Sunday 27th July 2014
Today is the day that they are going to blow up the 3 south cooling towers at Didcot Power Station.
The Demolition company stated that the towers will be blown up between the hours of 3.00am – 5.00am.
Local residents and people that had a interest in the power station petitioned the Demolition company to
try and get the time put back to a later time.
They insisted it was a health and safety issue and did not want large numbers of spectators turning up and said that the time would not be changed.
Fair enough, they are playing with 180kgs of explosives.
2 days before a Notams was put in place, surface to 700ft amsl between 04.45 – 05.30
now that tells me the button will be pushed at about 5.00am.
My plan was to film the demolition from above the towers if I could legally get there.
I laid my wing out for a forward at 4.30am sunrise is at 5.15am ish,
its still fairly dark so I have to check my lines carefully.
Airborne by 4.45am ,full trim and with a bit of luck going downwind, its very grey and overcast and the sun is nowhere in sight.
I climb to approx. 1000ft and the towers are minutes away FLASH, BANG 5.00am they go,10 seconds later the 3 south cooling towers are down.
I saw all three go down and the dust cloud that followed.
At that height the conditions were not suitable for filming.
here is a very good clip taken from Youtube.
I then had the slow flight back into wind to my bed.
JOB DONE
Paul