Tinworm-wings: One to learn from

Saturday 20 August 2011

One to learn from

click image for clarity

I am going to have to climb down and apologise to the resident GA instructor at my airfield tomorrow. I misjudged a situation, then made the wrong decision once a problem became obvious. And in the spirit of one of those blue safety thingies they enclose with the BMAA magazine, I am going to risk humiliation so that others can learn from my mistake (if ever they are stupid enough to get in the same situation).

As I approached the airfield, late evening, there didn't seem to be anyone else about. I had probably been lulled into a false sense of security by all my friends having packed up and gone home and my flight having been quiet. I did a standard over-head join at Great Oakley at 1,500', noted the absence of wind in the sock, which was pointing straight down, and decided to use the biggest runway, 27, which had been the runway in use all day. There didn't appear to be anyone else around, so I dumped 500' on the deadside of 09/27 and joined crosswind for 27 (right).

As I flew downwind I saw an aeroplane I could have sworn hadn't been there before! It transpired that it landed as I was descending, and as 27 is a right hand circuit I descended with back to 27, and therefore assumed that this aeroplane must have just landed behind me.

I concluded that he was taking off again on 27 and decided to extend downwind to give him time to get off, and then he started taxying, not running-up, so I assumed he was going to vacate on taxi-way B, so I started to turn on to a base leg (much further out than my drawing suggests). But then, instead of vacating he started to the head of 09, by which time I was on finals and realised that he wasn't using 27 but 09, that he wasn't taxying but was back-tracking ....and that he hadn't landed on 27, but on 09!!!! In descending facing the sun, I had missed him on finals.

There I was on approach, at about 500' and he had just turned around to line up. At that point a sensible man would have aborted the approach and gone around. Unfortunately, I convinced myself that since the runway in use all day had been 27, this character was the one in the wrong....so I hovered there trying to decide if he was going to start rolling or if he was holding, and as I was non radio, I couldn't ask him. I braced myself to break right, flapped my wings to make myself visible and continued to drop in, then rushed to vacate via taxi-way C.

I know now that having seen him on the runway I should have known that whatever he was doing he had the right of way. I had misjudged his intentions, and that was forgiveable, because he had landed with the sun at his back while I was making my descent on the south of the airfield, but having realised on base that he wasn't taking off on 27 but had just come to a halt there and turned around after landing in the opposite direction, I should have turned left and done a left hand circuit for 09.

I feel an idiot, not least of all because I tried to argue the toss in the clubhouse afterwards. Pride got in the way, partly because I knew he'd be thinking, "Bloody microlights". But now it is worse because I have gone and given him more grounds for thinking 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!