mobile control tower

[danny chapman]

does anybody know why that white and red chequerd mobile control was at end of runway today. What a day aswel got soaked.

[Macc]

It's always there..

[danny chapman]

no it aint. been kinloss many times. this was mobile and a couple of landrovers with it.

[Mike]

does anybody know why that white and red chequerd mobile control was at end of runway today. What a day aswel got soaked.

Hi Danny,every RAF base has a red/white caravan at the end of the operational runway (always the end they are landing and taking-off from).
The controller inside has a close look at the aircraft that is about to take-off,it's a last-chance check to see if they still have any panels still open and also to check if the ground-crew have removed all of the "Remove before flight" tags etc.

I've seen many a Tornado taxi back to where it came from due to panels left flapping in the wind !

[Mike]

It's not actually a caravan,but a small truck/lorry with a mini control tower thingy on it.

[Mike]

We are posh at Coningsby,we have two.

Is that one at each end of the runway ?

[robin]

I think you will find that all the exercise RAF Mobile ATC towers, have all departed south, long, long ago, for their holidays overseas, in Hellman and other such places, so the caravan you have sceen, are what they call "Runway Caravans", these are used mostly at fighter bases, hence you don't see them at transport bases.

Suspect why you have not seen them before at Kinloss, is they don't normally use them. But having a large numbers of fighter jet's on exercise, will result in a runway carvan brought in, for comments already said, and of course, to insure the pilots have dangled the dunlops, i.e. have put their undercarrage down.

[Thunder]

As Robin says, the runway caravans are normally just found at fast jet bases and the likes of Linton on Ouse. Although Kinloss have one on base(or at least they did) it was never used for day to day operations with the Nimrod.

[Macc]

I think you will find that all the exercise RAF Mobile ATC towers, have all departed south, long, long ago, for their holidays overseas, in Hellman and other such places, so the caravan you have sceen, are what they call "Runway Caravans", these are used mostly at fighter bases, hence you don't see them at transport bases.

Suspect why you have not seen them before at Kinloss, is they don't normally use them. But having a large numbers of fighter jet's on exercise, will result in a runway carvan brought in, for comments already said, and of course, to insure the pilots have dangled the dunlops, i.e. have put their undercarrage down.

Never did often see them at Kinloss, but I'm sure there's one permanently on station? If not!
Last Thursday I was in Lossiemouth town and a Mobile ATC tower drove past my bus stop so it might have been off to Kinloss. Made me laugh!

Chris.

[Gary]

From memory Waddington has at least one, possibly two

[Thunder]

From memory Waddington has at least one, possibly two

I know that Waddington had one back in the days of the NOMAD/ACMI detachments, but from memory they lost it when the ACMI closed and they now get one from elsewhere for the week of the airshow or exericses, that was a few years back so maybe changed now. Which brings me to ask this, where is the caravan park full of Red/White chequerd Runway caravans.

[Sentinel]

Waddo definately has one all the time....

They switched runways on Friday because of the wind direction and were taking off and landing from the Findhorn end whereas they had been using the Burghead end for the rest of the week. Maybe thats why you saw the runway caravan then??

Sentinel

[danny chapman]

thanks for that and sorry didnt mean to be rude

[reheat module]

Yep, confirm that Wadd has one (actualy 2 for the recent airshow).
If that's incorrect, then I was IN some strange illusion the other week