Memoir Chest

The Reed Life Files:

 

RTAF Don Muang, Thailand 1984

 

I spent two weeks at home with my family in St Helens before I travelled to Thailand. I had arranged with my director at GQ to give me this time off before going to Thailand and also arranged for a flight to Bangkok from Manchester Airport, this job was going to take me at least six months to complete and the final handover to the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) of the completed new dome was set for early January 1985.

I was accompanied to Manchester airport by my family in mid-June and I boarded a Qantas flight to Bangkok. Being GQ Company policy, I had a business class seat upstairs on this Boeing 747 and the flight was very comfortable albeit long.

On arrival at Bangkok's Don Muang airport I quickly went through Immigration and as instructed by fax, I turned left on exit from immigration. I was met by the GQ dome erection team and then led to a minibus supplied by the Airport Hotel, and we went to the hotel which would be my new home for the next six months.

I went to the new dome with the other guys the next day and I checked the container that held my simulator equipment and all seemed well. The other guys had not yet completed the dome erection and there was nothing that I could do until the structure was ready. I was then introduced to Dumrong who worked for the Agent in Thailand and at my request he took me back to the hotel.

At the hotel a fax had arrived for me from GQ and it informed me that there was a problem with an indoor firing range system at the Thai Navy base and that the repair of this range should take priority over the dome installation for the time being.

Many more technical problems happened over the next six months that I shall not go into on this page, this just being a general overview. However, one very important thing that did happen to me that changed my life, was that I met a Thai girl and by the time that I had finished this dome installation she was pregnant.

I returned to uk in mid-January 1985

Family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances: Myra Reed, Cheryl Elaine Reed, Douglas Alexander Reed, Adrian Tyers, Dumrong Kraison, Phnom Devahastin, Tony Sandford, Bungon Saenthaweesuk, Phanit Saenthaweesuk

 

Ian Reed 1985

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