Tinworm-wings: One Hundred Percent!

Sunday 17 January 2010

One Hundred Percent!

Finally, flying weather....a full month after my last flight, and hopefully not only is the weather going to be easier on me now, but having my plane hangared at Sutton Meadows should make rigging a heck of a lot easier too.

Not only will I be spared the shuttling of cars in the road to ensure a convenient parking space for loading, then spared the hour of loading the next morning, the need of a friend or neighbour's help in getting my wing on the van and the wing rigging and de-rigging at the airfield, but now I have also freed up the front room (somewhat) and space in the back; and will be able to shut the communicating door and keep the heat in.

Going flying should be a lot easier. I can now just grab my flying kit and helmet (plus miscellaneous bits and pieces in a box, and jump in the car. The hour plus in the car each way is more than made up for.

I was ploddingly slow with my wing rigging today, for two good reasons: firstly, everyone was so friendly and I had lots of conversations with fellow enthusiasts, including Peter and Mary Robinson, who I have been talking to for the last month, as we have sought a gap in the weather for installing my plane. They own the airfield and were very hospitable. That sort of thing really matters at an airfield. They, and Peter and Renate, and Nick and Brian, and a student called Reza (originally from Persia) all made it a very pleasant day. Secondly, because I was waiting for the wind to drop, which it did in the early afternoon. Just as well, as I'd been told in the morning that it was 30mph at 2,000'.

Rigging the trike went very smoothly, I am glad to say. I must email Ben and tell him that his modifications and adjustments worked.

I bimbled for 55 minutes, mostly around 1500'. My obalob method of navigation worked gratifyingly well, I was delighted to find. I landed, then flew one more circuit. Dave Broom tells me that there are no restrictions on circuits and beat-ups at Sutton, which is good news, because I want to practise my hand throttle control at low height....something like ten feet...and I want to get Lizzie to take some shots of me flying past with wheels up.

That was the best thing about my flight -I retracted my undercarriage and had an uneventful landing when I put the gear down again. Must tell Ben that, too.

But the absolute highlight of the day was Lizzie getting 100% in her Air Law exam; I am very proud if her!

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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!