Salisbury Plain - 30/07/2008

Having seen images captured during previous Operation Herrick Mission Rehearsal Exercises, the lure of MRX9 proved too great, and Sammy and myself elected to spend a couple of days on the Plain.

All of the whispers in the run up to our trip, admittedly towards the back end of the allocated two weeks, suggested that this was going to be rather hit and miss, and that's exactly how it proved.

The early part of the day was spent watching a single Apache flying orbits at about 1000ft over the ranges. There was a bit of activity on the scanner, but all of the training aircraft had been pushed from their regular haunts by the exercise, with only the Pewsey Vale seemingly being open to them.

Getting somewhat frustrated I was then lucky enough to receive a tip-off about a press event happening up near Netheravon, so we took a flyer and headed over there. Having spoken to a soldier effectively on guard duty, we were authorised to stay around and watch the demonstrations, on the proviso we kept a fairly low profile. My interpretation of that was to stay on the opposite side of the barn from the main action, presuming we'd get treated to some flying through on their way there.

It didn't quite work out like that - the pair of Apaches, Junglie and one of the two Chinooks dropped right down in the valley to the south of the barn and you could only see the very tops of their rotors as they transitted to the main area. The other Chinook, however, dropped down on our side of the barn, no more than forty or fifty metres from our location. I'm fairly certain I don't have nicer Chinook shots in my collection than these (certainly not of the HC2 anyway).

Evidently the other Chinook had performed a troop insertion, with the Apaches taking out targets on the ground and a 13 Sqn Tornado GR4 performing a couple of shows of force, before the ground forces were cleared to move in.

With the demo seemingly at a close, we took the opportunity to go for a look at Pewsey Vale, but the area is so vast and so open that photographic oppotunities would be so few and far between as to rule it unappealing.

While there, we did here a couple of helos recover to one of the camps on the Plain, and so we took a chance that we could get there before they were gone again. A single Lynx was still present, and having cleared it with the army guys packing their gear up, we were invited to shoot its departure.

With nothing else doing we headed, somewhat reluctantly, to Boscombe Down to kill a couple of hours.