Tinworm-wings: I flew a Chipmunk!

Monday, 29 September 2008

I flew a Chipmunk!

(above) Dad in the 1950s

Yesterday I flew a de Havilland Chipmunk, the type Dad flew with Bristol University Air Squadron in the late 1950s. It is a type I have always wanted to ride in, let alone pilot!

I darted around Flylight, desperate to find anyone who could lend me twenty quid, then saw my instructor landing and approached him as he taxyed in and switched off. Neill was very kind and reached for his wallet even before I explained that a young woman was taking me up in her Chipmunk. He has been banging on about it ever since, to anyone who will listen; using his bloody money to help me go swanning off with a woman! He was far more interested in the woman angle than the Chipmunk one.

"Here I am slogging my guts out to make you a half decent pilot, and all you will remember about this weekend will be Carol de Solla Atkin", he ranted. And he is not altogether wrong ;)

Flying the Chipmunk changed my view of 3-axis altogether - you will remember how bored I was in a Eurostar. Carol would tell you that I was all over the place ("nose too high", "level the wings", "more power, more power", etc), but the fact is that I was actually flying the thing for twenty minutes...and I was delighted to see how easily transferable my skills are....and indeed that I had no problem with the reversing of the controls; it was instinctive (or maybe I have just been doing it all my life in my imagination? - reading, -war films etc). I understood the instruments, the principles of flight, the trim, etc, etc.

Carol took over at one point to show me some pretty dramatic turns where we pulled 2G! It is a terrifically stable and forgiving aeroplane and, honestly, I think it is easier than a few flight sims I have tried. I do think that one day I will have to do a GA conversion, or at very least that I will have to do 3-axis on microlights and get something quirky - not yer bog-standard Cessna-wannabe, like the SkyRanger.

Before take off, Carol gave me a very professional pre-flight patter, which made me ask if she was actually an instructor. Until then I had only been aware that she was a member of a syndicate that owned the aeroplane. She had simply said that she'd be delighted to take me up. I'd thought I was getting a "jolly", never imagining that I'd get my hands on the controls. It turned out that she has just qualified and that I was to be, in effect, her first student. Heck of a privilege!

So, I now have 20 minutes of logged tailwheel experience in a late forties airforce trainer. When she sent me to get my logbook, as she paid for fuel and prepped for take-off with another Chipmunk heading home with her, I am sure I must have looked like an excited schoolboy.

This was a fantastic experience on so many levels. For one thing there is the link to my Dad, but apart from anything else it is probably as close as I will get to flying in a Spitfire.

Thank you so much, Carol.

Sadly, Carol's research showed that Dad never could have sat in this particular Chipmunk. It served with numerous University squadrons, but never Bristol's.

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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!