Tinworm-wings

Saturday, 27 November 2010

sub-zero, shnub je'ro! I want to go up!

The internal debate this weekend is, "will I get up in the air tomorrow, or not"? Am all packed and ready (bought a fishing bag at a carboot for only £20, new, which has room for everything in well padded pockets and is much lighter than my wheeled tender).

So, ok, it is sub-zero...but the snow will have stopped and wind is just 7mph at its worst for the day. Should I risk the drive (snow, ice and idiots) and a blowout on the snow camouflaged, crater infested off-road track? And what will traction on the runway be like...and how easy to spot it from the air, covered in snow?

I think I will just bimble close to home and go through all the drills, some practice forced landings etc....as it has been two months.

Just praying the wind might drop just a wee bit (been rising) and the tempreature creep up even just a degree (been dropping)! Yes, I will undoubtedly be miserably cold, but I know the scenery will be stunning and I will be aviating!

I want to go.

Sunday, 21 November 2010

about time I had a droolingly nice shot of my trike at the top of my blog again :)

Friday, 12 November 2010

I look like a fool, but I get the last laugh

I have just unloaded at Sutton and logged on to the flying club computer, having come here straight from Paul Bailey's farm, where he ran through all the checks on my engine and found the source of the problem in about twenty minutes flat. The price? To be the butt of a joke Paul will share with Ben Ashman....

My wiring of the auxiliary power socket was the source of the problem. I had wired the positive up correctly, but my negative should have been earthed through the chassis and not connected to the black wire.

My initial embarrassment was saved, however, when I remembered that I'd been completely oblivious to the very existence of the two wires until Ben Ashman pointed them out and suggested I plug my GPS into them. He seems to have been as unaware as I was that the black wire is commonly used by paramotorists for a KILL SWITCH!

Wednesday, 27 October 2010

CAP 413 supplement 3 - How to get sound

When studying for my RT I found CAP413 Supplement 3 very useful - mainly because it has audible examples of text-book exchanges between controllers and aircraft. But when Steve Wilson suggested I use it to brush up on my RT I found that the sound links no longer worked. So I got in touch with the CAA help desk and Kevin wrote back to say that there is a mismatch between the latest version of Adobe Acrobat and their file.

The solution is to download the file to your computer and run it from there (rather than watching it in your browser). When it opens in your browser it doesn't have an immediately apparent save button. But I discovered the solution to this by accident. At the top-right is a button "Exit"-Home. Click this and a menu appears along the top. Click on the Floppy, as usual, to save.

Many thanks to Kevin Crowley at the CAA

pitting hope against the fear of disappointment

Apparently Paul is away on holiday. So that puts paid to any plans to get flying for a week or so.

But in a way that is a good thing. When there is a chance of a gap in bad weather or a chance to go and get something done on the plane, or whatever (when you are dependent on others or other circumstances) you play a waiting game; forever on edge, forever calculating likelihoods, forever watching the wind, forever mentally pacing up and down waiting, forever pitting hope against the fear of disappointment.

At least this way I know that for the next week I will not be disappointed....and can spend the time more productively: in this case, glazing my workshop.

My plane will get sorted out and there will be a gap in the weather and I will fly.

But not this week.

.

Saturday, 23 October 2010

RT revision Nav-pot

It is all very well having my RT licence, but apart from calling Sutton Radio circuits and the odd mayday (ahem), I haven't actually talked to ATC at all . . . and feel afraid of doing it, despite reassuring pep talks from Carol and being called a poof by Neill.

So last night I re-jigged my Nav-pot to incorporate all my RT scripts and a moveable scribble board + pencil (yet another use for velcro!)

It is prototype number 2. It does look rather fussy, I know. But I think it will make life easier until I get the hang of RT in the air.

Wayne Lofts' trike

On a positive note, I saw Wayne Lofts' trike today and was able to send him some pictures on my mobile. In reception, when I arrived, I found Cath polishing the top panel with turtle wax - never occurred to me to do that, but what a great finish you get!

Wayne and I have been friends since he got in touch with me some months ago to ask me about the Dragonfly, as he has had a hankering to try SSDR, particularly with its advantages in terms of owner-operating costs. He had just sold his Quik and was looking for something which wouldn't feel like it was costing him loads when he wasn't flying.

What makes Wayne's Dragonfly unique is that it is adapted for use with two prosthetic legs, as he lost both of his in a motorbike accident when he was only 17, in 1987. The devastating crash also left him with a severe head injury, which meant that he had to learn to talk all over again (it doesn't show at all..and interestingly he has both air-to-ground and ground-to-air RT licences now)

Ben has designed some really nice features, including strapped pedals and a hand-brake, using the draw-chord and jam-cleat system he originally used for the retracts (which are electrically operated on Wayne's, as on most everyone's, these days).

I know Wayne is going to LOVE his Dragonfly. He has the newer engine and the grey powder coating which I thought I'd hate but which looks superb. Ben has done a really great job on it....and is delivering it on Monday.

I shall look forward to knowing how Wayne gets on with his new machine and will hopefully be able to put up some photos of it in use, as we plan on flying together soon.

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!