Highlands and Islands Flying, BBC iPlayer

[TSR2]

Really enjoyed that! I loved seeing the Loganair flights going into Belfast City when I was a lad, mostly 360's in those days with the very odd 146

[dfarrow]

Brian , concur on'' BEAline to the Islands'' ISBN 0-9518958-4-2 . Descendants of some featured still work on the islands ,
and sometimes crew breed crew ! Sad 'tho Penzance - Scillies has finished . Apologies for thread creep .

Rgds dave f .

[VEGAS]

What a brilliant program. I loved it.

Made me laugh when that female first officer mentioned about landing on the beach at Barra.

"we can land into the wind, whichever direction its coming from!"

[hobby]

Earlier this year my wife and I spent two weeks in Orkney and we both enjoyed watching the film. Neither of us are Orcadians but both of us are descended from Orcadians.

We had a broken Saab 340 at Kirkwall on our return to Aberdeen which made us miss our flight to Gatwick. Lunch allowance was £5.10 which was enough for a sandwich and a cup of coffee at Kirkwall!

The Orkney is a special place, wonderful for birdwatchers and one quickly learns that the inter island ferries, the buses and the Islander aircraft are absolutely essential to the life of the islands. Some twenty thousand people live on the islands, ten thousand of them in the capital Kirkwall. Orcadians consider themselves to be more Norwegian than Scots and Norway does maintain a consulate in Kirkwall. The Orkney flag is very similar to that of Norway, the difference being that the blue Nordic cross is outlined in yellow on a red field for Orkney whereas Norway has the same cross outlined in white on a red field.

We found lots of English people have retired to Orkney. One Orcadian said to us that there is one island with thirty inhabitants - one Orcadian and twenty nine English!

I was pleased to recognise some of the Kirkwall airport staff whom I had spoken to during our visit and I am really not too sure about the Loganair Islander night arrival timetable. I suspect that Capt Finlayson will be happy to retire on his sixtieth birthday before after dark flying begins.

For those who have never been to Orkney the wind is always there such that there are very few full size trees and gardens usually have a protective wall to shield plants and vegetables from the wind. Some of the crops planted by farmers have seeds from Norway, southern seeds do not grow so well up there. The real business is the rearing of beef cattle - Shapinsay has three hundred human inhabitants and three thousand cattle.

Meat, fish and shellfish are of excellent quality, the salmon farms are run by a Polish contingent .

Wave power is another industry and I was told that the fierce tides and rips around the islands have caused quite a lot of damage in past years to the underwater equipment, some of which is made in Orkney.

A really super film, brought many happy memories - a great pity that Loganair seems to have to work on such a financial knife edge.

[DaveB]

It's funny you know. I recently downloaded and installed Treescapes for GenX Vol4 which is free for vols 4 and 5. Having loaded it up, I went for a spin to admire my new download and surprisingly, I didn't see one single tree. I then looked at the terrain and thought it would probably be realistic to see little or no trees there anyway. Watching that vid showed very little trees of any kind up in that neck of the woods so I concluded that it was probably Darren's easiest work yet and completely accurate. I'm not sure what I downloaded though

ATB
DaveB

[Garry Russell]

BEA wanted to introduce Viscounts to one of the fields up there but the runway was not long enough for a useful service according to the base figures...

It was decided that as long as the wind was above a certain figure they could operate with a useful load and about 90 per cent of the services operated as required.

[stegs]

Interesting piece about the Skyvans being a commercial failure.

Not much call for moving Land Rovers and elephants

[hobby]

For Garry; At Kirkwall Airport there is a picture of 4 Viscounts at the airport celebrating some sort of anniversary or occassion.

[Garry Russell]

I think that would have been the end of BA Viscounts...they did a four ship celebration up there

[Garry Russell]

Just came across this from the Vickers Viscount.net newsletter

On the 27 and 28 March 1982 BA - British Airways operated special flights from Glasgow to Kirkwall with Viscounts c/n 261 G-AOYL, c/n 262 G-AOYM, c/n 264 G-AOYO and c/n 412 G-APIM, to mark the airline's withdrawal of the type twenty-five years after it had first visited Kirkwall and following twenty years of scheduled services