Some people are disappearing from email and the arrival of broadband means many people are hanging their addresses - can you please let us know if you change or discontinue your email address?

MISSING PERSONS
There still are some. Please click here for a .pdf file (only 43kb) of the ones we've lost, and let us know if you can fill in any details.
Bob Storey is launching a new trawl to find folk ... I suppose that's what living in Spain with too much sun burning all your hair off does for you.

NEW ARRIVALS

Thanks to yet more inspired work by Bob Storey, my sleep was interrupted on Midsummer's Day by the arrival of not one but FOUR lost souls.
Alphabetically, they are:

Robert Barnes, in Cowplain, which if memory serves me right is just outside of Havant;

Richard Brown, near Shrewsbury;

David Newman, near Stirling;

Ken Nicholson, in Hamilton.

Bob Storey says: "We need to say a big 'Thank You' to Peter at the Services Pensions Agency in Crawley, as he trawled his records to obtain the addresses for our 8 missing 99th guys and then forwarded on my letters and stamped addressed envelopes. It restores your faith in human nature when people are so helpful - well, maybe that's going a bit far for a cynical old bald bastard like me. He really was very helpful though."

The two hundred and one freshly-scrubbed members of the 99th. Entry of Royal Air Force Apprentices arrived, quaking in their civilian shoes, at No1 Radio School, RAF Locking, near Weston-super-Mare, in September 1961. We were probably the biggest entry of apprentice wireless and radar technicians at Locking.

One hundred and seventy-two of us passed-out three years later, and through the intervening years we have dispersed all over the world as far as Australia, New Zealans, South Africa the Philippines, the U.S.A and Mexico - and, of course, Weston-super-Mare, where there is still a thriving colony of Apprenti of various species in their native habitat. Doncaster also seems to be a favourite place to live, and there is a growing community in Spain.

To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the formation of the 99th. a big reunion was held in September 2001 in Weston-super-Mare, and another even bigger-one in 2004, at the Royal Hotel, Weston, to commemorate Passing-Out.

A drive is still on to contact old friends, whether they made it to pass-out or not - there are fond memories of and frequent requests to find those who didn't stay with us until the bitter end in July 1964. Largely through the efforts of Bob Storey and Chris Horn we now have over a hundred and fifty names (Tony Pugh was the Ninety-Ninth to turn up). The full list, with addresses, is available in our secure area. If you are a Ninety-Niner, possibly not known to us, who has just browsed into the site, or if you simply haven't been given a password because of a cock-up, you need to register because the members-only personal pages can only be viewed using a password. If for any reason you can't do this you can call Ken Bowker on 01687 470268.

If you know of any ex-99th Entry Apprentices who have not yet been contacted, then please email us

96th LOCKING APPRENTICES
You'll find their website at http://www.96thentrylocking.net

98th LOCKING APPRENTICES
Mike Rafferty runs the 98th website at http://www.98thlocking.co.uk and can be contacted there.

100th LOCKING APPRENTICES
Tony Lindon runs the new 100th website at http://www.100th-entry-locking.uk.tt . You can contact him via the website.

103rd LOCKING APPRENTICES
Over at http://www.103rdlocking.org.uk is the 103rd website.

104th LOCKING APPRENTICES (and the demolition of Locking)
Pete Harry is building the 104th website at http://www.104thlocking.org.uk and can be contacted via that site, which has some splendid and historic photos of Locking being demolished.

99th HALTON APPRENTICES
At exactly the same time as we signed up, another much rowdier bunch of 99th Apprentices joined at RAF Halton to learn different skills. If you're an ex-Halton 99er, and you want to get in touch with them again then click here to go to the 99th Halton website.

CLICK HERE to see the detailed list of the folk we're still looking for - it includes some people who didn't pass out for one reason or another, and there may be more than these - we're hoping shortly to get our hands on the detailed list of everyone who joined up.

Bob used a BT CD-ROM of the UK, plus an endless supply of notepaper and a very good relationship with RAF Innsworth. Over the past couple of years Bob has put half his life into finding us all, so if you can help, please check the list and rack your brains to see if you can help in any way - a wife's name, a last meeting, an RAF Station, whatever moves us forward. And it does work - three of our recent new arrivals were just such 'finds'.

If you know of anyone we need to know about, please encourage them to email us.

Terl Bryant says "We've found 160"

Details in the Members-Only pages.

99th NEWS

Lost Souls: Bob Storey's war on pensions (see below) had a pleasant side-effect when he wrote, via the Pensions Service, to missing 99ers - four of whom got back in touch on June 21st.

ALAN KENNAUGH
Alan died on the 11 May 08 after a heart attack. He left behind him his widow Jackie and three children David, Peter and Hazel.

Christmas presents: In an idle moment Dick Bradfield, laying by the pool in Melbourne, Googled 'Colin Baxter, artist' - and up popped Colin Baxter in France - who led us to Mac (Mike) McGurk in Norway - who led us to Paul Bassett, also in Norway.

Frank Rawlins has found his signing-on papers and the letter his parents got - setting out his pay, for instance, which was quite startlingly low. You can find them, as .pdf files, from the Photo pages.

Final Exams
Do YOU think you could pass the final exams again? Have a shufti at this, then - courtesy of Tony Lindon of the 100th Entry, who sat it as their mock exam. It's quite frightening - they're OUR final papers! Click here to download them as a .pdf file.

Bob Storey in Spain is still tilting at windmills - and his latest one is pensions. If you left before 1975 you almost certainly missed out on changes that came in afterwards. Click here for more details ....

To read .pdf files you need the Adobe Acrobat Reader: click here to download it.