Tinworm-wings: May 2010

Saturday, 22 May 2010

success

Pleased with myself. I have flown to Sackville and back, sans GPS (which impressed some of the old boys who wouldn't be without it).

This was also a landmark flight for three reasons which matter to me:

I switched my engine off at about 3,000 feet - sort of to reassure myself about it re-starting.....as I have been a bit anxious since my engine failure.

I flew back from Sackville to Sutton Meadows with my undercarriage retracted.

I used my new Microavionics extension cables, which enabled me to mount my radio on the trike keel, just behind the retract cleat. I now have several key frequencies saved by name...and these can be scrolled through easily.

The winds were light, certainly, but that is deceptive because it was very thermic up to about three thousand feet, where it was gloriously smooth. I rested my ankles on the pegs and flew with fingertips.

Wind shear at take-off was horrible and flying below three thousand was a fight....and quite a scary one at times.

Perhaps my next landmark will be learning to exploit that lifty air rather than fighting it?
.

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Right, enough bimbling . . .

Right, enough bimbling . . . it is time I did some venturing out from home. This weekend, come what may, I am flying to Sackville to see Neill. What's the big deal? It isn't nearly as far as I did on my final cross country before I even had my licence! Sackville is a bit harder to find than the Hundred Foot Washes but I will be fine.

The weather is forecast to be good, with light winds. Can't wait!

Saturday, 15 May 2010

With a strong cross wind (which one pilot with a app on his phone told me was blowing a hard-to-credit 16knots!) and gusting, landing today was the hardest work I have ever done getting down safely. Shortly afterwards Neill texted to say he was stopping until the wind dropped.

Funny thing is, no sooner had I decided to de-rig than it was teasingly calm - but I soon needed help from Mike, who has a Rans Coyote at Sutton, to do a tricky de-rig and was relieved once my trike was packed away. No regrets, though. I got a good 50 mins in the air and some good practice landings.

Dave Garrison pulled my leg about my Bill and Ben rotating map-board, but said he liked the idea, which was gratifying, and I met his new student, Matt, who now has 3 hours under his belt...and lots of enthusiasm. As I headed home, it was good to pull up alongside Peter Millbank and have a brief chin-wag.

One of the nice things about flying with a club is the people you meet and the friendliness of the scene.

Sunday, 9 May 2010

Aware!

oh dear.....my resolve may be faltering.

I may be on the point of going for a GPS system, having always felt that a real pilot should be a good navigator.
NATS have developed a GPS system specifically to alert pilots to possible airspace incursions. The basic AWARE system is £150...which includes regular free updates on airspace restrictions etc....and if you include the extra navigational features, is £250.

I won't go into detail here because other sites will do that better. But I like the touch screen nav features and the fact that it is altitude sensitive, so won't alert you to CAS which is below 0-3000' if you are at 4,000'...but which has a 500' buffer (above and below), so that if you are only just above the airspace, you will still be alerted. I like the read-out at the bottom which tells you where you are (in case you need to give position reports)

The BMAA is pro-Aware. Here is the Aware detail and here is a review.

Saturday, 8 May 2010

Mea Culpa! Haven't entered up my logbooks with the flights I did the other day! That is the most mundane news....but it's all I've got....except that I have ordered a 1.5m extension cable from Microavionics, to enable me to move my radio further forward, though I am not sure to where.

Possibly mount it between my legs, where the protrusion will be not unlike a rather impressive willy (and will doubtless draw comment), or perhaps mounted to the right of my binnacle or even to the right of my right leg (see sketch), where the settings can be easily changed. Had thought about fixing something under my seat-cushion, so that sitting holds it down. This arrangement is similar to those folding side desks sometimes fitted to chairs in lecture theatres.

So far I have had my radio in my top pocket, paramotorist-style, but when I pull the bar in it sometimes hits buttons, causing alarming beeps, which accidentally changed my channel on my last flight...so that I heard someone in "my" overhead who turned out not to be there. I need to be able to see my channel read-out clearly and to be able to change channels and other settings easily. Incidentally, a golfing or ikea pencil is very useful for pressing buttons when wearing gloves. On the Quantum I kept a pencil on a piece of string and secured the pencil itself to my chart with velcro.

Sunday, 2 May 2010

Dad, circa 1954

a Slingsby Grasshopper, I believe

Chatted to dad about thermalling today and he has just emailed this picture of himself flying the primary glider when he was
in the CCF around 1954 at Wellington College in Berkshire,
aged about 16.

I asked him how high you could get in one of those things and he remembers clearing the top of the rugby posts.

I remember seeing boys pulling one of those up (using a bungey-rope...like having a tug of war with the aircraft) at Beggars Bush, when I was at Clifton College in the 1970's. I seem to remember hessian sacking being layed out under the skid to reduce friction and probably save the playing field.

Dad also sent this terrific shot of himself climbing into a Chipmunk in the 1950's

Saturday, 1 May 2010

I wasn't going to fly today, as weather was set to be bad and getting worse. But by this morning, the wind had dropped and was set to be 7mph top. So by 11a.m. I was at Sutton Meadows and rigging up.

I had a terrific afternoon of 4 flights interspersed with chats with Mary Robinson, the friends of a trial flighter, and Andy Fell and his friend and fellow pilot Julia (did I get that right?). "You must be Peter Eveleigh", he said, shaking my hand. He knows me from this blog! I know him from seeing him a lot on the BMAA forum.

I did a bit of thermalling and am not sure I like it, really. It is too buffety and unpredictable for me, but at one point I was doing 700' per minute!

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!