User:Geoffhl

About me
Hi, I’m Geoff Lawrence, born in Christchurch NZ in the late 1940s. Most of childhood at the foot of the South Downs in Sussex UK where parents ran the village shop and post office. Failed my 11+ (unlike my twin), went to a rural Secondary Modern to O levels, then local Grammar School for A levels. Then to Bristol Polytechnic (which later became the University of the West of England).

Much of my working life was with South West Water, both before and after privatisation. Now retired.

Now in 2021 it feels like starting again as a new editor as I've forgotten what I learned previously, I'm trying to catch up.

WW2 aviation
I got into Wikipedia about ten years ago when I found the shortish article on Dad, which had a few errors. At the time I honestly and genuinely didn't know that I should not edit his page due to what would be seen as conflict of interest. But because I’m proud of what he did and what he went through, I enlarged the article, helped by the fact he literally had a whole bookcase of aviation books – it became an enjoyable project from which I learned more about what he did, which he never spoke about when we were growing up. Obviously it had to be written from an entirely neutral standpoint, which I’m confident I achieved. Keith Lawrence (RAF officer).

The campaign of dive-bombing of the V2 rocket-launching sites in Holland towards the end of the war is little known and was unmentioned in Wikipedia. I thought it would be of interest, so also expanded the article on No. 124 Squadron RAF and its modus operandi to include it. There was no article anywhere on the Central Gunnery School, which has where Fighter Command trained experienced pilots to become gunnery instructors, and Bomber Command trained rear-gunners. The CGS spent more time at RAF Sutton Bridge than anywhere else, so I bought a book on RAF Sutton Bridge (Combat Ready! Highly recommended to anyone interested in pre-war aviation, a real eye-opener on RAF training and the accepted accident rates at the time)… and included the section on the CGS in that article.

I was going to add to the article on No. 421 (Reconnaissance) Flight RAF, but ran out of steam when parents became poorly in their late 90s, and didn’t get back to it. I have two sources that can provide the missing provenance for some of the statements in it, but sorry to say at present that’s still in the pending tray.

Crop circles
Dad and I shared a fascination with this extraordinary phenomenon since the late 1990s. In 2009, for his 90th birthday later in the year, I drove us to the Wiltshire Microlight Centre at Yatesbury which was where he’d learnt to fly 70 years earlier in 1939. Fantastic flight, seeing about 7 or 8 amazing formations in a 25 minute flight. Really memorable, which I filmed on the camcorder.

I’m prompted back to Wikipedia now by the deficiencies in the Wiki article on the subject, as I see it. There’s a lot of old and very biased content on it. So, at time of writing this I’m proposing proably later this year to put forward reasoned comments on the content on the Talk page - for comment - as, in my view, the article needs a re-write to make it objective, balanced and neutral.

Other interests
After retiring, I’ve taken up gliding once a week at the Devon and Somerset Gliding Club - sometimes really great, sometimes very frustrating! (Put it on your bucket list, everyone should have a flight at least once). Also the club has a Condor gliding-flight-simulator group, doing online tasks/races as a group – VR makes it incredibly realistic. And I’m a Samaritans volunteer.

Geoffhl (talk) 21:59, 14 October 2021 (UTC)