Tinworm-wings: if you don't grin from ear to ear, you don't "get it"

Friday 21 November 2008

if you don't grin from ear to ear, you don't "get it"

Chatting with Cath, Stew and Neill the other day it became apparent that my attitude to the solo is unusual - that while I regarded it as a massive and looming landmark, which made me increasingly anxious, for them it was something that came upon them all of a sudden without them having really given it any thought. For me, the number of hours to solo was a matter of pride and the growing anxiety about not doing my solo early, as I imagined I would, made me tense and my flying erratic.

Having read about flying all my adult life, I have always seen the first solo as something akin to the loss of ones virginity... a huge big deal. Maybe the pride around solo comes from a GA/light aircraft frame of mind. Most of my reading over the years has been about what lay-people call "real aeroplanes".....the type that only the well heeled can afford to fly.

I never want to lose the sense of awe at having got this far. I am lucky that there are many more firsts ahead: I have my two hours alone in the circuit, my first hours venturing alone out of the circuit, my first time alone in a Quantum and my first out-landing.

I know there isn't a limited amount of flying to be shared out. Everyone can have as much as they want (or can afford), but it irks me that some people are just doing it because it is there, rather than that they are passionate about it. People have too much money if they fly because they can or because they think it makes them sexy.

And I know people can be smiling on the inside, but what is it with pilots who go round grimacing, like it is all just too much bother. I don't think I have ever seen a GA pilot based at Sywell smile...and the blokes who fly the Harvard look like they are serving some kind of sentence. I hate pilots like that - pilots who can afford to fly some of the really great aeroplanes but don't seem to care much for it. Flying something magnificent like a Harvard is a privilege wasted on people who are not passionate about flying.

If you aren't grinning from ear to ear, you don't get it. That's one of the reasons I like Neill - he's been doing it yonks, but he still gets it in spades. He will say, "You have to be a Spitfire pilot now, no hanging about, we only have an hour of daylight left" - and we scramble, while GA pilots are no doubt wandering over to the Aviator for a bevvy. It is why I like just hanging round Flylight, even when there is no flying to be had. People there get it. I think, generally speaking, microlight people get it.....and the flexwing pilots, the more so....because flexwingers are flyers, not aeroplane drivers.

I am not going to beat myself up if I seem "frantic", as Cath called it. Maybe I seem like an excited kid about flying, but is there any other way to be?

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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!