Slemish Airfield
SLEMISH AIRFIELD: New airfield in 2020
NOTES: A change of format clearly required here. In early August 2020 I was kindly contacted by Mr Stanley C P Love, the project manager, who asked - "Would you please be good enough to let me know what is necessary to have this new state of the art Runway/Airfield listed in your Airfield Guide." He attached three photographs and three newspaper articles. Needless to say his request alone was more than enough to gain an entry.
Pick your preferred superlative - amazing, fabulous, stunning, etc, etc. Set against a bleak future for GA airfields in the UK in general over many years, and in the middle of a global pandemic, (Covid 19), which saw all UK airports reduced to skeletal operations, and airfields struggling to survive, here we had the most robust example of faith in the future.
Location: Just NW of Buckna village, 6.5nm NE of Ballymena town centre
Period of operation: Opened on Thursday 2nd July 2020, to -
Runway: 08/26 765 x 18 grass
Note: Although, for the purposes of this 'Guide' the runway is classified as grass, as Stanley Love explained: "It has a grass reinforced surface using PERFO AK+ Tiles laid on an engineered base with drainage running either side of the entire length of the runway." This I imagine pretty much guarantees safe year round operation.
WHAT THE PRESS HAD TO SAY
In preparing this 'Guide', and helped along the way by some lovely, kind people - I am usually adding quotes from newspaper articles published between the 19th centuary, and the 20th century mostly up until WW2. And now this - bang up to date in August 2020 when I made this entry.
Although without any doubt, for this 'Guide' Google Earth images are a godsend in so many ways. Such a shame that the unskilled amateurs Google Earth employ to sort and date these images cannot be relied upon. This is of course not just a problem for Google Earth, the standards of education in so much of the world has suffered no end in the last few decades.
There is a very good film of the PC12 arriving at: https://youtu.be/2Prd8OWhcT8
But still, be that as it may, what a great addition to this 'Guide' this has been.
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