great Western and Southern) 3 April '39 until the beginning of WWII. The aerodrome closed in the autumn of '39. From what I have here (which is less than little).. the terminal building was being used as a discotheque in '86 and there was a transport museum on part of the old airfield. What state it's in now is anyones guess but I'd lay odd's the discotheque is no longer running I guess the reason for Rydes eventual demise and Sandowns continuance was due to it's comparatively small runway length.. 2100ft as opposed to either 3,300ft/2,750ft/1,580ft at Sandown. Even Bembridge had longer runways at 2,340ft and 2,200ft so if any airfield was to go.. Ryde was the obvious choice I scanned Ryde many moons ago looking for any trace of where the airfield might have been but like Portsmouth, unless you have some form of reference, you'd be hard pushed to tell there was ever one there

Tks for not saying EFF OFF anyway

ATB

DaveB

[511Flyer]

Ryde airfield is out on the Brading road. It shows on the site I posted a link to before. Still looks very much like an airfield today.

www.contact-delivery.co.uk/aviation/airfields

Keep in your favourites list. It a great reference pointer.

D.

[DaveB]

Bless my soul Dennis.. that's brilliant

My old reference for it only gives one runway length and that link clearly shows the outline of one runway I'd searched Ryde in FSX with GenX and couldn't find any bit of land looking like it was once an airfield but I guess, with hindsight, had I gone to the grid reference.. it may well have been rather more obvious. I shall do that now

Thanks for that matey.. top banana

EDIT..
Remembering what the site looked like from that link, I was able to fly straight to it from Bembridge I hope to goodness the Spartan Cruisers that flew in and out of there had a low unstick speed as getting a default load Rapide out leaves very little margin for error I had no weather active so a few knots of headwind would have helped Dunno if Trev could make this even if he got the required info as it sits on top of a hill and flattens might look the whole plot look odd

ATB

DaveB