Renfrew Airport

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Re:

Postby mrsam » Thu Jul 01, 2010 10:11 pm

The Voyageur wrote:Apparently its a Royal Navy Flag?!?


[Sadsac flag knowledge]

The flag is called a white ensign and is used as a identifier for any HMS(Her Majesty's Ship) vessel afloat. Technically any royal naval docks / bases are also known as ships and are called HMS (summit) so presumably the airport was being used for a naval air squadren at the time

Website for more info

[/Sadsac flag knowledge]

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Re: Re:

Postby BrigitDoon » Fri Jul 02, 2010 7:17 am

mrsam wrote:Technically any royal naval docks / bases are also known as...

"Stone frigates"?

mrsam wrote:...presumably the airport was being used for a naval air squadren...

RNAS Yeovilton is an air base known as HMS Heron.
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Re: Re:

Postby mrsam » Fri Jul 02, 2010 7:05 pm

BrigitDoon wrote:
mrsam wrote:Technically any royal naval docks / bases are also known as...

"Stone frigates"?

mrsam wrote:...presumably the airport was being used for a naval air squadren...

RNAS Yeovilton is an air base known as HMS Heron.



Aahh righto thanks...
Hmmm I wonder what happens if i press that lever.... Ahh It operates that shiny new plug socket!

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Re:

Postby Tom Macfadyen » Fri Sep 10, 2010 8:47 am

Snapshot wrote:Here's my version of the image... a few of the worst scratches removed, and some colour tweaking to get it looking a bit better.

Sadly there's only so much that can be done, although some light sharpening has tidied the lines up a bit...

I've tried to minimise the edge darkening, however I decided to leave the old edges in so that it still looks "period" :-)

Image


Alan
-----
http://alangraham.co.uk



Hi,

I only became aware of this forum yesterday and was very interested in the discussions on Renfrew Airport. I first visited Renfrew Airport in the early 1950s and continued to do so until it closed in May 1966. The flag in the photograph at Renfrew Airport was not the English Flag, this flag does not have a Union flag in the top corner nearest the flagpole. Nor is it the Royal Navy’s White Ensign, it is however, the flag of the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, MTCA, which was flown at civil airports and airfields from the mid 1940s to the early to mid 1960s. this flag was also painted on some airliners during this period. The last time that it was painted on aircraft was probably on the MTCA/ CAAs fleet of aircraft, DH Doves and Precival Princes. The colours of this flag were pale blue with a dark blue cross and the Union Flag in the top corner nearest the flagpole. In black and white photos with poor contrast and colour photos where the colours have faded it often looks like the White Ensign.

The Royal Navy were temporary based at Renfrew while the concrete runways were laid at Abbotsinch in the early 1950s but this predates the colour photo which was taken after the terminal was built.

This colour print is printed back to front as the control tower should be on the right of the terminal when viewed from the road.

Tom
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Re: Renfrew Airport

Postby Josef » Fri Sep 10, 2010 1:22 pm

Looks like a good call, Tom. The Civil Air Ensign :


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Re: Renfrew Airport

Postby ant-dat » Wed Oct 20, 2010 10:00 am

Cool thread. Found ti very intersting.
Sadly the Airport was away by time i moved to Renfrew. there is some items to remember it by,
For example there is an estate called arkleston in memory of the Airport (all the streets are named after planes)
There is also a memorial next to Tesco's It was placed there a few years ago

I see in some of the pictures an area called Victory gardens it aint changed much

look forward for more updates
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Re: Renfrew Airport

Postby PhilDodd » Tue Nov 22, 2016 3:46 pm

I have just found this thread and see that it is quite old, but hope that I am not too late to add my bit.
I was born and brought up in Kinloch Road, Renfrew, which was quite close to Renfrew Airport and have some fond memories of the place. I was 11 when it closed.
My mother was also born and brought up in Renfrew but my father was English. His father (my Grandfather) worked for the Air Ministry and specialised in radios used to communicate with aircraft and radio navigation aids. Around the mid-1930s, he was sent to work at Renfrew Airport and he brought his family with him. He rented a house on Wright Street which backed onto my mother’s family house on Ross Avenue which is how my Mum & Dad met when they were in their early teens. Granddad was only there for about 18 months and I suspect he was involved with installing the Radio Systems for the Airport.
Dad joined the RAF in the late 1930s and then about 1953 he was discharged and returned to Renfrew with my mum, who he had married by then, and went to work for Scottish Aviation at Renfrew Airport. His Identical Twin Brother also worked at the airport as an aircraft engineer for B.E.A. but by the mid-1950s, he was moved to their main maintenance base at Heathrow. Incidentally, my grandfather was also involved in the original development of Heathrow Airport.
When Renfrew Airport closed, Scottish Aviation moved to Prestwick Airport and Dad then commuted there daily by car for the rest of his working life.
I have good memories of regularly walking past a wooden fence at the Cockles Loan end of Sandy Road and seeing the aircraft tail fins sticking up where they were parked in an area of the airport, right next to Sandy Road. British Eagle was one of my favourite ones.
We also flew from Renfrew Airport once, down to Heathrow to visit by Grandparents and Uncle’s family. I think that it was a Viscount or Vanguard that we went in. To get to the aeroplane at Renfrew, we had to walk out to it on the apron, through the café’s outdoor seating area that was set up just outside the new terminal on an area of the apron that had low, waist high, barriers around it. You could sit and have drinks right there on the apron, very close to the aeroplanes.
I also remember that Arkleston Road passed close to the threshold of runway 08 and there was a small wooden hut beside the road there. When an aeroplane was taking off or landing over the road, a man would come out of the hut and stop any traffic on the road until the plane has passed.
Occasionally, while the man in the hut was not looking, my friends and I would sneak into the field on the other side of Arkleston Road and hide in the long grass in line with the runway. When an aeroplane passed over we would jump up and try to catch it. It was of course, far too high to possibly catch, but it was low and great fun to see it flying right over us.
I also have memories of being taken to an airshow at Abbotsinch when it was still a RNAS base. During a gap in the flying display, a group of clowns entertained the crowd by trying to fly on a bicycle fitted with a pair of wings.
When the M8 was built, I am sure that it was laid over the existing runway. Whether the original concrete was removed first or not, I do not know, but my friends and I managed to cycle along it before it was opened to traffic.
Those were the days. Young children could roam from home safely without their parent’s supervision and Health and Safety had not yet banned everything that was fun.
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Re: Renfrew Airport

Postby Socceroo » Wed Nov 30, 2016 7:30 pm

Thanks for that - superb memories.
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Re: Renfrew Airport

Postby War Baby » Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:36 pm

My father was still a schoolboy when he took a trip in a tram from Glasgow to Renfrew to see the aerdrome. He had become fascinated by the exploits of Jim Mollison and Amy Johnstone, who were breaking records for solo flights to & from Australia at the time. He went straight into the flight office, knowing that there were summer joy-riding flights available to the public. But there was only one man there, sitting at a table. He was actually the chief flying instructor. He asked my father what he wanted.

"I want to fly," my father said, a bit dramatically. The instructor gave him a long look and replied that the joy-rides were over for the year. Really dejected and crestfallen, (so my Dad says in his memoirs) he turned away with his head down. But the man, seeing this, suddenly stood up and told him: "Just wait there a minute."

...The instructor returned with a flying helmet!

But my father didn't have much money, so he asked him nervously how much it would cost. The guy said:"How much have you got?" Dad said: "Only ten shillings" To his surprise, the man said, "It's a deal", and before he knew it, he was following the Flying Instructor out onto the aerodrome, where right away he saw a two-seater Gipsy Moth bi-plane sitting there on its own.

The plane took off. Being quite a small lad, he could see nothing except the upper wing and the sky. But he wasn't caring! He was flying. After five minutes, the plane banked steeply and my father could see the roof of the hanger below with the word 'RENFREW' painted in huge white letters on it. My father writes that he was in a daze all the way home.

In 1936, he joined the RAF at Abbotsinch, and only came out after the war in 1946. He was Ground Crew but he saw action in Belgium. He was in charge of a squad of men who had a lorry load of equipment, and could be sent anywhere at short notice to fix up crashed, or shot up planes. One time at Moelsbruek, he & the men had just finished fixing up a plane when the German fighters came in low, and he'd to dive into a dug-out. When he came out, the very plane they'd just fixed was completely destroyed.

Can anyone tell me if the true cost of a Joy Flight at Renfrew around 1930 to 1932 was really ten shillings or was the Instructor just saying that because it was all the money my father had on him?
Last edited by War Baby on Sun Feb 19, 2017 8:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Renfrew Airport

Postby banjo » Sun Feb 19, 2017 7:27 pm

great story war baby,thank you for sharing.
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