Salisbury Plain - 22th October 2008

The plan for our two day trip was always to do Salisbury Plain on day two - when you're doing a 360-mile round trip, if you've got the time, you may as well! Anyway, just as we were about to pull out of the Travelodge car park, a text came in from Morley Lester saying that Ex Wessex Warrior was the reason behind Neil Jones' 'blank' at our usual haunt the previous day, and a quick text to a warden friend confirmed that the ex was ongoing.

We elected to head to Westdown Camp, stick the scanner on and see what was about. The only thing we could hear was Vortex 758, which we knew should be a Merlin from the callsign. He called up as going to Beeches Farm and that he'd be on the ground for 10 minutes - a location that neither of us had heard of. Fortunately I had my OS map with me and eventually we tracked it down. It was on the road from Netheravon to Everleigh, but there was no way we could get there in 10 minutes. Our only hope (or so it seemed) was that a FARP (Forward Area Refuelling Point) had been setup there. We elected to chance it.

Half way there he called up as lifting and inbound Blackball Firs, a location deep inside the Danger Area.

We arrived at Beeches to find quite a bit of activity - a few vehicles, a cluster of troops, and a guy with an aerial sticking out of his rucksack. No sign of any FARP, but they did very much look like they were waiting for something.

A Squirrel started to do approaches, probably auto-rotations, into the rough land around Netheravon and we decided to go and check him out. We'd probably gone about 150m when Dunny saw the Merlin charging up the valley to our right at low-level. We piled out, shot him 'side-on' in glorious light and watched as he banked hard right, gear down. Sure enough he was landing to pick up the troops.

I legged it back down the road to where we'd just been, getting there just in time for him to touchdown, unfortunately on the wrong side of the sun...

With everyone safely onboard, he once again lifted, dropping the nose straight at us. It would've looked stunning with the sun at our backs, but alas it was not to be...

He headed back into the Danger Area to drop them off, before coming back up the valley and putting down on the opposite side of the road.

We didn't get very close before he lifted, informing Salisbury Ops that he was off to Wallop, we presumed for fuel for his homeward leg to Benson.

The next hour brought nothing on the scanner and reluctantly we retreated to Boscombe Down.