With my 9yr old ?

I’m on school holiday duty next week, and I thought it might be a nice day out combing a bit of walking with seeing aircraft.

In school holidays do the RAF take holiday too or do they keep flying ? Is it a case of you might see 1 aircraft every 2hrs or every 20 mins?

Thanks

Cant hurt to double check the training timetable, looks like if you are in those parts early doors you are in with a good chance of spotting something.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/operational-low-flying-training-timetable

I’ve just come back from a week in Abergynolwyn. The planes are flying every day but it seems hit and miss when they’re out. It did seem to me that generally I didn’t see any until after 10-11am ish.
If you’re after walks in the valley could do a lot worse than the waymarked walks at Tan Y Coed, free carpark! Just down from the king Arthur place.

Mach loop is on my to do list

This maybe helpful….

I took a random few days off in spring and stayed in a cottage down that way, meant to do loads of different things but ended up just Mach looping. There weren’t that many planes (Hawks, Hercules and a single prop trainer – saw Ospreys from the cottage )but it worked for me as I had good books and was very happy just to sit in the sun and read until something flew underneath. 🙂 I did the Bwlch a couple of times and Cad East, Cad East definitely the nicer spot – proper geeks have some kind of radio to hear chatter, I had to leave before they arrived but on my last day they could hear that a USAF squadron of F15s was on their way after refuelling over the Isle of Man… 🙂

Is it possible to combine with walking up Cadir Idris, or is not the same valley ?

Also in terms of timings that government document says approx timings, but then that video says there are no timings …🤔

Yeah, think Cadir Idris is north of the loop, so if you climb up the south face (Cad West is at the bottom), you’ll have a good chance of seeing passing traffic if the incline allows – they fly west down the valley over Tal Y Lyn lake then either turn left to do another loop or climb up and away (most things I saw did two laps, the climb out of the lake is one of the exits), so I would imagine, even if you don’t get a close up view (they are VERY low when they go through Cad!), you’ll see them on the way in or out. 🙂

I didn’t find the timetables to be of any use, there were “scheduled” sessions with nothing happening and planes flying the loop outside the specified times. The impression that I got from overhearing geeks was that there isn’t a way of knowing ahead of the day what’s going to be flying, but with the right connections and scanners, you could make an educated guess on the day (some chap near Mildenhall apparently posts on a plane spotter Facebook page when anything interesting takes off). I was happy just to head for the hills with my book, but then, I didn’t have a nine year old to entertain – I’ve no doubt there are some fully-geeked Facebook groups to stalk where you’ll get better tips, unless anyone on here has better info? 🙂

Mach loop Facebook group is worth joining

How did it go? 🙂

It was damp overcast with a very low cloud base 😐.

We managed a walk to the tarn on the Minffordd Path up Cadair Idris before turning back

Still on the plus side took less than 1hr to get there from home so will return at some point