Chinook landing in Manchester?

[ajame5]

I work in south Manchester and every 6 months or so, we have a couple of days of a VERY low fast-flying chinook go right overhead and land in the park (platt fields) down the road. it's a big built up area and mainly residential and te park is well used. It's an awesome sound, our whole building vibrates and shakes when it goes overhead. Does anyone on here know what this might be for? Some rumours was it was practice for VIP evacuation in case of terrorist/enemy strike. Did a bit of web searching but didn't find much.

[db]

i don't really care why they do it, but i do wish they'd do it more often. especially around Glasgow.
they fly over every couple of months and it's just not enough!
there was one in and around GLA last weekend, on a Sunday no less. taking in views of the classic monte carlo start?

[Parabola]

Gets mentioned on Twitter quite a bit when they fly over Whalley Range on their way to Fallowfield.

Think they're from RAF Odiham. Platt Fields is an authorised landing area. Not sure why though.

[Ben Jk]

I saw one last week when I was in Stockport. Was pretty low and flying quick. Thought i'd seen two seperatley but maybe just the same one circling.

[Chrisgr31]

It could be some form of training flight. A farmer I know used to allow them to land in his field, they'd fly from their base to a field in East Sussex then fly all the way back. Apparently this particular field was good from training as it has a marsh, railway line alongside, and power lines over it! To make life easier they usually flew in whilst it was dark!

So I'd guess they'd have similar places to get to in built up areas!

[ninja-lewis]

There's a Royal Signals TA centre on Norman Road just across the road from the park. Two other TA centres just up the road in central Manchester as well. They could be picking up TA soldiers for exercise.

Likewise they could be picking up Air Cadets/University Air Squadron cadets for a jolly.

[Fat Albert]

Chrisgr31 said:

It could be some form of training flight. A farmer I know used to allow them to land in his field, they'd fly from their base to a field in East Sussex then fly all the way back. Apparently this particular field was good from training as it has a marsh, railway line alongside, and power lines over it! To make life easier they usually flew in whilst it was dark!

So I'd guess they'd have similar places to get to in built up areas!

Yes some of our practice confined areas were pretty hairy, we would do a fly-over to do a 5 'S' assessment: Size, Shape, Slope, Surface and Surroundings before plopping in

[f1dget]

db said:

i don't really care why they do it, but i do wish they'd do it more often. especially around Glasgow.
they fly over every couple of months and it's just not enough!
there was one in and around GLA last weekend, on a Sunday no less. taking in views of the classic monte carlo start?

One of the pilots is my nephews godfather,they were based out of Redford barracks for a weekend of training flights.I got a text at 11am on Sunday telling me o be at a nearby airport in the next 15minutes for a fly-by.

He flew over town for 5 minutes before spending another 15 minutes doing practice landings/take off's giving me the chance to get a few pictures before he gave us a high speed,low level fly-by and heading out towards Glasgow.

The amount of people complaining on Facebook afterwards was unreal but I could listen to that wokka wokka noise all day.

[Geneve]

Chrisgr31 said:

It could be some form of training flight. A farmer I know used to allow them to land in his field, they'd fly from their base to a field in East Sussex then fly all the way back. Apparently this particular field was good from training as it has a marsh, railway line alongside, and power lines over it! To make life easier they usually flew in whilst it was dark!

So I'd guess they'd have similar places to get to in built up areas!

The military do rely on arrangements with private landowners/farmers for training exercises.

In normal helicopter training you can usually come into an empty field, subject to the 500' rule, so long as the skids/undercarriage don't actually touch the ground - for that, you're supposed to have the landowner's consent.

[Munter]

I seem to remember a C130 landing in an approved field for training. And sinking into it. Oops.