Tinworm-wings: precision hedge-hopping

Sunday 13 June 2010

precision hedge-hopping

Dave Broom asked me today if I fancied competing when Sutton Meadows hosts the Nationals in a fortnight. I think it may be fun. He said there may be an event with precision landings, touch and go's etc, so this evening, when the air was smoother I did about ten tight circuits at no more than about 250'.....and did some leg extending at 150' on base; I love it at that height!

Earlier in the day Peter Robinson urged me to make more of the Dragonfly's thermalling capabilities and I discussed this with Nigel who is about 12 hours into training but seems to have a good grasp of matters aviation and who had some advice about thermals, which I then went on to try out North East of the airfield. It is a bit hairy pushing the bar out and doing a 60 degree banking turn with power on idle...you fear the wing will stall, but doing that I managed to get about 500' per minute climb, which I reckon is pretty good for a novice.

I wanted to get quickly above 2000' because, according to the Notam for RAF Wyton, a Hurricane of the BBMF was due through at 15.30 hrs (surface to 2000') and I wanted to be safely clear, but airborn. I listened in on 134.05 mhz VHF to all the traffic being asked to hold and most of them were at about 3,500'. Goes to show how many pilots do not check their Notams, that so many had been quite unaware it would be coming through when they asked for Matz penetration!

I wanted to be outside the 3 mile exclusion but able to get a good view - in the air. In the end, though, I heard it on the radio but didn't see it at all, so goodness knows what became of it. Consequently I didn't get the snap on the camera very kindly lent to me by Richard (the accountant whose GT450 is a capital expense!).

Congrats are due today to someone I won't name (in case he'd rather I didn't) who has finally qualified after 12 years! He has had several set-backs over the years, but when his wife threatened to put his XL on ebay, decided it was time he finished the licence off; though apparently he has passed his GFT before and timed-out having forgotten to put in his paperwork. Impossible to imagine forgetting! But I suppose not everyone is as obsessed as I am.

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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!