Useful airfield information and home of the forum's fuel price league tables.

Moderators: deltacharlie, GlosOps

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By Ridders
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#691965
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By AndyR
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#692305
Shoreham EGKA has a choice of runways, a tarmac one aligned 02-20, a wide grass runway aligned 25-07 and a short grass one for those blusty days aligned 13-31.

Despite complaints of being expensive, it is an airfield serving a large area, with no competition and in the overcrowded south east is relatively good value compared to other controlled airports around it offering the same facilities. Landing fees start from £17.50 for residents.

ATC are fantastic, the firemen and refuellers are friendly and helpful; that would be one gripe, that the fuel is consistently more expensive than most places around.

Maintenance is available from various organisations and flying schools are open 7 days a week.

Lancing College makes a wonderful backdrop to the Art Deco terminal building. Hot meals, snacks, teas and coffees are served in the main terminal, along with a beer for those long balmy summer evenings where you sit and chat about your latest exploits.

There is a Transair shop situated on the airport grounds and Shoreham is also the base for Headset Services Ltd amongst others.

The website is [url]http://www.shorehamairport.co.uk[/url] and your other half can keep an eye on your arrival time with the live arrival & departure board, along with a web cam surveying the entire airside. Always worth remembering that one!

You can hire anything from a Cessna 150 to a Harvard, a PA28 to an Extra 300, as well as a range of helicopters. The surrounding area is picturesque and the likes of the Isle of Wight are just 25 minutes way for most pilots.


An airport that comes in for a lot of undeserved flak and well worth a visit.
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By Ridders
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#692535
[quote='AndyR']An airport that comes in for a lot of undeserved flak and well worth a visit.[/quote] Flack [i]is[/i] deserved when it comes to parking your car! Its a Shoreham "tax" on flying from there.

Of course, everything else you say above Andy is quite accurate and very worth mentioning. Its really is a great place to fly from - I love it down there!

But: I maintain the car parking charges are outrageous for the private operators that already pay to base their aircraft on the field and would welcome some concession similar to the parking stickers issued to companies based there.
[i](I did ask Ian that my original post above was moved to GA Discussion but its been retained in this section for some reason)[/i]
By mr spog
#693991
I agree, I only rent other people's aircraft, and pay lots for fuel and landing. If I paid to keep my aircraft in the hanger, or on the field I would be extremely p****d off at paying parking fees to access it. Each owner based on the airfield should have one parking permit.
By vindaloo
#694062
Here's a couple of videos of landing at Shoreham - hopefully they will be of some use to first-time visitors:

[url=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=U9rozqAV6cw]Runway 02[/url]
[url=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k4nOY7CBy80]Runway 20[/url]

Vindaloo
By mr spog
#694080
I thought you were going to land in the car park. (It must have been the angle it was filmed from!) :lol:
By vindaloo
#694380
[quote='mrspog']I thought you were going to land in the car park. (It must have been the angle it was filmed from!) :lol:[/quote]
I agree, it does look quite a flat approach, although the RPM is 1000-1500 so I certainly wasn't dragging it in. I'm just pleased to get on the runway. :wink:

Vindaloo
By mikej
#696885
Can I just add to Dave's parking analysis.

I'm down three or four times a month - mainly at weekends. I always park outside T2 and I've never received a single ticket or warning (touch wood!!)

Rumours of a Pieterson and Moores style rift between the Airport manager and the paymasters abound. Potentially off to Fairoaks. So hopefully someone with a little business acumen (and the desire to reopend T2!!) will be put in place if the rumours are true.

Politics aside.. My favourite airfield!
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By AndyR
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#781240
Terminal Two's new restaurant and bar was visited on Saturday lunchtime.

With hopes high for something similar to the old T2, the abysmal choice of food and the high pricing is enough to have put me off visiting there again in a hurry.

The decor is fresh and the area looks enticing (apart from horrible tin foil chairs to sit on at the tables)>

The choice of food was:

Chicken Curry and rice.

Vegetable curry and rice.

Prepacked sandwiches ( I would imagine on sale or return from a local sandwich maker).

Ham salad. If you can call ham salad a leaf or two of little gem, some sliced tomato and some cucumber.

We ordered two curries, and a bottle of coke and one of water.

The curries were........ok. Nothing wrong, portions pretty small, nothing special but edible. Two small popadoms with each. The type you buy from Iceland and pop in the microwave.

Price? £17.10 and it was not posted anywhere either, but then neither were menus. I had figured about a fiver a head so had not asked beforehand how much our lunch was going to be.

I'm sorry but I am either becoming Victor Meldrew or that is a rip off surely? Less £2.80 for the two bottles of drink and that makes two small mediocre curry and plain boiled rice £14.30!! At least they will have a good profit margin if it does take off.

The disturbing lack of choice and the price serve only to discourage me from entering there again. I was going to ask if they did full english breakfasts and the price, but decided the answer may cause me to choke on a stray grain of rice.
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By Ridders
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#781274
And an Update on Terminal 1 restaurant.

I visited a few weeks back, the ownership had just changed to a catering company. After waiting 10min in a queue of only 3 people we decided not to bother ordering the tea/coffee’s and cakes. Must be an isolated case I thought…

Back again yesterday, so decided to give it a go again as I met some people outside. The outside area was busy with children and families enjoying the sunshine and watching a few cessna’s taxi about. The new café style aluminium tables and chairs that have replaced the previously wooden stuff inside were empty.

Task: order two glasses of coke (diet!)
Time: 10min
Queue 3 people ( I was number 3)
Cost £2.40

It was identical to last time. The lady who served me had to ask someone else what the cost was, then had to ask what it should be “put under on the till” and then couldn’t use the till, pressed the button that came up with the cost but then didn’t know what to do to open the till. Watching the staff there seemed little sense of customer service.

Terminal 2
Had a chat with the fire crew who said T2 was open again. Decided to give it a go.
I didn’t pay for my beers or the chocolate cake (!) so I cant comment on the charges, but the area is quite nice, the seating being comprised of some “Directors chair” seating. We sat there in the sun watching Flying Time departing with students and instructors in their Diamond Star aircraft. Nice and relaxing with no screaming children and a chinwag between pilots. Very Nice.
By mr spog
#781297
At least the main restaurant now use decent quality tea. I always thought it was a shame to take people over for tea and cake, when you had really cheap tea event though they made an effort with the rest of it.
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By AndyR
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#781704
ridders wrote:so I cant comment on the charges


Wait til you do, makes the car parking look cheap ;-)

Should have said you were down I'd have popped in and said hello!
By mikej
#785619
The food in T2 yesterday conisted of a hot plate full of chips and ginsters slices! They were sitting there for the 2 hours i was there, so I shan't be eating there!

However... big cup of nice tea for £1.10. Lager circa £3 a pint and nice to be at the airport rather than sticking to the floor in the Royal Coach..

Will do for me.
By peterh337
.
#789301
T2 seems to have a poor choice of food. Today (Sunday) there was nothing - just one sandwich left in the display cabinet. It was also totally empty. I went down to T1 and found a huge queue...

I think they forgot that the "community" at Shoreham was all at T2 - prior to its closure. Not many regulars would meet up at T1; it was always too noisy.

There are some improvements though. The tables are clean; in the old days one's arms would get stuck to them :) What is there is a lot more businesslike.

Looking at the low level of traffic, I suspect the place is suffering from the economic downturn, much as the rest of GA.
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By AndyR
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#789363
peterh337 wrote:
There are some improvements though. The tables are clean; in the old days one's arms would get stuck to them :) What is there is a lot more businesslike.

Looking at the low level of traffic, I suspect the place is suffering from the economic downturn, much as the rest of GA.



I would say the place is suffering from appalling management and lousy choice of food and service.

Yes the place is clean, but it should be, it has only just opened again. Same cheap tin foil chairs as T1 apart from the few sofas, but you can't eat from those. They need to offer good honest pilot grub, decent standards and value for money.......then the atmosphere may improve remarkably quickly, it wouldn't take long to get around.