Visit to RAF Coltishall Heritage Centre

Hello There! This is another local place to visit, but more importantly was one of the stations I spent many years at when I was in the RAF.

This is the picture I remember from the 90's. One of the four hangars that have now been converted for civilian use.

This hangar is now used by an electric bus company

The Air Traffic Control Tower, which looks in a very sorry state!

The 'New. aircraft spray painting booth which was delivered and built in the late 90's and found to be too short to fit a Jaguar aircraft in!

The former General Engineering Flight, Ground Support Equipment Section. Place of work for many years.

The front entrance to the section and the brown brick corner is where the 'control' once stood. A drafty green metal cabin.

Another 'New' building on the left which was only used for a handful of years before the station was closed.

GSES old POL store in front of the armoury.

Down the airfield, an old WW II remote dispersal area was found under a mass of brambles and trees. This was built during WW II and consisted of two areas, back to back with an adjacent building. Built from sandbags filled with cement and ballast this was a surprise to see as I had driven past this hundreds of times and did not know it was there.

Further along the airfield are a number of revetments. Built during the cold war there were meant to protect  aircraft and have their exact co ordinates written on them.

The old Bomb Dump also looks forgotten and derelict

Overall a very stirring day and sad end to a place with so many great memories for so many people.

Armourfest Sunday 18th August 2024

Hello There! The local tank museum, the Norfolk Tank Museum, held a display over the Summer Holiday.

The arena was busy both days but although mostly a Modern theme, post WW II there was a number of WW II vehicles and re enactors present.

This does give you the idea of the amount of dust kicked up as vehicles manoeuvre. I remember the WW II photos of a sign saying 'Dust means Death!' and you can see ow visual that dust can be.

There are also some modern AVRE vehicles in the collection as well.

I remember when the firemans strike was on and these were on the streets!

This was tucked away in a corner with a second gun behind and complete with display board.

In the museum part, I saw an LRDG badge.

Here was a surprise to see. A Diamond T tank transporter. This reminds me of the Matchbox version that was available in the 80's!

A diamond T Wrecker was also in attendance . As I am playing around with wargame rules at the moment to game a vehicle recovery game I enjoyed seeing this. Although a little late for the desert an equivalent game could be possible for Normandy.

A Bedford in desert colours looked familiar and I may have photographed it before.

And its larger brother.

Although not complete with instructions here was Sun Compass of desert fame.

The Russian Re Enactors provided a wide choice of uniforms to photograph

As it was a sunny and hot day I took some pictures of the German Re Enactors representation of a number of camouflage patterns on their uniforms. It is not always suitable to use a lovely clear painted illustration to paint your figures to get what you think is a good finish. Here you can see that the colours soon get washed out and are far from clear.

Here a converted 432 is made to look like a Stug

A Tatra representing a Sdkfz 251 Half track. This was  'D' version

Its a challenge to see all the kit stowed on this motorbike and want to copy it in 1/72nd!

I do not usually photograph American kit as it is not usually on my model making radar but that has started to change so here are some American vehicles

Although  very hot and dusty day it was still fun and made a change not having to travel a long way to get there and back. It had a worthwhile amount of WW II vehicles on display and the arena had a raised hill running its length so you did not end up looking at the back pf someone's head!