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The building right next to where I used to work (Where InWales was a week or two ago)  was used as a navigation point/ electronic bombing target by Low level airforce Jets, tens of times a day, just about 90% of the year.

Apparently in the UK you're not allowed to complain and actually have the airforce do anything about it unless your community is larger than 10,000 people. On top of that if you claim that they were actually flying below the minimum legal height, the RAF will not do anything about it , unless you can give the registration number from the plane. which are normally either side of the tail, in letters 4 inches high, not painted in anything highly visible, and travelling past at 400 miles per hour. Even if you can give them the serial number, the usual excuse is that they are above the minimum height , just you are standing in a place where you can't view effectively and properly judge the height, even when they are between you and the valley floor, and the valley is less tall than the minimum height. Occasionally they install a mobile radar at the top of one of the valleys to check. strangely that always seems to happen during the quiet times of the year.

Complain enough and you get invited to a talk where they tell all about the necessity of training, but not why it particularly has to be you they're training over.  Local farmers have taken to writing messages with weedkiller in the grass for Pilots. ranging from Pam fod Hast (Welsh for what's the rush) to the much less subtle Piss Off Biggles! (which backfired, because many pilots detoured to read the message after it was spotted in the ariel photos on an airforce flight simulator)

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Jul 8th, 2009 at 12:48:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
They used my high school as a marker and would fly over frequently.  I know the school complained plenty because the planes really were hugely disruptive but we we based in a tiny village where the county's cast-offs and bastards were all sent so nobody cared.  

Ad astra per aspera
by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Wed Jul 8th, 2009 at 12:54:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And they always choose beautiful quiet places to fly over. I mean, bloody hell, we won the Falklands, can't they go down there and fly over W Falkland, which is just like Wales except it's empty

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Jul 8th, 2009 at 12:54:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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