Tinworm-wings: The ship of the Fens

Monday, 1 February 2010

The ship of the Fens

In the end none of the ground maintenance got done; it was just too cold this morning to contemplate. But when I saw the sun and realised that next weekend could be too windy, wet or even snowy to fly, I realised that I couldn't fail to get up today. So, rather late, I got going to Sutton Meadows, where I met Al, an ex-RAF aerial photographer who is about to start learning to fly - and he kept me company as we waited for Dave Broom to land and take up his new student.

I fitted G-CFKK with her red panels then pulled the trike out and found to my enormous gratification that the wing trolley pulling hook that I welded up when I got home last weekend worked a treat. I was able to pull the trolley out while steadying the wing...and was able to pull it easily over the gravel in the hangar, which may well mean that patio slabs are unnecessary. I may just use some well anchored wooden planks, prepped at home.

I took off on runway 28, this time without a camera, and flew a circuit and a touch-and-go before leaving the circuit for a bimble across to Witchford, up the ditches and then back down to the airfield. Total flight, 40mins, but even that is worth the drive each way. It is just pure pleasure.

Next week is the club's annual dinner and Lizzie and I have booked into a hotel within staggering distance of the venue so that we can both drink. Hopefully we will spend the day flying. She has a lesson booked and I plan to fly to Ely.

As I come around the corner, approaching Ely from the south (when driving up on the A142), I am always staggered by the beauty of the cathedral and you can quite imagine the impact it must have had on people in the 12th century and for hundreds of years afterwards, when it was the awe-inspiring skyscraper of its time. It is a magnificent sight, bathed in sunlight. It will be good to see it from the air (sadly not as close as in the photo below), but Lizzie and I have decided that if it is unflyable, we will spend the day exploring it on the ground.

Ely Cathedral is known locally as "The ship of the Fens"
as it "towers above the surrounding flat and watery landscape" (to quote Wikipedia)

I had hoped to fly over the cathedral but its top is at 290ft amsl so, to overfly any part of Ely, I'd need to fly at a minimum of 1290ft amsl (because of the 1000' rule). The Mildenhall panhandle starts at 1033ft amsl, so I would be in controlled airspace. Thanks to Steve Wilson for keeping me out of the brown stuff with this one. He has suggested an alternative, which is to fly down the river beneath the pan-handle and keeping clear of any congested areas, which would mean being able to fly lower, provide I stay 500' clear of structures and 600m clear, horizontally. This will still afford a magnificent view of Ely and its cathedral from the east. Early enough and it will be bathed in sunlight....and that approach may even be better than what I originally had in mind.

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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!