Caldale Air Station has first landing since 8/8/44

It has been a long winter and the saying Orkney has 9 months of winter followed by 3 months of bad weather seems very accurate. I haven’t seen as many unusual aircraft over the last couple of months but I was looking through my photos tonight and thought there were enough to write a new post.

We had a short visit from ZE708 but it parked at the far end of 14 so it is just a long distance shot.

Last week saw me ticking a box for the first Russian registered aircraft at Kirkwall even though it was an american built helicopter.

The World Around 2017 team stopped off at Kirkwall while circumnavigating the globe. They are a russian/polish crew and you can find their adventures on Facebook by searching World Around 2017.

G-LGNN has come out of the paint shop and is now operating the mail service for Loganair in their new colour scheme, it is certainly unmissable and looks very professional, in my opinion.

I managed to get a decent picture of the Saab 340 owned and operated by Polish Airline, Sprint Air who have been doing the afternoon mail run since Loganair won the contract.

And finally where the post title comes from. I live on the site of RNAS Caldale which was an airship base and engineering site until just after the Normandy landings and, to my knowledge, no aircraft has landed on the site since closure. That was until today when looking out my back door I noticed that an aircraft was about to land in the field around 50m from my house. A quick look see saw G-EOIN heading up the field to Carisbrooke along the road.

It transpire it was 2 local pilots, Tony Scott and Erling Flett who had just stopped off for a quarter of an hour or so at Tony’s house.

Erling is well known in Aviation circles as a commercial pilot flying for Virgin and is a regular visitor passing through the airport.