96th Entry RAF Halton 1960 - 1963

Welcome to the RAF Halton Apprentices 96th Entry secondary web site.

The halton96th.org.uk site is used for development, testing and other stuff to see how it pans out before letting it loose in the real world.

Its a workshop area and my work bench so its not too pretty, a tad untidy and not everything works as it maybe should, so please be warned - if you get in a muddle you may have to bail out of it and find your own way home.

Links:

To go back to our current primary web site you can use this link www.halton96th.co.uk

To view photographs of a visit by the Anglian Branch of the Old Haltonians to Robertson Barracks, Swanton Morley please click here:  Old Haltonians - Anglian Branch .You may recognise Wg Cmdr Ken Wallis in these photos. Whilst not a brat Ken is an honorary member of the Anglian Branch. During this visit he pranged his 'Little Nellie' gunship after it lost power during a demo flight at visit end. The game old boy (90+) walked away from the crash and was marched off to sick quarters for a check-over by the Army. Needless to say he was perfectly OK and turned up the next weekend to collect all the bits.

Background:

A bit of background to some stuff that you may see on the main site...

    Our 'spotty cat' badge designed by Dudley Denham if memory serves me right. 

It's supposed to be a cheetah and the Latin motto I'm told translates as '...with greatest speed'. My grammar school Latin translates it as '...as quickly as'.

Where we were going and why it was at that rate of knots and compared to what, is a complete mystery to me.

Reunion Banners:

   Our original reunion banner with a darkish blue background to the wheel badge. Now superceded by a red wheel version.

 The pattern used for our new reunion banner with a supposedly more correct background to the wheel badge.

Galleries:

There are many photographs on the old web site loosely arranged into themed galleries, such as people in uniformed or sporting groups, mug shots of individuals old and new, at reunions, etc. The new gallery will be slicker and better to use. Many pictures will eventually have a hover-over facility to enable a person's name to appear or photo detail to enlarge.

Please send in anything you would like included on the web site, preferably as a big Mb size .jpg/jpeg file. Eventually there may be a facility for you to upload photos directly to the web site.

Here are a couple of examples. As you can see the better the resolution I start with the better the end result. I can optimise them so they load quickly, whilst retaining detail.

 Poor original resolution - badly scanned photograph from a 35mm film camera.

That's me above on the left, with Colin Murden (100th I think), Bill Joisce (99th) and Glyn Bolderson (95th), photo taken at Goose Bay - Canada in winter in the late 70's when we were Victor tanker crew chiefs on 57 Sqdn at RAF Marham.

  Much better original resolution - taken with a decent digital camera.

Here we are outside Halton House during one of our reunions.

The Window:

The original picture that our window centre piece is based upon (Photo copyright Steve and Margaret Pays - Pheonix Project). 

Compare this with the window master design below and you can easily recognise Trev Taylor on the right.

Our window in St George's Church at RAF Halton - see the primary web site for the whole story behind the various elements of the window design. You may notice that the drifting snow on the design melted in the kiln during firing and does not appear in the actual window.

These pictures indicate how the window was made to our bespoke design, based on your suggestions. Starting with full size paper templates, then cut glass parts, which are drawn upon, painted with special glazes and fired layer by layer for final colour and effect, then assembled with lead striping. The clever bit of stained glass is similar to pottery where you paint it one colour and after firing it turns a different shade. 

When installed each stained glass window is protected from the elements by a clear outer pane. 

This monkey wrench is used in the window to represent the versatility of our aircraft trades, chosen not just because it is a nice antique tool. Although it was probably in common use in Trenchard's day, ironically such imprecise adjustable tools are never allowed in use on aircraft in modern times.

A very interesting project to have been involved in. The artisan Reg Pritchard is an ex-apprentice, who upon starting up had to design and build his own kiln to fire the pieces as he couldn't get a suitable commercial item within his budget. He is responsible for manufacturing many of the windows installed at St George's.

Waving the Flag:

 The RAF Ensign gif seen on many Brat web sites. Author unknown. These animated gifs are essentially a sequence of still shots assembled with a short delay between frames to produce the moving effect.

 Another wavy flag - author again unknown, maybe the same guy who did the RAF Ensign and the spinning brass wheel.

  The famous spinning version of the brass wheel that we wore on our sleeve. Author unknown. Usually seen on most Brat web sites. 

Your Squadron - Flight within the Wing - Entry was indicated by the colour of the plastic disk installed as a background to the brass badge. Red (1 Sqdn - A Flight), Green (2 Sqdn - B Flight), Pale Blue (3 Sqdn - C Flight).

Downloads:

In order to allow members to download for free the next iteration of The Book I have a folder containing some test files. Feel free to download them. Here...

When the link opens, depending upon the file type and your web browser you may have to right click the desired file and save as to your pc, else follow the instructions.

What's next:

There will be more to come on this site, some of which will make it onto the primary site, so please check back now and then to see what's happening on my work bench.

Cheers, Rob - aka T0686605 A/A Honnor JRL

...who was always in C Flight, Room 6, 4th bedspace on the right.

...and is web master of both the halton96th.co.uk and halton96th.org.uk sites and legal owner of both domain names on behalf of the 96th Entry.