Tinworm-wings: "sector recce"

Thursday, 29 October 2009

"sector recce"

Yesterday I did my "sector recce", which Steve (ex-RAF navigator in Tornados) tells me is the RAF jargon for having a look around the area you are going to be flying in for a while. Being airborne again was fantastic, though no sooner was I up than I realised I needed to land, as my breather tube, normally retained in a hole in one of the panels (which I had decided to fly without), was blowing about and had been unceremoniously shortened by the prop. Damn. Steve realised I was in trouble and came back and landed behind me, though by the time he was down, I had taped the breather out of the way and was ready to take off again.

I flew in an open-face motorbike helmet (with scooter visor). Until now I have always used my Microavionics one, but then I have had the use of a school headset. I need to get myself one. I'd wondered how noisy it would be. But really it was fine. A friend has been trying to convince me of the merits of a Flycom helmet, which cuts out loads of noise and cold but I have to say that these are not necessarily advantages. It is good feeling the air on your face and hearing your engine. I don't want to feel detached from the experience.

I had my balloonist's altimeter in my see-through pocket and it appeared to work rather well. Steve appeared always to be higher than me, though this may be an illusion. The rate of climb is conservative, to the say the least, but I realised pretty soon that I tend to pull on speed, thus losing height or reducing my rate of climb. The trim position is actually a fair stretch. What I need is a vario/vsi (I nearly got an old one on ebay last night)

It was wonderful settling down into the experience of the flight and taking in the sights, circling to enjoy the details, like when I turned quite tightly to look at a church tower near Ickworth house and to return the wave of children on a half-term outing. The House itself looked fantastic from the air and made me feel that if I spend my time sightseeing from my Dragonfly, I need never go abroad again. There is so much to see here...and possibly no better way to see the country than from above. The layout of gardens and vineyards, avenues of trees etc is impossible to appreciate at ground level.

One thing I will HAVE to do is find a way to rig a camera, ideally with a screen to give a field of view...or some kind of wire frame sight....so that I can record what I see. One thing that can be recorded is the route. I think my Etrex can already be made to do this - I haven't explored it yet - but Steve sent me a Google map overlay of our route, as recorded by his own GPS system. It would be terrific to be able to keep a record of every route flown.

A highlight of the flight was a recce of RAF Honington. Steve got us permission to fly in close and have a really good look at the runway. I gather that the base is only now used for NBC training and at one point I saw a gaggle of airmen looking up from the door of what to this amateur looked like a bomb shelter, but which may well have been a gas hut like the one I trained in when I was in the TA. We had to walk around in the CS gas, and take turns at taking masks off and giving name, rank and number before exiting the building, coughing our guts out, our eyes streaming. I remember that I hadn't been issued my army number yet, so I just gave my phone number.

Being now free to fly into the area of the former MATZ will be excellent - though Lakenheath is still out of bounds. We had to keep a keen look-out because there were a number of KC130s flying in at about 500' above us. I had thought it would only be possible to fly beneath the panhandles, but providing we take account of those Lakenheath aircraft, we are a lot more free to fly North of Rougham now that the RAF have stopped ops at Honington.

My landing at the end of the flight was sweet....a darn sight better than my earlier one, which had been very pendulous - very hairy indeed. I think I am going to really enjoy flying my "sector", operating from Rougham....and venturing out further afield.

I talked to some of the chaps flying radio controlled models back at Rougham and one, Kevin, told me about two Tornados he had seen beating up the airfield at about 200'! I am going to have to be on the look-out for that sort of thing, and with that in mind, I MUST get my radio licence. Let me know, folks, if you hear of an affordable radio. I am planning on not bothering with an interface, just using an OPC499 with a GA headset, or similar rig.

Yesterday was an important landmark for me. From now on I am an independent operator. Free to fly.

1 comment:

Aviatrix said...: Congratulations of the enormous variety.

It is wonderful to see someone with such passion achieving their goals.; 29 October 2009 at 23:23

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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!