Sleap

[strike & return]

Some really interesting shots guys. My late father did part of his air gunner training at Sleap in 1944.

[Sparky67]

This is on the wall of the stairs in the control tower. When I saw it I thought 'Air Ministry' !! Not sure what it is though - a Tannoy or PA speaker of some sort perhaps ?

[PETERTHEEATER]

That is a KLAXON horn.

Brahooohaaaaaaaa

[Ian P]

The klaxon on the stairs is part of the "crash alarm" system... As I found out much to my eardrums' discomfort when one of the club C152s suffered from a seriously iced-up pitot tube while I was debriefing from my own flight with the then CFI in his office.

Because the pitot heat wasn't doing a darned thing to the ice, the instructor on board wanted Rescue 1 standing by just in case, so off went the crash alarm. Not only did Rescue 1's crew move, I think everyone on the airfield did. Needless to say, the aircraft landed perfectly safely.

Sleap has changed massively since I was last there - partially in a good way, partially not so much. I went over a couple of weeks ago to ask about the possibility of making a photoreal scenery of what had always been a very friendly, open airfield. The old access road, past a small industrial site, is now closed and instead you are sent up around the side of what was one of the T2 hangars into a very small publicly accessable section of peri track between two chicanes of red-white plastic barriers with warning signs on them. The number of hangars on the site has trebled, all privately owned and rented, which is good for the airfield's future, but means that you no longer get the feeling of openness and access that you had.

I haven't e-mailed them back about getting permission to photograph and create the scenery for FSX because it all got very complicated very quickly. Apparently the club only has control over what happens inside the peri track. Everything outside that is owned by private landowners, the hangars on them are privately contstructed and owned on land leased off the landowners and I'd need to get permission off everyone to get access and photograph. It's a pity really.

Cheers,

Ian P.

[Sparky67]

Another view of Sleap. The two groups of new-ish hangars mentioned by Ian P are evident on the LHS of the photo. The tower and museum buildings are centre-left.

[REF]

Control Tower in May 2008

[Odi]

I used to live in Wem before moving up to the north east of Scotland nearly 12 years ago. I took part in 3 (I think) sponsored bed-pushes around the peri-track of Sleap in the very early 1990s and can well remember walking round the track in the early hours of the morning.

I also was a member for a very short time around 1986/87 and have a few pictures of the control tower and the members' cars parked in front of it. If I can find them I'll scan and post them for comparison.

[a10694]

Mike Grant, author of Wings-Across Border" runs the museum there.

[two_foot_winky]

Hi peeps. I live not to far from Sleap and visit it on a regular basis. I've got some up-to-date photos of the control tower etc, just in the process of uploading them to PB.

Here is a small video of me taking off from Sleap last year.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaNCp...&feature=g-upl

[two_foot_winky]

Just a few pics etc,

My kids in front of the control tower