Page 297 - Demo

293dog and we went up to Northumberland for peace and quiet in the caravan. Harry quickly settled into a routine. He let me do a couple of hours work before fidgeting about and demanding a walk. He would then have half an hour or so of chasing rabbits around the sand dunes before we repeated the whole thing several times a day. I think that I spent a week up there, but I am not sure exactly when as I was running LSEs at the same time and we had a navigation detachment to Lossiemouth as well. That nav det was a bit different. Mark Heaton had now converted to the Tucano and came up in that for a couple of days. He had a relative I think at Wick and so wanted to go there for a night. That was not a problem but on the day Lossiemouth told us we would have to operate out of Kinloss as they were going to have a major Minival which was a station generated practise war. Operating out of Kinloss was no problem but liaising with Mark about going to Wick probably had to be done over the phone. At the same time Lossiemouth operations asked us to do an airfield attack at some point in the afternoon. This sounded great fun and so we quietly planned what we would do without mentioning it to Mark as he would probably veto it. The final plan was that we would carry out a navex to two points a bit outside Lossiemouth. Three aircraft would go to each point to be there at the same time. We would then fly in loose formation to various points on the airfield, crossing over midway. We agreed one flight would go straight for their targets while the other flight would avoid them whilst going for theirs. You can see why we thought the plan might be vetoed! Any way we did it. I think I flew over the NAAFI. It was surprising about how long it took to cross the airfield at 300kts and 250ft but it was fun although the Rapier unit claimed they shot us all down. In the middle of our attack our Flight Commander called %u201cPan Pan Pan, A bird strike, going for low key%u201d. We could see him pulling up as we all fled the scene. Low Key was a position you flew too at 1500ft from where you could carry