Tinworm-wings: shorts and t-shirt at a thousand feet

Saturday 5 June 2010

shorts and t-shirt at a thousand feet

Easily the nicest day of flying I have ever had. A first for me - for the last half hour of flying today I didn't suit up; I just wore shorts and t-shirt and even at a thousand feet the air was warm - gloriously liberating feeling.

Yesterday I arranged to go to Sackville today to see Neill, but when I rang for PPR today he told me that a storm was due through, so we held fire. And when I texted later it seemed that it was still imminent, so we postponed. Later in the afternoon, the haze and bank of rain was very evident and I was really pleased I didn't risk it - in fact, the heavens opened on my drive home, but even in my last half hour of flying I did get a few drops on me and landed quickly and de-rigged before the wind got up. Good call.

However, before all that the air was very smooth indeed and I did some really great manoeuvring, including a pass down the runway at 20' with wheels up, so no room for getting the throttle settings wrong. That felt superb; I now have complete confidence in the undercarriage - but do recommend spraying it before flight with a lubricant.

Before flying, and indeed for much of the day (where does the time go?) I tinkered around - mainly sticking velcro to my keel and fitting the radio rig and routing the extension cable behind the seat cushion. It works very well, though you will see from the photos that its position is likely to provoke some ribbing.

Airbox Aware+

An important job today was distributing Aware+ units to the various club members who joined me in a deal I arranged through Airbox so that we each saved about £40. I won't use mine until I have found a way to secure it on my lap. It looks like a really decent piece of kit. I spent my saving on getting the quarter mil charts card for southern England on the assurance of the very helpful Lauren that they would throw in Northern England too! Personally I prefer quarter mil, but Baz tells me that the clutter of detail can, so a friend of his tells him, become rather tiresome. We will see, but for now I like the detail for picking my way.

Where the time goes

On reflection, I know where the time goes. Every task is punctuated with short, very pleasant conversations with an array of different people who wander over and admire G-CFKK: the man there on a trial flight; or the man who came a week early just to make sure of the way; or the recent joiner or low-hours student waiting for his hour with Dave Garrison; or the couple Mary Robinson introduced me to - she is a bit nervous of flying and he (who predicted he has 5 years left in him!) has just spent £70grand on his plane! And with everyone I am evangelical about flying, generally, and about the Dragonfly in particular. It is rumoured that I might sell it and it is clear I won't have any difficulty doing so when I do, judging from the interest, but after today, I can't imagine ever wanting to let it go.

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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!