I can recommend the B&B hotels. Rather cheap but a little bit more expensive than a Formule 1 but much better (and cleaner) rooms and private showers. Such hotels are usually fully booked in France during weekdays. I advice you to book ahead on the internet!
Withnail wrote:planning a trip to reims in july. can anyone give information on cheap hotels, hostels, b&b etc. in the neighbourhood of the airfield?
Hi there
I'm leaving in Reims
For cheap hotels, you can find some at Tinqueux, at about 10km from threshold 07, but that will be "Formule 1" or "premiere classe"
if you have about 70€ to spend there is a very good one at "Witry les Reims" it is "brit hotel"
If you want you can contact me I give you all the data
(notes: there were quite a lot of good reasons to make the rather long journey to Reims-Champagne airbase that day: a German holiday, very good weather, a very spotter-friendly airfield and – most importantly – a very nice aircraft-type whose flying days at Reims are counted now. All missing for making that day perfect was a good companionship. While all afforts to find the latter via Flugzeugforum and scramble were fruitless, it were two of my oldest fellow spotters who joined or rather organized that tour. This was even greater for me as I thought to have “lost” these two guys due to my rather special ways of persuing my aviation hobby and being useless as an TLP information source now. Luckily that proved to be wrong thinking ...
Regarding the hard facts: When arriving at Reims airbase after the three-and-a-half hours car ride, closed shelters and hangars looked not very promising at the beginning. Only two parked French transport aircraft indicated that something might be going on that day. Indeed, after the surprising departure of a French Army CARACAL, a lot of patiene was required until flying activity of based Mirage F.1s finally began at late morning. This turned out to comprise eight sorties performed by six different airframes during the day, plus test activity of two further examples on the ground. On the good side, departures, recovieries and taxying of all Mirage F.1s could be well enjoyed from quite a close distance and included a lot of new codes. Apart of having much fun with my fellow spotters, it were some very intersting detached aircraft flying from here which saved the day: apart of the above mentioned CARACAL, a Gazelle, a Puma, a Transall and a Hercules provided some impressive flying activity. Approaches of two Mirage 2000s completed this small but very nice log ...)
Not as great as the other landings.
Will find out Tomorow as off there for 3 days before Gilze.
I still think some nice shots are available at times .
On take off of a pair 1 will stay alot lower than the other for example and on landing they may come long for some nice photos.
Next thursday we will visit Reims for some F1's
What are the photo oppertunities at Reims with winds from the east?
Just go for the same spot near the old terminal near the taxitrack. During our visit all F1's were, after landing, taxiing towards the end of the runway and took the taxitrack. Bring a stepladder but keep the stepladder down when not in use. Gendarmerie is very friendly but can get nervous when seeing all stepladders along the fence.
More then 20 missions were flown by these local aircrafts, and nice to see was a F1 that did a chute test on the runway, and taxi back afterwards towards the shelterarea.