Tinworm-wings: Baked Beans, Air Law and RT

Monday 4 August 2008

Baked Beans, Air Law and RT

I am getting used to a diet of baked beans and Air Law, as the wind has been gusty the last few days. I flew yesterday, doing an exercise on low flying and incipient stalls; finally achieving a recovery with no loss of height, which chuffed me to bits! But my second hour was lost to weather, as were both of today's.

On Saturday I drove down to Popham for the show, which I do have to say was disappointing; nobody's fault, but the weather was awful for the first half of the day and there weren't nearly as many exhibitors as I expected...and nothing particularly thrilling flying. Sadly, I missed the Dragonfly and Viera flights, as they went up on the Sunday, the latter rather abortively, though even that would have been good to see. I believe in this aeroplane, even if it needs tweaking.

Cath and Ben flew the Dragonflies back to Sywell in about an hour and fifty minutes, which, when you consider that it is a 90 mile flight and other manufacturers dismiss it as merely a powered hang-glider, is pretty impressive - and inspires confidence! I just asked Cath about it and it only just occurred to her that it had been that long even, as the ride had been very comfortable; she says that long in a Eurostar would be murder on the back.

I am really settling-in now. While everyone was at Popham, and after my one hour flying, I did laundry, hanging my wet smalls on the flying wires of various aircraft in the hangar to dry. I created a little niche in the back of the hangar, where I am well out of the way. Someone had left a shop's clothes rack there, so I am using it to hang up my shirts, and I have boxes of books and other bits and pieces tidied away and my bedding hangs on the wing-rack.

I had been sleeping in a tent outside (with the inconvenience of having to take it down before eight every morning, as my site is an active airfield), but the last couple of nights, following a searing pain in my back at Popham, nobody seems to have minded me sleeping in the hangar on a folded carpet...rather than suffering sans-mattress in a tent. It meant that this morning I lay in until 7.40. Luxury!

Irwin, an experienced instructor and RT examiner is arranging an intensive two day course in RT for a small group of people for the end of August and has invited me to come on it. That is fantastic news because RT can take ages otherwise. I shall be able to leave here with an RT rating; though I am resigned to taking several months more (minimum) to get my flying licence.

While I am on the ground I am studying hard and keeping out from under people's feet. I think I'd been getting a bit of a nuisance hanging round - like a plane spotter - when people were trying to get on with work, so it is good to be hard at something...rather than just waiting for the wind to drop....which brings me back to the baked beans. I had them for breakfast this morning, after pre-flighting the aeroplane before Irwin, my instructor today, arrived.

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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!