It is odd to think that people will probably look back on the Boeing 747 era with nostalgia, but with the way that they are currently being axed – look back they may have to. There may even be a Boeing 747 or an Airbus A380 preservation society, we will just have to wait and see.

The picture above was taken by me in 1972 I think in Bahrain, now I look back on these trips to various airports around the world with fond memories. Thinking much about some of the aircraft that seemed to be dumped in unusual locations, on my first trip through the Panama canal I was astonished at how many aircraft were parked on the small airfields along the side of the canal.

Many of them seemed to be in a poor state of repair, but when you are on the bridge you don’t really have time to keep a log other than the ships log. Many of these aircraft will have been consigned to the scrap heap in the intervening fifty years, yes they will have been consigned to the dustbin of history – and not many people will have considered preseving any of them.

So what would you preserve from today?

After witnessing the bun fight on ScotAvNet, I decided to have a look around at some other options for posting and reading aviation information. After a conversation with a friend and a short search I found, Aviation for All and although it seems to be a bit higglty pigglty the forums are pretty good and quite active.

It did take a little time to find my way around the forums, but I was pleased to see that there is a lot of information and it would seem that there is something for everyone. The Scottish posts appear in a number of places dotted around the forum, but there is a certain logic to the layout.

As for the administration team, there seems to be someone available pretty much all day – although I haven’t had to ask any questions yet I’m guessing that if I do they will be answered pretty quickly.

This looks like a forum, where people are actually prepared to help other people – it even has separate sections for ADSB logs, Aviation stuff for sale and Off Topic posts – which means that you don’t have to wade through stuff you don’t want to see.

So in the short term, I’m going to give this forum a go – while I keep a weather eye on ScotAvNet. But I suspect that in the long term I’ll be ditching ScotAvNet, as it seems to be the old thing where people seem quite happy to become very partisan and start a bun fight.

While down at Prestwick this morning, the rumour mill was working away and most of it revolved around how many aircraft were scheduled for COP 26 and where they were going to be parked up..

The current majority rumour seems to be that there are a total of 46 aircraft currently booked, that is between Glasgow, Edinburgh and Prestwick. The rumour mill has come up with the majority of the Business Jets will be Edinburgh bound, the big stuff will be at Prestwick and the intermediate stuff and some of the larger stuff at Glasgow.

It seems that there are according to the rumours some 28 aircraft booked in for Prestwick at the moment, but then this is all rumour – so I guess that we’ll just have to wait and see.

There was also some debate as to whether Air Force One would be at Prestwick, with Air Force Two at Glasgow as a contingency – or would they both just park up at Prestwick and POTUS 46 would slum it with the VH-80N “White Hawk” of HSX-1.

There should obviously be a number of logistical flights pre COP 26, with a number of logistical flights after the event.

At any rate, these were today’s rumours from the mound – more info the next time I get bushwhacked by a secret squirel.

A quick trip down to Prestwick today for the Turkish A400 18-0094, first visit to Prestwick for this type in Turkish service. There were a few nice other bits and pieces there, KC135, KC10 and C5 from the USAF.

We had a UAE C17 and an AN-12, with the GAF Tonka still broken and on Royal Navy front there was a Merlin HAS2 out for a bit of sun bathing – they ran it up for 15 minutes and shut it down again. I suspect the crew heard the erie call of the greater spotted egg banjo with coffee, I decided to say that because people seem to make up their own mind about this sort of stuff.

As a follow up to the COP 26 post a few days ago, there seem to be a total of 46 aircraft booked between Glasgow, Edinburgh and Prestwick. With 28 of those being booked at Prestwick, anyway time will tell on that front.

There is a Gallery of nine shots with this post, as usual at Prestwick with stuff going out on 12 in the morning – the light could be better. But what is in the Gallery is what I got before the rain stopped play.

As days at prestwick go it was a pretty good day, not like the days of Prestwicks heyday but not too bad nonetheless. It isn’t that often that there are so many older bits of kit on the ground, so you have to make the effort to get down and see events like this one.

I was nice to have a catch up with some of the other spotters, so all in all a good day.

After the bun fight on ScotAvNet, I probably will not be using the forum much in the future – if atall. I had a quick poke around and came accross an other forum, called “Aviation for All” and have registered.

It is early days and I have only had a quick look at the forum – first impressions are good and the administrators seem to be much more on the ball. The forum has a wealth of sub forums, with all kinds of special interest groups catered for. In short it certainly seems to live up to its title, I will be a regular visitor until I can get a real feel for the forum.

There doesn’t seem to be a specific Scottish section, but I’m guessing that the Northern UK section will cover it. I’ll post an update to this when I know more.

Update

I’ve had a reasonable cruise around the site and there are is a lot of useful stuff on it, but the Northern Regional Airports section is a bit hap hazzard – you have to browse through whats there looking specifically for Scottish stuff.

In fairness, there are loads of excellent snippets of information – but there don’t seem to be regular contributors from the main Scottish Airports. Which I think is a shame, there are not many airport logs posted in ScotAvNet – it just needs people to do the needfull.