Unusual Sight

I've always liked airplanes and helicopters so living near Prestwick airport and the connected HMS Gannet Search and Rescue means that there are often interesting aircraft around.

Just last week we had a military Dauphin and Merlin helicopters and over the years I have seen some pretty unusual planes.


I have seen Hercules, TriStars and a Gulfstream that does not exist. We have seen Tornadoes and Hornets and Chinooks. I've seen the Police EC135, a Lynx, a Boeing E3 Sentry.

These are just what I see when I'm not in the office!




I have a bad phone photo taken while driving past Prestwick of the world's largest airplane, the Antonov AN-225.

When that one takes off you can feel it in your chest. It has 6 engines! One year it took off during the Loans Gala - the entire place stopped to look.

I've also seen the next largest plane, the AN-124. This was a regular visitor to Prestwick but I haven't seen it recently.






On Tuesday we had another rare visitor - one of the 4 remaining Vickers VC10s.

These planes are used for inflight refueling and are due to be retired by the end of the year.

Not sure what he was actually doing, but he was pulling some tight curves over the house.