What was the deal with RAF East Fortune with 3 concrete runways, two of which could still be resurrected? It is, as you know, the home to the Scottish National Museum of Flight, but the only flights possible from there are from an ultralight club that still uses part of an old taxiway, I think.Undried Plum wrote: ↑Thu Jul 29, 2021 3:04 pm
Something like the opposite happened with RAF Turnhouse.
It's quite incredible that a city of the size and wealth of Edinburgh has no GA facilities whatsoever. Even the big boys with their Gulfstreams and Challengers aren't allowed to park overnight.
If the Rosebery estate had been allowed to buy that land for the originally agreed price, things would have been so different. The old Runway 26 and the old clubhouse could have been rebuilt and fun times could have resumed. As things stand nowadays, Edinburgh's nearest usable GA airfields are Glenrothes and Cumbernauld, both of which are a very long drive from anywhere in Greater Edinburgh.
The place hosts an airshow, and has the dubious honour of being one of the few airfield-based airshows in the UK where fixed wing airplanes cannot land at the airfield!
I watched the airshow from a rambling garden near Haddington, part of the property used as the grace house by the late Earl of Wemyss and March, David Charteris's, widow. The house was being baby sat by my younger brother at the time. Sadly both widow and my brother are now dead as well (RIP K & P). The weather at the time, summer 2018, was preternaturally hot for Scotland, as it has been again this year it seems!
While I was there I took the opportunity to visit the museum on a non airshow day...
and pay my respects at the Catholic cemetery, near Haddington, at this chap's grave and leave some flowers in memory of a very brave Czech indeed...
