NO , NOT that type of hardcore action obviously...Specialist engineering equipment and operators are re-laying the runway at Culdrose in a time-critical operation…
…and in the foreground a Merlin from 824 Naval Air Squadron – the training unit for all who fly and maintain the £40m helicopter – prepares to carry out a winching drill with a stretcher (and a rather healthy casualty on the evidence of PO(Phot) Paul A’Barrow’s photograph).
All 6,006ft (1.13 miles or, if you prefer new money, 1,830 metres) of the Cornish air station’s runway is being re-laid over the coming two months with contractors working 14-hour days and, on occasions such as the past weekend, 19-hour days.
The hardcore and surface of the runway are being replaced; the latter has to be laid quickly before it hardens in the trucks which are delivering it to the site from St Columb Major, near Newquay.
By the time the builders are finished in early June, some 30,000 tons of asphalt will have been put down.
Although fixed-wing operations have either been postponed (observer training resumes with the new King Airs in the summer) or transferred to Yeovilton (the FRADU Hawks used for air defence exercises off Plymouth), not so helicopter flying.
Aside from the round-the-clock search and rescue duty performed by 771 NAS, training by the Afghanistan-bound Bagger crews in the Sea King ASaC community, and lots of Merlin magic (sorry) courtesy of 814, 824 and 829 squadrons.
The resurfacing work is the latest stage of a massive facelift for the Cornish base which has seen new hangars built to meet the needs of existing and future helicopters (notably the next-generation Merlin), revamps of the Sea King and Merlin simulators and new accommodation blocks (most recently the wardroom).
Source : http://www.navynews.co.uk
0 comments:
Post a Comment