Tinworm-wings: Airbox are selling themselves short

Thursday 10 June 2010

Airbox are selling themselves short

It isn't often the case that a company appears to sell itself short, rather than vaunting qualities that its products actually possess in rather less measure than implied. But the people at Airbox are such a case, it seems to me. They have produced a terrific product, but if reviewers weren't singing its praises, you wouldn't know it. Sure, they have some cute "Space Invaders" advertising, but it is down to people like me to shout about the features these things have.

Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that they have concentrated their efforts in the product (no complaints there) and their manual, such that it is, has been an after-thought, printed on a couple of A5 sheets (not good at all).

Yesterday I embarrassed myself by writing to Tom at Airbox to ask whether using a stylus of some kind (a sawn-off knitting needle, perhaps) might improve pointing accuracy or whether it would damage the screen. I have had mine a week and hadn't even realised that the thing has a stylus built in! I had seen the top of it peeping out of the unit and feared pulling it out in case it wasn't something that was meant to be removed. There was no mention of it at all in the instructions!

Another thing a fellow owner and I discovered quite by accident when removing our SD cards is that the unit comes with other features, including the potential to run car GPS on it, to view movies and pictures, etc. Does this mean that it was not originally built by Airbox but customised from a unit designed for something else and adapted to the Aware's needs? Does it matter? If it has all these extra selling-points, shouldn't Airbox make more of them?

When I was encouraging people in my club to join me in the 6 for the price of 5 deal, one existing owner said the problem with the system, as compared to more expensive ones, was that it could not save routes. As it happens he was wrong, and I was able to bring him up to speed on this, but I really hold Airbox responsible for this misunderstanding because their documentation is really poor; easy to understand (Good English, not as is commonly the case, Chinglish) but far too thin on detail.

The fact is that most owners of the Aware+ are going to find that they got a lot more for their money than they realised and that is not something that happens often, is 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!