RAF Lossiemouth is hell of a distance for most of us, so when the opportunity came up to shoot on-station I decided to tie it in with a trip around the highlands. As nice as the highlands are I was chomping at the bit to get to Lossiemouth and see where my Grandad had served with the Fleet Air Arm when my dad was growing up.

On Tuesday 2nd May 2018 I arrived on the perimeter fence of the station, having never had the opportunity to visit before I had a drive around the whole area to familiarise myself with the local landscape. Settling on the 23 end, I spent the afternoon shooting departures and recoveries in a very leisurely fashion.

2 Squadron, forming in 1912 at Farnborough, is one of our front line squadrons operating the Typhoon FGR4 and form part of our QRA defence. The squadron operates on a 24/7 365 days a year basis and is critical to our country’s defence network. As such it was a massive privilege to be invited to spend 2 days shooting with the Squadron during a training period. On Wednesday 3rd once security checks were completed we were escorted down to the 2 Squadron hangers and 3 Typhoons that were lined up on the ramp ready for the day’s sorties.

For the next two days we would spend each morning with the squadron shooting departures and ‘hot-pitting’, doing lunch at the combined ranks mess and then spending the afternoon over at VAS. It was an excellent opportunity to capture the everyday routine and training that must take place to ensure a well-oiled, well drilled unit capable of deploying at a moment’s notice to defend the people of this country.

Over at VAS we had guests from the US & French Navy in the form of a P-8 Orion and Bréguet Atlantique II. Also on the ramp was parked a Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora a rare visitor to this country.

RAF Lossiemouth was a superb base to visit and I for one appreciate a little more now what my grandad had being up there in Scotland. I could easily be tempted to go back again one day!