Mike’s of Cardigan

 & Cardigan Electronics

    Established 1980

PROVE  TO  IMPROVE

Opened 1st September  1940

Closed 31st May  1984

A Guided Tour

Foreword by Mike Ford,  

         These pages of our business web site, have been set aside to remember  R.A.F Aberporth and the R.A.F and Royal Navy  Trials Unit personnel  who once called  R.A.F Aberporth their home in the second half  of  the Twentieth Century.  The “technical” pages will  mainly  be of  interest  to ex - R.A.F Technicians, and relates to my own career before retailing, when , after completing a three year apprenticeship at No 1 Radio School at  R.A.F Locking from 1959 to 1961, (91st entry), I soon  became a Radar Technician  working on the Bloodhound Mk 2 Surface to Air Missile system  between 1963 and 1975, both at  65 Squadron, R.A.F Seletar in Singapore, and the Bloodhound Firing Unit  (BHFU) here at  RAF Aberporth  near Cardigan.

      Three years were also spent at RAF Neatishead, a Radar Station  in Norfolk.. (Now a Radar Museum)

         My own years here at the Bloodhound Firing Unit were without doubt the most interesting in my  service career. It was a job unique in the R.A.F, heading a three man  team  responsible for preparing and fitting the in-flight Telemetry equipment  and  WREBUS break-up system in the missile warhead bay, plus installing  and testing all related telemetry antenna in the missile tail end.  We also carried out the same conversions to rounds brought regularly  to the BHFU by other UK Bloodhound Mk2  Squadrons and the Swiss Bloodhound Firing Teams.

         Pre-trial , the job involved working closely with  R.A.E Aberporth  civilian personnel in Telemetry, Doppler, Safety & Arming and Range Safety, as well as monitoring the WREBUS  break-up system to the very second of launch in over thirty live firing trials, against Jindivik and Meteor targets.   Retired range personnel whom I came to know well in those far off  days, are John Armstrong (Doppler), Bill Birchenoff (Telemetry), Dave Pegram (Safety and Arming) and  the late Dennis Wetheral (Range Safety ).

          I left the R.A.F  as a Chief Technician in 1975, settled locally, and  became self employed servicing Colour TV’s from home. (Somewhat of  an anticlimax.) About the same time, the Bloodhound Firing Unit went under the control of  R.A.F Brawdy  on a Care and Maintenance basis for a time, with firing trials continuing on a much reduced scale until RAF Aberporth closed down in 1984. (The Bloodhound system was scrapped in 1991 when the Berlin wall came down..)

          In 1980, with  my  new  business established, I opened our shop in Chancery Lane. The rest as they  say, is history. We are still running the same business since 1975, though not without some hair raising problems,  thirty three years later.

       Don’t go looking for the RAF Camp if you come here on holiday. It was demolished in 2004. However, if you go to the main entrance of the MOD site, (formerly known as R.A.E Aberporth, DEFRA  & Quinetiq,) at  nearby  Parclyn,  you can see a display  Bloodhound Missile on a Launcher alongside a display Jindivik target drone through the security fence.                                     No Photography is allowed. This is still a high security MOD  site.

          The graphics presented on this site are a compromise between picture quality and loading time, so be warned if you have a slow PC and no Broadband connection.

        With  the help of  ex-RAE employees , ex-RAF Personnel, and  1429  ATC Sqn, (who saved much of the stations artifacts when  it closed in 1984),  I have tried to put together  the story  of  RAF Aberporth and the BHFU.  

           Putting some of  it on-line seemed the obvious thing to do.  

       I have several  superb images of  Missile Firings which unfortunately I cannot reproduce here from those days because they could be crown copyright, but  I have acquired other  images from  various local sources over the years, and include a few of  them here . ( Some of them can also be found on  other web-sites.).  

                                                       Please respect our “Original” site copyright.

                     If  by  some fluke our paths have crossed, or you have a tale to tell, drop me a line.

                                                          The email address is on my  retail pages.