Tinworm-wings: Cracked it!

Friday 29 August 2008

Cracked it!

Neil has put in some real time with me today and it paid dividends because I have really cracked landings! We started off flying to Sackville (on a x-country Nav exercise) then did some circuits at the grass strip there. I did some half decent landings (though I was a bit disorientated by the right hand circuit; hopefully didn't let it show, because I managed to find my bearings turning onto base leg). Having stayed out rather longer than our logged estimate, the people at Flylight were getting a bit worried. We hadn't thought. We'd just been wrapped up in what we were doing.

In debriefing Neil was quite clear that he has really been cranking up his fussiness for accuracy and I have been responding positively, showing real progress each hour. I think he wanted to reassure me because I felt that I hadn't been performing as well.

After a break we went up again to do an hour or so of circuits, eventually doing ten landings of which Neil said only two were dodgy, the problem being my flaring. The best bit was Neil drumming on my shoulders with delight when I got it right...and went on and on getting it right - and my sense of elation, knowing that it hadn't been a fluke and knowing that I'd be able to repeat it. We went over time by about a half hour getting that consistency. I was really grateful for that because I needed to know that I could repeatedly demonstrate the newly acquired skill.

After another break, we did some navigation, with Neil showing me how to use the wizzy-wheel to calculate tracks taking drisft into account, how to calculate the fuel consumption, etc. Bloody nice bit of kit. I ordered one last week, so I will get it next time I am up.

Late in the afternoon, when I was tired, we did some more landings...another 8 or so and they were not as good, but again, Neil was cranking up the pressure and I was doing all the flying, with no inputs from Neil and hardly any prompts. He said he wanted me to feel what it is like being up there alone and he reassured me that I am flying tight, tidy circuits now.

I have now done 19 hours and 58 landings. I was worried about those numbers but Neil says some people don't get 20 hours in a year and then fly as many as 40 before soloing. Many fly well over a 100 landings before solo, so he says I have accomplished a huge amount, which he puts down to my commitment. He reminded me of the time we first talked, when I had told him that I was sleeping in the hangar and he had said that if I was that committed to it, he was committed to teaching me. There's no doubt about it, he has really gone the extra mile for me over and over. We didn't finish tonight until after 8pm. Good man.

A great day.

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Ground handling (how to store an aeroplane at home and get it to the airfield)

A trial flight in a Thruster, when I was 28, c.1991

I have started to learn to fly before...TWICE! First time round I had just graduated and got a job at an aerodrome in Cornwall, where I earned flying hours by fuelling microlights, giving hourly weather reports to the Met office etc. The weather was bad, so there was little flying to be had...and in the end I was paid with broken propellers and bits of crashed fuselage to hang on the wall. The boss was a great bloke called Ian Stokes, who had been a leading light in forming the BMAA and had manufactured Thrusters in the early days . In retirement he moved to The Gambia and became a publican and, shockingly, was murdered this year.

Flying Rogues

ten years on from my first experiences at Moorland Flying School (and now nearly ten years ago) the flying school was under new management and my girlfriend and I booked full courses. We both made good progress initially but never felt we were being moved on and had difficulty pinning the instructor down to signing our logbooks. When another instructor signed himself as P1, we got suspicious, contacted the CAA and were horrified to learn that our instructor did not have a current instructor rating, that we had not been insured and that none of our hours counted towards our licences. We were eventually refunded and the instructors were prosecuted by the CAA.

The very sympathetic CAA investigator spoke to the BMAA on our behalf and my hours have been allowed to count (at the discretion of the school). But in point of fact, I flew way over the minimum number of hours subsequently, so it is really quite academic in the end.

Around 2001 an instructor in Norfolk tried to convince me that if I bought his aeroplane he could teach me at a cut rate, as I'd then be using my own plane. Great idea, I thought, except that it turned out that the aircraft in question had failed a noise test and could not be used from the instructor's field. He later admitted that I would have to learn on his aeroplane at the normal rate. He resisted showing me the paperwork, kept avoiding me and eventually, when it was quite clear I wasn't going to buy without the paperwork, told me to F-off.

So far my experience has been that there are a lot of rogues in flying, which is one reason why I was so very impressed by the professional set-up at Sywell.

by air to Africa

My sister and I were lucky to fly many thousands of miles in the 1960s and '70s in many aircraft types, including BOAC VC-10s, Boeing 707s and even a Nigerian Airways Dakota, as our dad (and later our mum) had teaching posts in Kenya and Nigeria. Those were still the romantic days of flying, when passengers walked across tarmac and up steps, rather than walking down the tubes that have turned passenger flying into a mundane affair. (Mind you, aren't take-offs still incredibly exciting!?)

Back then air hostesses GAVE children the sorts of nick-nacks that their parents have to pay fortunes for from the airline catalogue these days; things like model aeroplanes, keyrings etc. We were also given sweets to help us cope with depressurisation. (And they were hostesses, so nobody give me a hard time)

Mum says that I cracked my first joke when I was small, on a flight out to Kenya, when I said, "Mummy, shouldn't there be a wing on this side of the plane too". Apparently I got her with that one.

At Kano airport I remember standing behind an engine and thinking how hot it still was....and then being told that the engine was cold. The heat was Kano. I got a headache and took several days to aclimatise.

The airport perri-ways at Kano were littered with aircraft that didn't make it, including a burnt-out Mig 15. The Nigerian Airforce flew them and my dad played squash with one of their pilots, Ben, at the Kano Club. I recall a Mig fly-past on my birthday. Was it arranged with Ben over a beer? Was it a pure coincidence?

At Entebbe airport (Uganda) I remember climbing down the steps on to the runway and being encircled by soldiers with machine guns, who then went through all our belongings and confiscated my cherished Swiss Army penknife, purchased on one of numerous European stop-overs. That was in the twitchy time after the Israeli hijacking ...and mum had to stifle my protests.

Before my first flight to Nairobi, as an infant, I was scared stiff. I didn't understand that I wouldn't have to sit astride the fuselage, as I did on my pedalcar! In a funny way, I not only overcame that fear but have come full circle; microlighting is just like sitting on that pedalcar......open to the elements - real flying!