Cardiff International Airport Update

Boards Friday 15/04/2022​

BAMC Happenings

St Athan Airfield ..runway in use 25

LY-BJT on April 15, 2022

Cardiff Heliport ..runway in use 20

Russian Invasion of Ukraine - Day 52​

Aircraft losses 16 April 2022​

No Aircraft losses reported today.

A new Ukrainian postage stamp commemorating an iconic act of resistance to Putin’s invasion has proved a huge hit with the public amid surging patriotic pride and growing confidence in Ukraine’s eventual victory over Russia.

The recently released stamp depicts a celebrated episode from the very first day of the war on February 24 that saw an isolated detachment of Ukrainian troops stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea defy the might of the Russian navy. Despite being hopelessly outgunned by the approaching flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Ukrainian soldier Roman Hrybov rejected Russian demands to surrender while offering the epic response: “Russian Warship, Go F*ck Yourself.”

This memorable quote captured the mood of furious defiance then sweeping the nation and was immediately adopted as an unofficial slogan of the Ukrainian war effort. Many regarded the use of obscene language as particularly fitting and saw in it a direct echo of the legendarily profanity-laden seventeenth century reply of the Ukrainian Cossacks to a similar surrender demand from the Ottoman Sultan.

Within days, Hrybov’s industrial language was adorning billboards across the country and dominating social media. The incident also inspired Igor Smelyansky, the CEO of Ukrainian postal service Ukrposhta, to launch a national online competition for a commemorative stamp. This resulted in a winning design that can justifiably be called an instant classic, featuring a lone Ukrainian soldier directing an obscene gesture toward the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea flagship.


With emotions running high in wartime Ukraine, interest in the planned stamp was already intense ahead of its official April 13 presentation. This excitement then escalated to entirely new levels one day after the launch when Ukrainian forces sank the Russian warship depicted on the stamp. The sinking of Putin’s flagship was a humiliating blow for Russia and a massive morale boost for Ukraine. It also guaranteed a prominent place in modern Ukrainian folklore for the country’s recently released commemorative stamp.

Demand for the new stamp surged following the sinking of the Moskva. Thousands of Ukrainians queued for hours at post offices across the country in order to get their hands on this little piece of history, with many expressing their pride in the country’s defiant stance and mounting military successes. The international media loved the story and provided enthusiastic coverage, with the stamp even making it onto the prestigious US late night talk show circuit.

Needless to say, not everyone was thrilled by this success. Efforts to make the stamp available for online purchase ran into difficulties when the site was hit by a massive cyber-attack. This presumably reflected simmering Russian anger at the fate of the Black Sea flagship and resentment over the obvious international admiration for Ukraine’s courageous resistance to Putin’s invasion.

Someone mentioned me as a 'Flying Welshman' on the RMB.

This triggered a memory of a story I had heard..........

27 DEC 2019

The poor Welsh carpenter thought to have built and flown the world's first aeroplane

Rumour has it that Bill Frost flew his aeroplane in a field near Saundersfoot in 1896 - seven years before the Wright brothers

If you look in any good encyclopaedia you’ll be told that the first powered flight of an aircraft was made by American brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, in their Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903.

It was a feat of engineering that marked the beginning of the age of the aeroplane.

But there is a legend that has been passed down the generations in a quiet corner of Pembrokeshire that, if true, would give Wales, not America, the right to boast about being the location of the first powered flight in recorded history.

People in the picturesque coastal town of Saundersfoot, near Tenby, have long shared the colourful and intriguing story of a local carpenter, Bill Frost, who is said to have designed, built, and briefly flown, an aircraft in 1896, a full seven years before the Wright Brothers.

Bill Frost (far left) at work as a carpenter in Saundersfoot in the late 19th century

Bill Frost with his wife, Annie, in 1896

For decades, it wasn’t much more than rumour shared over pints at the local pub. That was, until an inquisitive local author, Roscoe Howells, began to dig deeper into the story and discovered there may be more to it than mere legend.

In his book ‘A Pembrokeshire pioneer: Bill Frost of Saundersfoot, the first man to fly,’ Roscoe Howells pieced together the snippets of gossip and the few pieces of documentation that existed about Bill Frost’s legendary flight, bringing the legend an inch closer to reality.

Roscoe Howells, who died in 2014, at Amroth beach, Pembrokeshire. Behind him is the headland where Bill Frost is thought to have made his flight

The story goes that Bill Frost, a relatively poor carpenter who was born in Saundersfoot in 1848, had a childhood obsession with flying which later translated into him building a flying machine at his home workshop on St Bride’s Hill, Saundersfoot.

There are even accounts of him running through Saundersfoot's fields with a sheet of zinc above his head, perhaps trying to work out the laws of aerodynamics.

The 30-foot craft he built was made from bamboo and canvas and had hydrogen-filled bags in it to keep it aloft. There was even a helicopter-like propeller built into the top and a rudder to steer it.

A computer generated image of Bill Frost's legendary flying machine

A lever was used to spread the wings in flight and to make the aircraft rise and drop in the air, at least, that was the theory.

Legend has it that on or around September 24, 1896, Bill Frost finally realised his dream of flying, in a field near Griffithston Hill. Accounts say that he managed to control the craft for at least 500 yards before the undercarriage caught on a tree, bringing the flight to an abrupt halt.

Determined to try again, Bill Frost tethered his flying machine to the tree, which local people told Roscoe Howells still stands in the field, but there was a great storm that night and the contraption was completely destroyed.

The field on Griffithston Hill, Saundersfoot, where Bill Frost is rumoured to have made his historic flight

As a poor man, he wasn’t able to rebuild the craft to make another attempt before his death in 1935.

The problem is, there are no surviving written testimonials that anyone other than Bill witnessed the flight, or any photographs of the attempt, unlike with the Wright Brothers' historic flight almost a decade later.

However, slowly the fiction was pieced together with ever more convincing facts by Roscoe Howells. Amazingly, a patent was found for a ‘flying machine,’ submitted to the patent office by Bill Frost himself in October 1895.

The patent included a detailed diagram and outlined what each lettered part of the craft was designed to do and Bill Frost outlined in detail how it would work.

‘The flying machine is propelled into the air by two reversible fans revolving horizontally,’ is the first line on the patent submission.

The home of Bill Frost, who died in 1935, in Saundersfoot

Even more tantalisingly, the author found an article in the Tenby and County News from September 30, 1986 with ‘Great storm’ emblazoned as a headline, giving more weight to the claim that craft had been blown apart in bad weather.

Whether Bill Frost really did take to the skies before any other human is something that can never be proved beyond doubt.

The original drawing included in the patent application by Bill Frost


Aeronautical engineers at Boscombe Down airbase looked at the patent and said the machine would never have flown. They were going to build a replica but when war broke out in Iraq their plan stalled and was never realised.

Whatever the truth, Bill Frost can be appreciated as a pioneer with an ambition that went beyond his quiet life in Saundersfoot, and into the skies.

Whether you believe it happened or not is up to you, but maybe what's really important is that Bill Frost tried to do something great in the first place.

Saturday 16/04/2022​

Cardiff IAP ..runway in use 30 ..to 12 06:00

Boards Saturday 16/04/2022​

BAMC Happenings

St Athan Airfield ..runway in use 07