Tinworm-wings: " . . . or don't ever come back!"

Thursday, 25 June 2009

" . . . or don't ever come back!"

I passed another major milestone on Monday, when I flew my first cross-country qualifier. One more (of 40 nautical miles, with a landing 15 nm out) will qualify me for my licence!

I flew solo to Leicester Airport in newly re-built Golf Juliet, with its brand new wing covering. It was fantastically exciting flying away from Sywell, knowing that I had to get it right....."or don't ever come back". Most of it went like clockwork (watching a stopwatch and checking time against my waypoint chart marks), but I do have to admit to a few minutes of being totally lost when I couldn't come up with any really sound features near Leicester (apart from Leicester itself) and when I was aware of talking to myself rather intensely. But in the end I just followed the town's outline towards the SE....and was delighted to spot the airport ahead... such a relief. I did a standard over-head join and landed on runway 28 (a beautiful landing with a sweet hold-off which amost certainly nobody saw), taxied to the Tower and shut down on a patch of grass off the tarmac.

As I walked towards the reception desk I remembered someone describing the evolution of my walk...from novice pilot to someone who had flown his first solo.....and here I was sauntering with the confidence and pride of a man who had flown his first qualifier to an "airport"! I logged in and paid a wopping £12 landing fee, called Sywell to tell them I had made it, got my document stamped and then flew out again, racing to leave a rain shower behind.

It was one of those situations you hear about at Met ground-school, where you have to decide whether to sit a rainshower out or take off under a rain-cloud and aim for the sunny part of the sky, SE of you, where you know the rain will be chasing you at only 6 knots. I knew I could easily out-run it, of course and that was better than taking off with a sopping wing (having sat out the shower in the club-house), but it did mean taking off below low cloud and then losing some forward visibility (not being in cloud but having the top of the sky obscured and acting like a visor out to the sun).

I look forward to being better at RT. I wanted to be quite sure I got it right. Some pilots are so very good at relaying back the info they have been given, while I am just doing my best to use it, let alone repeat it (but I expect lots write it down, which I don't have enough hands for). But I guess it gets easier, like everything else. "Leicester Radio, Golf-Charlie Echo Golf Juliet approaching from the South East. Request airfield information." Interestingly, they give QFE and QNH together, which seemed odd, as obviously I am on QNH already.

Having recce'd the airport with Neill that morning, and used a particular perimeter track before, I repeated the process and was surprised to get a telling off from the tower for being on an active runway. Actually, I wasn't. I had made a particular point of "holding" while someone landed, but it seems that everyone uses a different track, which sensibly takes you to the end of 28, rather than back-tracking up it. I apologised and did as I was told, and doubtless people will be going on about "bloody microlights" on the back of it.

Where next? Neill says I can choose.

Steve has challenged me to fly to Finmere. Cath, who was touchingly enthusiastic about my success, has said that most people in the club have found Finmere hard to find, which may not bode terribly well, but Steve is confident and I'd love to beat him to it.

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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!