High Time [First ed.]

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BRIAN LECOMBER

HIGH TIME

BRIAN LECOMBER Best-selling author of:

Turn Killer Dead Weight Talk Down

HIGH TIME Copyright © Brian Lecomber 2013

Brian Lecomber, 2 Wychwood Rise, Great Missenden HP16 0HB, England Tel: +44 (0)1494 868788; Email: [email protected]

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Dedicated to my dear wife Joyce. Who for 30 years waited for the phone call from afar beginning; “It‟s about Brian…” And who never said a word about it.

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In Memoriam

Neil Williams; Ted White; Mark Campbell; Don Bullock; David Perrin; Nigel Brendish; Rod Rae; Sean Cunningham; Jon Egging; Marcus Edwards; Michael („Hoof‟) Proudfoot; Manfred Strossenreuther; Chris Penistone; Gabor Varga; John McLean; Andy Wallbridge; Guy Bancroft-Wilson; Manx Kelly; Bill Murton; Brian Brown; Pete Clark; Robin Bowes; Jan Baran; Arthur Wignall; Mark Hanna; Ray Hanna; Omar Bilal; John Fairey; Sir Ken Hayr; John („Jeff‟) Hawke; Randy Gagne; Mark Walden… and many others.

Friends departed – and looking down and saying; “How come YOU aren‟t here?” A most reasonable question.

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FOREWORD By

Air Chief Marshal Sir John Allison KCB CBE RAF (Retd)

I got to know Brian Lecomber when our paths criss-crossed on the display circuit during the 1980s and 1990s, and we have remained friends since. One of the many things we had in common was that we both loved flying. However, the great difference between us as display pilots (apart from a huge differential in Brian‟s favour in terms of ability) was that I was doing it for recreation and he was doing it to earn a living. Once, at the end of the first day of a two day show, as I was walking off the field, I saw Brian working on his aircraft, with cowlings up and some panels off. I knew he had flown four displays that day in various parts of the country and would be tired. Concerned, I asked him what was wrong. “Nothing”, he replied cheerfully. “I‟m just pre-flighting the aircraft”. Glancing at the rapidly setting sun, I said surely he was not flying again today. “No”, he said, “but if anything‟s wrong it‟s better to find it now while there‟s still time to fix it before tomorrow”. That is professionalism. I did not start doing early pre-flights, but I did learn much from Brian‟s example, and from the flow of wisdom that he had on offer. Now he has retired from active display flying, it is good to see that flow continue, because there is much wisdom as well as excitement to be found within the pages of this hugely entertaining book. High Time is mostly, but by no means exclusively, about display flying, but it offers much to a far wider audience. Anyone who has ever had the responsibility of being captain of any aircraft will recognise the challenges of decision making, both in planning a flight and in the air, when events do not turn out as planned. Any practising pilot who reads this book will find things to ponder and, through doing so, can become a better and safer pilot. But this is no text book. It is an entertainment – riotously so at times. Brian‟s highly individualistic use of language to paint vivid pictures is an entertainment in itself and the pace of some of the descriptions of flying situations is compelling. We see how Brian, in the course of a long, highly individualistic and abnormally dangerous flying career, managed to survive, both personally and as a businessman in a brutally competitive sphere.

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It is all told with humour, candour and modesty. If Brian was afraid, he tells us so. If he made mistakes, they are not hidden. If he did well, there is no bragging, more like humility, but we get the idea. I remember once discussing with Brian another display pilot of whom we both thought well. Brian summed him up thus: “He‟ll be OK because he has the right mixture of bottle and caution”. Brian might as well have been talking about himself. He certainly had plenty of bottle – and just enough caution to be a saving grace. Through some of the most exciting passages of the book, we see how Brian‟s bottle got him into tight spots in the air and how his innate skill and wide experience, coupled with his ability to think lucidly under pressure, enabled him to find a way out. Most of us pilots reading “I have left it too late” will know that we would not have survived. Nor do you need to be a pilot to enjoy High Time. In places it goes beyond flying wisdom into philosophy of life. How many of us follow our dreams, however unlikely of attainment? Brian did, and to understand him and his approach to life, one should read “Barnstorming with a Stampe”. To ponder the role of luck in our lives, read “How much luck is luck?” To understand about striving for perfection and, in doing so, consistently achieving the high end of excellence and, just occasionally and tantalisingly, touching the sublime, one should read “An aspirant is humbled”. Brian chose to live his live through flying, but such philosophy can apply to any worthwhile field of human endeavour. I most warmly commend this book to every reader, pilots and non-pilots alike.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE More than one hundred million spectators worldwide attend airshows every year. The variety of acts on offer is huge – vintage aircraft, WWII Warbirds, thundering jet fighters, national military aerobatic teams, pirouetting helicopters, wing-walkers, parachutists… Plus a small cadre of specialist aerobatic aircraft and pilots referred to as Unlimited. Which means just what it says. It is a normal mantra of display flying that; „You display the aeroplane, not the pilot‟. Not so with aeroplanes bearing the badge „Unlimited‟ – these are machines of such awesome agility and strength that now you are purely displaying the skills of the pilot. Sometimes warts and all. These performers are the gladiators of the Coliseum. I have been fortunate indeed. My luck has been such as to grant me more than a quarter-century of professional Unlimited display flying. In these aerobatic cockpits at various times I have known great heat and great cold. I have been host to savage elation – and also uncertainty, fear, and downright gut-dissolving terror. In these cockpits, like every other Unlimited pilot, I have sought to fly the perfect display – a mythological concept which is somehow forever slipping through a man‟s fingers like an especially greased eel. In these cockpits I have both exalted and cried. It has never been boring. At times I have written about it. The following is a compilation of some of these times, spaced over many years. Welcome to my cockpit.

Brian Lecomber, 2013

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THE SPIN Experience being but a flimsy defence against stupidity

The Extra spins on. It occurs to me with a sense of mild injustice that in the next twenty seconds I am going to die. And I do not know why. My right leg and arm are bar-taut and quivering, jamming full rudder and forward stick. We must recover. The Extra spins on. Fright is the igniter of true fear. But this has happened so quickly there has been no time even for fright. I am simply observing the fields of Buckinghamshire whirling round the nose and wondering what I am doing wrong that is going to make me die on this summer morning. The power is off. Even if my left hand wasn‟t hauling the throttle hard back I‟d know this because of the noise. The engine is mumbling at idle but the sound of the airflow in this spin is an eerie whistle such as I have never before heard in the Extra‟s cockpit. We spin on. The Extra does not do this. The Extra EA230, designed by the near-genius Walter Extra, is built with Teutonic precision by Extra Flugzeugbau in Germany. It looks like a scaled-up model aeroplane – but this is what all the new generation of aerobatic monoplanes look like. Soap-smooth symmetrical wing, 200 hp engine. If it looks right it will fly right. And indeed it spins like an obedient politician. And of course recover is equally mannerly. No fancy techniques needed; just rudder-stick and it stops. Bingo. In fact, as in most aerobatic hot-ships, you never normally even think about the tiny matter of recovery from a mere spin. When you require to stop a spin in this kind of aeroplane you require it in the down-vertical on heading and you require it exactly on heading, not a sloppy three of four degrees off. So you do not go think-rudderstick. Instead you slam the controls like cracking a whip; hit whatever you need to translate instantly from auto-rotation to vertical dive. In the course of this ungentle procedure the actual spin recovery is an almost incidental by-product. It always stops. If you‟ve banged the aeroplane down into a vertical dive the wings have no

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alpha (angle of attack) and therefore cannot possibly remain stalled. Elemental law of physics. This works every time. That is, it was every time. Right now I cannot get the nose down. Here and now the Extra spins on. And I still have not the slightest idea why. In a very short time I shall never know why in this world. Because in a very short time this aeroplane and I will be an intermixed mass in one of the peaceful fields below. I am, had I time to think about it, aghast. A dozen years ago I was new to lowlevel aerobatics. Not so now. Now I am – supposedly –one of the most experienced professional display pilots in the country. How can this be happening to me…? Well, the grisly fact is that however experienced you are, the sky can always find a way to humble you. Or kill you. In one way, of course, it was due. If a man will earn his living flying displays of aerobatics at low level, there will inevitably be moments when Old Man Death reaches out a beckoning hand. In the early years you laugh off these encounters with varying degrees of conviction. But as more years roll by the mirth tends to acquire a certain hollow ring, until eventually, unless you are completely lacking in all imagination, you come to accept that diligently as you may scheme to avoid the final summons, still the Old Man may well have his way in the end if you persist in your calling. This is the unvarnished law of averages, and is not to be denied. It is why life insurance in this line of work is for all practical purposes unaffordable. I have been around for a fair while. I have nodded to the Old Man on several occasions. This likely termination is, by dry actuarial reckoning, due and overdue. But this way! This is not the sometime-inevitable mistake. This is total betrayal… The treachery is absolute. Against all reason the Extra has simply decided to throw away all the known laws of aerodynamics and whirl on down to its own destruction. And mine. Four years ago I would have been less astonished at such infidelity. Then the Extra was new and I was not used to Extras and there was a period of deliberate vulgarity while I established just what my new lady would and would not let me get away with in a spin. In-spin aileron, out-spin aileron, stick-before-rudder, power-on, power-off, stick back Muller style – all the liberties which might have been expected to prompt a fit of passion and a slap around the face. And – nothing. The Extra was the perfect mistress. Spin how you will, hash up the controls, come home drunk singing dirty songs – still she smiled demurely and forgave. To stop a spin, just stop and you‟ve stopped.

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So what, in heaven‟s name what, is different now? Two differences spring to mind which I do not wish to dwell upon. The first is that four years ago I was up at 4,000 feet conducting my nervous experimentations. And the second is that at that time I dressed slightly differently, to the extent of rounding off my outfit with the small frippery of a parachute. Either luxury would now be most appreciated. Neither, unfortunately, is present. We spin on. A separate part of me notes that the nose is high and the rotation is very fast. This probably means we are not coming down particularly quickly as spins go – a factor which, even if true, is of very little consequence indeed, especially since this separate part also notes that the whirling panorama of the ground is slowly swelling up and around us. Being an experienced separate part it knows that „slowly‟ is an illusion brought on by the imminence of demise. The ground only ever appears to swell up when you are close to it and becoming rapidly closer. I check feet again. Hitting the wrong corrective rudder in a spin is the oldest killer in the book and far easier to do than many aviators would believe. The main lesson long experience teaches is that long experience does not render one immune. But I am not doing it; we are spinning left, and my quivering leg is locked on right rudder. God! Come on! What is it? God (if there is a God), what am I doing, or not doing, which is making this spin different? And Sir – and I didn‟t mean that bit about if there is a God – if you‟re going to let me know, please do so very soon… The spectre of structural failure has already crossed my mind. If a rudder cable or something has broken I could shove my foot halfway through the Lycoming‟s crankcase without achieving the slightest result. But the aeroplane feels all right. The Extra and I have now long been one, and even in this extreme I would surely know if our body was wounded. Also, of course, if something has bust there is exactly and precisely nothing I can do about it. This truth renders all thoughts on the subject nothing but a pure waste of seconds – seconds I require for more positive considerations. Or at least, I would require them if I could think of anything positive to consider. As it is I am consumed by utter helplessness. The unnatural whistling of the airflow seems to freeze my brain and curdle the very marrow of my bones. I suppose the sound is a function of the very fast rotation, which is certainly the fastest I have ever experienced in any aeroplane. And that is probably due to the way we went in.

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The way we went in was highly inadvertently. I was practicing knife-edge spins. These are rapid negative-g semi-stalled gyrations with the wings in the vertical plane. They look sickeningly weird – which is not misleading – and their overall flight path is straight down with the subtlety of a dropped brick. Some aeroplanes – among which the Extra 230 is definitely numbered – require a certain degree of tact and diplomacy on entry to the knife-edge spin, lest they become cantankerous. My technique is to enter off a stall-turn (hammerhead); somewhat gingerly at first to get the rotation started, and then delicately smashing every control hard into the appropriate corner of the cockpit to wind up the revolutions. The right moment to smash is critical. Too late and you go into a highly uncomfortable negative-G down-vertical barrel roll; too early and the whole world explodes into such a maelstrom of whirling violence that you can only cling on aghast, convinced that no aircraft can possible gyrate this fast while still maintaining possession of all its major appendages, such as wings. When this happenstance occurs, the only thought you have in the world is to halt the proceedings at the earliest possible moment before your head flies off your shoulders. This instinct is most sound, since even if your head remains attached there is certainly a very real danger of the propeller parting company from the rest of the assembly. So you tramp on opposite rudder and un-bash the stick and wait for anxious moments… Which is what I did when it happened to me twenty seconds ago. Resulting in this spin. The transition from super-fast negative knife-edge spin to very fast positive ordinary spin happened too quickly for perception. There was a second or so of that ominous rolling-sliding feeling which all aeroplanes can produce when they seriously wish to inform you that things have got out of hand, and then there we were, spinning. And not, ridiculously not, stopping spinning when so directed. The whistling noise is grimly steady, testifying to the locked-in state of the spin. My right leg muscles shake as if in disbelief that their strength is not this time halting the ghastly rotation of the landscape around the engine cowling. Why? Why? I snatch my hand back and forth again to bang the stick hard against the forward stop. Just to make sure. It was there anyway. The spin goes on.

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The ground is horribly close. The details are not a factor, one bit of farmland being much like another to die in. But you only ever see revolving ground from very much too low once in a lifetime, and that briefly. The spectacle is impressive. The sunshine is bright and warm, and the world will go on. I will not be with it. The Extra will probably not burn – the engine having been idling for half a minute there won‟t be the red-hot exhaust to flash the fuel – but the aeroplane and I will certainly be an impacted tangle in the earth, mute and crumpled testimony to my ineptitude. If I should have any high – and by this performance, undeserved – reputation, then the wreckage may cause some puzzlement among those whose job it is to look into such things. The Air Accident Investigation Branch will peer at the remains, check, measure, piece together shattered parts, trace twisted control runs, search for mechanical failure. Not finding it, they will look for evidence of pilot error. Because they are very conscientious and because I was known as a long-lasting aerobatic pilot up until this point, they will look very hard, lest whatever caught me should rear up again and claim further victims. Well, I wish you luck, AAIB. Much luck. Because I fear I am going to leave you precious little evidence. The spin goes on. Of course, AAIB, you will question eye-witnesses and also look at my record. The witnesses will furnish colourful variations on the central theme (the plane was stunting, bits fell off it in the air, there was an explosion, etc.), but my colleagues in the business may offer more pertinent clues. They may tell you, for example, that my normal display routine includes a four-turn full-power flat spin entered from 1,400 feet. And you may thereby conclude that this was what I was doing and for once I lost count of the turns or fumbled the recovery… But you will be wrong. This is not a power-on flat spin – the nose is lower, the rotation is much faster, and the power is most definitely off. I wish it was a true flat spin because I can recover from a flat spin in an instant with reflex motions as familiar as breathing. So benign is the Extra that you don‟t even have to throttle back; just lead a quarter-turn and smash in hard out-spin rudder, in-spin aileron and forward stick. Aileron. I look down at my right hand. It is a distant member, frozen in effort. It is holding the stick hard forward. And central.

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I move the hand to the left. Into the spin. The spin stops. It stops in a quarter-turn and without the slightest fuss. The sudden sanity is absolute after the turmoil. We pull out of the dive. The ground is 200, maybe even 300 feet beneath us. We soar up into the warm sky, the Extra and I. Snarling at full power away from that dread place in the innocent farmland. My heels are drumming on the alloy footwells – something they haven‟t done for well over a decade, since I taxied out for my first aerobatic competition flights. My mouth is sticky-dry. The shaking of my hands is echoed by the wild pounding of my heart. Even before we climb away I am an older and wiser pilot. I know with hideous clarity the extent and simplicity of my sin. The truth of this day is not flattering. In the knife-edge spin in the 230 one hits full-forward-full-left stick and full left rudder. When this knife-edge spin went berserk my first act of recovery was to hastily remove all such extreme control inputs. The Extra then translated into an ordinary spin, while I doggedly hung on to out-spin controls for the knife-edge. Which of course did not include in-spin aileron. In the ordinary way this would not have mattered overmuch. I had the correct rudder on, and normally if you have that the Extra will come out of a spin eventually even if you‟ve pulled the stick out by the roots. But this was not an ordinary spin. The incredible violence of a knife-edge gone bananas imparted such rotational velocity that the spin was maybe twice as fast as the Extra‟s normal cadence. It may well be that this is the only way you could ever get an Extra 230 into a spin that fast. And for that spin, as I can now testify, it turns out that you do most definitely do need in-spin aileron for recovery. Simple. My already dry mouth is host to the ashes of mortification. Because of course I knew this: I know that in nasty spins any aeroplane may need in-spin aileron on recovery. It is a fundamental which is branded in letters of fire through the very fibre of my being. So how came I to sit there fat and dumb, if not exactly happy, holding a recovery action which was half-a-leftover from a previous embarrassment? How came my ohso-experienced reflexes to be so mesmerised as to permit such an elementary lapse?

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We fly around in a large, aimless circle, the Extra and I. My face itches with sweat and I wipe my sleeve across it, leaving damp patches on the Nomex. Oh, I know how come, of course. Sudden shock of the unexpected. Idee fixe – fixed idea that I‟d already done the right thing, the whole right thing, and nothing but the right thing. Failure, dismal, dismal failure, to recognise gut-feel reflex as unreliable and instantly replace it with proven rote. Idiocy. The human condition. Premature senility… All the usual things. But I have learned. Oh yes. Another twig on the sometimes creaking edifice of experience. This will – may – be a mistake I shall not make again. Doubtless I shall find others. But when I do, Lord, just may they please be not quite so low. Or quite so persistent. Realistic low-level practise for display flying is absolutely vital for all concerned. You practice high at first and then slowly bring it down low. This is fundamental for the safety of the performers, the spectators, the organisers, even the careers of the bureaucrats who claim to control these things. Everybody. It is a primary imperative. Unarguable. But in the nature of the beast it does mean that somewhere, sometime, somebody is going to screw up at that low level. This is equally unarguable… So Lord, next time I make a screw-up on this scale, please help it to be in earlier practise. Just a bit earlier, when I am just a bit higher… The cockpit is now normal again, and I am one small bit wiser. My heels have finally stopped their tapping. What I want now of all things is a quiet beer in a quiet pub garden, and time to reflect. But first I have a ghost to lay.

We wheel round, the Extra and I, clearing the sky. Then we pull up to the vertical. There are those knife-edge spins to look at again.

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FIRST SOLO Showing that wisdom can be a long time a-coming

Aviators as a race, of course, are far too genteel to indulge in – ahem, how shall I put it – urinational challenges. The Americans, being crude ex-colonials, call it a pissing contest. Along the lines of he-who-can-urinate-furthest is the Alpha Male in the group. (Females being at a slight natural disadvantage). Fortunately, pilots are universally of modest disposition, so such matches do not occur in our world. The hell they don‟t. Show me a late-night flying club bar and I‟ll show you a pissing contest. And one of the recurrent themes is the „How-long-did-it-take-you-to-go-solo?‟ challenge. “Oh…” (casually) “…I was off in ten hours, but of course I was pretty stupid in those days….” “Well… eight hours for me, but I had a rather dud instructor…..” “Six hours – but I‟d found this really legendary instructor…” (To divert for a moment, I used to have a very dear old mate who could out-pee the lot. His primary flying course was 50 minutes instruction, said instruction consisting solely of standing – standing – behind the pilot and looking over his shoulder to see what the demi-god was doing. At the conclusion of this „flying course‟ the instructor – rather wisely – got out of the aircraft and ordered the student to take it up by himself. Thus my old mate flew his first solo and, remarkably, survived same. In a Maurice Farman Longhorn. In 1915….) Sorry, I digress. Back to the pi… the urination contest. And I will now join in. Looking back into my very first logbook, I can reveal that I went first-solo after… wait for it, wait for it…. Twenty-one hours 35 minutes of instruction. I think I just pissed on my feet. However I had a good excuse for this. Quite simply that I had all the natural flight aptitude of a retarded gerbil. I just could NOT persuade this Tiger Moth to land in a dignified manner. Such was my ineptitude that my instructor, one Tony Cheshire (not related to Cheshire VC), finally produced a wooden seat for me to sit on so that I would better feel what he described as „the final sink‟ of a Tiger Moth landing.

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I do not recall that it improved my landings. I do recall that it was instantly christened „Brian‟s Throne‟ and created much mirth in that small flying club. And that eventually I taught myself to land while Cheshire passed me Polo mints from the front cockpit and said very little. Well, well. Time goes by. Later, with the hindsight of a couple of thousand hours as an instructor myself, I thought rather ill of Tony Cheshire. Why did it take me 21 hours 35 minutes to go solo? My students don‟t take 21 hours 35 minutes to go solo… Well, I said to myself, if I was a gerbil as a flight student, Cheshire was equally a stoat as an instructor. My tardiness might have been 90 per cent my own stupidity, but it also had to be 10 per cent down to the fact that he rarely said anything during our ricocheting re-unions with the ground. And even after repeated go-arounds to salvage hopeless landing attempts – and one thing I did get good at was go-arounds – never did anything except pass bloody Polo mints back from his eerie in the front cockpit. I thought. Back then I mentally shrugged. And stopped eating Polo mints. Having been a dumb student myself actually helped me in teaching other dumb students when I encountered them. There was a sort of empathy. But my style was sympathetic. When I encountered a student who was flummoxed by the art of landing I would try all my repertoire of tricks. The softly-spoken; “That‟s good – just relax” at the start of a tense landing flare. And the analysis. Are we flaring at the right height? Are we looking in the right place? Are we shifting our eyes alongside the nose as we flare? Are we looking a cricket-pitch ahead? And so to the equally softly-spoken prompt at just the right moment… I used all the tricks, and except in a handful of hopeless cases eventually gained the desired result. Which rather increased my slight resentment of Cheshire. Could he not have done things like that? Could he not have done more to help me land the bloody Tiger Moth instead of just handing me Polos while I bounced across the airfield? Could he not have helped me go solo in less than 21 hours 35 minutes…? More time went by. The realisation of the truth was nothing instant. It sort of came in bits and pieces. I ran a flying school on an island in the Caribbean. I used to meet up with an examiner from another island, who would test my students for their Private Pilot Licenses. One night, after a hard day‟s examining, we conducted a scientific

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research of the local beer and rum together. I was celebrating inwardly. Five out of five of my students had earned their personal wings this day. As the crickets trilled in the night, Derek said; “Y‟know, the thing that surprises me is that all your students make glide approaches unless I ask them to do something different”. I burped elegantly and said, “Well, of course they do”. “And they all land on the numbers or somewhere quite close to it”. “Well, of course they do”. “And they all seem to be capable of side-slipping, although it‟s not in the syllabus”. “Well, of course they do”. “Well…” Derek consulted his beer for a moment. “I‟ve got to say that they‟re above-average handling pilots. All of them are also so pig-ignorant about air law that it‟s a wonder they passed their writtens at all – but they all handle well. And all of them, because I‟ve looked in their logbooks…” he fixed me with a stare… “all of them took 15 hours or more to go solo”. “Ahhh….” Funny, that. I shook Derek‟s hand and took myself off to bed, executing a faint imitation of a Tiger Moth‟s weaving taxi in the process. But in the morning – and on many other mornings – I thought about Derek‟s words. He was a pilot I respected. And I thought again about Tony Cheshire. And about the 21 hours 35 minutes. And about Cheshire‟s absolute insistence on glide-approaches. You owed him a beer if you used power after closing the throttle at the top of the landing approach – an edict which cost me a lot of beers for a while, but which became less expensive as I absorbed some semblance of judging wind and eyeballing approach angles. I remembered that he taught me hook-on wheeler landings and fly-on wheeler landings long before I went solo. Remembered that if I had a lesson booked on a day which was strong-wind-marginal for a Tiger we still flew that lesson – often to the accompaniment of blistering invective if he felt that my planning and airmanship left something to be desired, which it usually did. His credo, oft-repeated in an ominous growl: “Cunning and forethought, lad – cunning and forethought”. And so this neophyte would look apprehensively at the horizontal windsock and the Tiger rocking gently on its tie-downs, and suggest that perhaps a slightly fast approach and a fly-on wheeler might be appropriate in the circumstances… “Don‟t ask me. You‟re the bloody pilot. You bloody plan it”.

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So I‟d bloody plan it. In the deep and certain knowledge that if I planned it wrongly my ears would burn for the rest of the week. I suppose you could call it the Genghis Khan school of instructing. But as my fledgling aerial time ticked on towards that 21 hours 35 minutes, so I did start to apply a degree of forethought above and beyond my hitherto blithe approach to the joyous business of aviating. I brooded before each lesson. Today I‟m going to need that angle of drift on base leg… today on this warm morning there‟ll be more sink over the trees on finals… today in this crosswind I need a left side-slip and then a hook-on wheeler touchdown…. Praise came not as praise from Cheshire, but rather as a diminution of his habitual snarl. My prize, rarely attained, was a post-flight de-brief which didn‟t happen – Cheshire merely stalking off, saying nothing. Then, watching his retreating back, I‟d savour a sort of inverse stamp of approval. Except, of course, for the bloody, God-forsaken three-point landings. He‟d snarled about my glide approaches – well, now I could do reasonable glide approaches for one still sporting L-plates. He‟d snarled about my sideslipping – well, now I could sideslip with a reasonable absence of hazard. He‟d snarled about planning and crosswinds – well, now I could look at the conditions beforehand, make my own mind up, and approach and wheel-on accordingly. My cunning, although most certainly very, very far from accomplished, was coming along… But not my basic three-point landings. He never really snarled about them, or not much. In fact he said practically nothing about them at all, except to introduce the humiliation of Brian‟s Throne. And the damn Polo mints. It was more years before it filtered through that I‟d been taught by a wise man. Many years before I understood that Cheshire had recognised an impetuous, overenthusiastic youth and resolved to pummel sense into him by main force. He wasn‟t worried about my landings – he‟d simply decided to keep me under his wing until my thinking was right. Until my respect for the task was right. Hence the shut mouth and the mints. And the Throne. Many years later I learned that Cheshire had watched one of my early aerobatic displays from behind a hedge and growled: “Not too bad – might actually make a pilot one day…” It is now more than 30 years since Cheshire departed us, ravaged by the claws of cancer. To my infinite regret he died two days after I got my job on the Rothmans Aerobatic Team, before I‟d had a chance to visit him and tell him my news – for his smile was as big as his snarl, and he would have been delighted.

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It took me decades to value the gifts that he gave me – not only the handling skills, but more importantly that elusive combination of forethought and suspicion which kept me alive throughout a career at least mildly adventurous. I suppose Cheshire‟s methods would not really be possible in today‟s training scene. Students are no longer supplicants but paying customers – and paying customers do not wish to pay for silence and Polo mints. Nor do they desire an instructor to climb into their mind and sow a seed of healthy cynicism. And glide approaches become awkward to fit into the drumbling stream of circuit traffic at a training airfield…. Well Chesh, I raise a glass to you. That 21 hours 35 minutes was the most valuable flight time I ever had. You taught me airmanship. And to hell with the pissing contest.

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THINGS ARE DIFFERENT HERE Not all aviation is going to be how you expect it

Piarco International Airport, Trinidad. The usual line-up of jets. An Air Canada DC-8 in Bay One, then a couple of 707‟s, an Arawak Convair, a 720 and a VC-10. And bang in the middle of them all, looking like a stray poodle in a Guard‟s parade, sits our little Cherokee 180. It has the undivided attention on everyone on the airport. We are not, at this moment, enjoying the limelight. We are standing in the middle of a bomb-site of aircraft seats, life-jackets, dinghies, maps and Very pistols and doing battle with a six-foot diameter tractor tyre. The idea is that with the aid of a chain winch and four Trinidadians we will bend this tyre double and place it in the four-seat Cherokee from which we have removed the two back seats. The tyre does not wish to be treated thus, and so far is winning. The job is not made any easier by the procession of squall lines which are marching over the airport and depositing their contents with car-wash intensity every ten minutes or so. Our tyre-bending crew is afflicted with the usual West Indian terror of rainwater and lights out for the tall timber every time the first few drops come down – at which point the tyre boings back into infuriating rotundity and fills up with water in the deluge. My flight student and I, suffering from a considerable sense-of-humour-failure, leap for the steamy shelter of the cockpit. The audience in the restaurant and departure lounge hoots with laughter. I peer out of the swimming windscreen and catch a broad grin from the lofty heights of the Avro 748 cockpit next door. Well might he chuckle: it was his airline‟s refusal to carry the urgently-needed tyre to the island of Montserrat that led my student, a Canadian water-project engineer whose work came to a halt when the last tyre gave up the unequal struggle with Montserratian terrain, to come to me saying wouldn‟t it be a jolly idea to whistle off to Trinidad and pick it up ourselves? After a few minutes the downpour ceases. The tropical sun comes out again and everything steams, especially us. The tyre-bending crew creeps out of the woodwork and again dances on the tyre, Canada gets his chain-winch hitched up for the fourth time, and twenty minutes later the starboard boot of Montserrat‟s water scheme is nestling inside the Cherokee like a vast malevolent black sausage. I am moodily

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pondering on what will happen if the winch gives way in flight: will a Cherokee survive an internal attack from a siege catapult? Possibly it won‟t – but without the tyre, Montserrat‟s water project will come to a grinding halt for the next few weeks while a freighter wends its casual way up the island chain. Our little flying school might then be unpopular in the island of Montserrat – and since I am running a one-day-a-week flying school there, I do not wish to become unpopular. Of such things are command decisions made in the Caribbean. And so we take off and turn north over 400 miles of ocean and islands. Overhead the Grenadines, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and finally Montserrat. The weather, for once, is lousy, and we are solid IFR from Martinique onwards. The elements don‟t often cut up rough in the West Indies – but when they do they can cut up very rough. Maps and computers slide about the cockpit in the turbulence. We don‟t break cloud until we are halfway down a selfinvented instrument approach based on the Guadeloupe VOR and one of the Antigua NDB‟s. It is a week before the rubbery smell in the Cherokee finally disappears. If you take on the job of instructing for a small club in the West Indies you must expect that certain things are not going to be quite the way they were at home. When I first arrived on the island of Antigua in January 1972 I was slightly dismayed to find that the Antigua Light Aeroplane Club consisted of one Cessna 150, four or five enthusiasts, and a wooden box which sat beside the runway at Coolidge International Airport and contained two spare tyres and an old spinner. The Antigua Light Aeroplane Club, for their part, regarded my mangy old fur-lined flying jacket as if it was a performing bear I‟d forgotten to mention in my letters. At the last moment it hadn‟t seemed right to go off on a flying job without the dear old thing – but I hadn‟t anticipated just how much of a fool one looks trotting out of a tropical customs shed carrying such an item. Settling in took a little while. The first time I called Coolidge Tower for taxi clearance a West Indian voice said: “See fool, solsabod, an confuh mun arefly intray nin aria”. I said; “Eh?” He said it again. My student took pity on me and translated. “Say your fuel endurance, souls on board, and confirm it‟s a one hour flight in the training area.” Oh, ah. Of course. Just wanted to see what your procedure was like. Harrumph…

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Another thing that took a little getting used to was all the single-engine overwater flying. Any cross-country exercise in the Caribbean involves going to another island. I made it a rule that everyone wore life-jackets and carried dinghy and emergency radio on over-water flights – but I never did completely stop worrying about what happens to a large percentage of real-life fixed-undercarriage ditchings. Even after probably 400 hours of single-engine water crossings I still feel uncomfortable hanging out over the drink 100 miles from land in any direction. The one good aspect was the navigation: even the most clottish student can‟t miss an island 20 miles wide in a 60 mile flight – especially if he can see the blasted thing from 3,000 feet over Antigua. On good days you could sometimes see 100 miles, and it took a really murky period to drag the visibility down to ten. The air law operating in the West Indies also took time to assimilate. It is largely a mixture of British and American rules, with a bit of French thrown in at Guadeloupe and Martinique. In Puerto Rico and the American Virgins it‟s all stateside style, with that nasty little trick they have of mixing Visual Flight Rules and Instrument Flight Rules traffic on the same airways and only maintaining controlled separation between the stuff on instrument flight plans. Thus you may be ambling into San Juan on Route Two from St. Thomas and have a Caribair DC-9, which is in touch with San Juan Centre while you‟re talking to San Juan Radio, squat down on top of you during his let-down. The French have the most comprehensive radio nav-aids and probably provide the best air traffic control – but against that you get snared up in their laws rather easily. They won‟t, for instance, give you a special VFR clearance at night. Not that we minded that: I tried letting down low over the drink one night to see what it would be like for ditching – and promptly forbade single-engine over-water night flights, period. You can‟t see which way the swell is going – and it might be going any which way near some of the islands – and you‟d require a Guardian Angel with an Hons degree in pure luck if you pulled off the fine judgement of height you need for ditching. After I learned to talk to the tower the operation picked up quite fast. “We need a clubhouse”, I said – and a few days later one of the members turned up with a small hut on the back of a lorry. As we watched a Pan-Am forklift scoop it off for us I asked where he‟d got it from. “Well, ah, don‟t worry about that”, he said. “It, ah, might be an idea to knock a few windows in it and paint it a bit quick, though. Y‟know, make it look different…?” So we stopped asking questions and started painting, spontaneously re-naming the outfit the “Antigua Aero Club” when it became obvious that the new sign wasn‟t going to have room on it for the “Light Aeroplane” bit.

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Something I hadn‟t reckoned on was the almost complete absence of bum weather in the Caribbean. When you book; you fly. We were soon doing 30 hours dual a week in the Cessna – so we bought the Cherokee. We used that for tourist sightseeing trips – wreck-hunting round the island crammed to the gunnels with camera-toting Americans – members‟ inter-island flights, and as a back-up trainer. It was particularly active in the latter role since spares can take a long, long, time to filter down to the islands from the States. One of the airlines once lost a replacement engine for the Cessna for nearly a week. The Court Line pilots flying BAC IIIs for Leeward Islands Transport thought this was a tremendous hoot. Until a few days later, when the same airline mislaid one of their Speys… During one of the rare quiet periods someone said: “Let‟s start a club in St. Kitts.”. So we flew over there and more of less stood in the middle of the tarmac and bawled; “Anyone wanna learn ta fly?”. Several people did – and soon I was commuting to work with a 40 minute international flight two days a week, teaching six or seven students at St Kitts Golden Rock Airport. Dragging my hangover across the 60 miles of ocean between Antigua and St. Kitts I kept remembering the 8.35 to Waterloo… This happy little venture came to an abrupt end after about three months when the St Kitts Government suddenly started raising work permit difficulties. I later found out that one of my students had been a leading light in the 1967 uprising there. Caribbean politics can be… well… delicate at times. The Montserrat Government was helpful though: we built up quite a successful “branch club” there. Blackburne Airport on Montserrat is a nice quiet little place without much air traffic. The major hazard is goats on the runway – but if you ask the tower nicely they‟ll always get the resident police to go out and shoot them for you. If you‟re going to the Caribbean for a holiday I can thoroughly recommend that you hire an aircraft from the Antigua Aero Club and get around the islands a bit. They‟re all different, and they‟re all worth seeing. Oh yes – and resist the temptation to swing on the liana vines in the island of Dominica. They might work for Tarzan, but they do give way in real life…

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THE INVISIBLE RUNWAY A fool flies with big mouth and small brain

It is rarely completely black in the Caribbean night. When there is a moon there is romantic silvery light. When there is not, a trillion stars dust the heavens. Sadly, on this moonless night the Caribbean starlight is not enough from where I am sitting. Which is in a Cherokee circling over the tiny island of Montserrat at 6,000 feet wondering where the island‟s f***ing runway is. Montserrat is a roughly pear-shaped island about seven miles wide and ten miles long, dominated at the fat part of the pear in the south by mountains which include an extinct (it is rumoured) volcano. To the west, from my height above the volcano, I can see the fairy lights of the small capital town, Plymouth. On the east coast, however, the black is almost total. Sadly, this is where the runway is. I can see an airport beacon flashing its green light down there in the deeps, and also, from my mile-high perch, make out the pinpoint repeating blue light of – presumably – an ambulance. But otherwise… Otherwise it is awfully black down there. There is very little habitation. And definitely no sign of a runway. Slight problem. No, actually, major problem. In the dark rumbling cockpit I dig out a Lucky Strike and light it. I have been Chief Flying Instructor of the Antigua Aero Club for four whole weeks and am making discoveries all the time. This looks very much like becoming one of them. It began an hour ago. I was driving away from the clubhouse on Coolidge, Antigua airport when a controller burst out of the tower, risked death by leaping in front of the brakeless heap I loosely described as a car, dashed round to my window in fine ignorance of his near-extinction, and said: “Hey, Brian, we need an urgent medivac from Montserrat. Could yo‟ do it?” The sky was darkening into night. But an urgent medivac is an urgent medivac. “Sure”, I said. “You handle the flight plan and Immigration for me and I‟ll go right now”. “Will do”. He looked at me in the gathering twilight; “Yo‟ sure „bout this, Brian? Yo‟ sure this OK?”

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“Sure I‟m sure”. “Okay. Yo‟ stay on our frequency alla time. Montserrat not manned now”. In my ignorance this rang no bells. I whirled the rust-bucket around and had the Cherokee fired up a few minutes later. “Victor Papa Lima Alpha Mike taxi, outbound Montserrat”. “Alpha Mike clear taxi, yo‟ flight plan filed. Return plan also. Yo‟ real sure about this, Suh…?” Shortly after that I was growling up into the now full-night sky, turning towards the island of Montserrat, 20 minutes away. Sitting over Montserrat now, I think I can see where I might just have missed a couple of clues around about there. And a couple more after take-off. The first was from a Seagreen DC3 drumming into Antigua who‟d heard my outbound exchanges with Coolidge. “Alpha Mike, Seagreen 42… yo‟ going to Montserrat, Sir?” “Affirmative”. “Well….okay. Seeya”. Hmmm. Slightly odd. Then the radio spoke again. “Alpha Mike, Leeward Islands 332, yo‟ goin‟ into Montserrat, confirm?” “Affirm”. “Well…” a short pause… “Yo‟ take care, then”. Odd again, that…. Not so odd now, as I circle over the charcoal black below. A nasty suspicion is beginning to form in my mind. I press the transmit button. “Ah, Coolidge, Alpha Mike, confirm Montserrat does have runway lights?” “Negative, Alpha Mike. No runway lights. Din‟ yo‟ know that? “ “Ah….” Well of course I didn‟t bloody know that. In my whole month in the West Indies I have flown into Montserrat exactly once, in bright sunlight, and it never entered my head that the bloody place might not have bloody runway lights… So I am staring down into this black coal-hole, having caused the ambulance to drive across the waist of the island from the hospital in the capital town of Plymouth – a good 25-minute threnody of potholes and mountain bends not calculated to improve the condition of any critical patient – and am stuck with it. Both my humanity and pride taste of ashes. I didn‟t know Montserrat didn‟t have lights – but I should have known… The problem falls into two categories. The first just might be possible of solution. The second… the second I will think about if I can solve the first.

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“Coolidge, Alpha Mike… Do you have any contact with the ambulance on Montserrat?” “Negative. But we have landline with de hospital”. Great. The hospital 25 minutes away across those mountain roads… “Ask them if they can send another vehicle to the airfield”. “Standby, Alpha Mike”. A long pause. “Alpha Mike, dey got no other vehicle. Why yo‟ ask?” I sit there in my droning circle and reflect briefly on the beatific innocence of certain controllers. Do they think I‟m going to switch on X-ray eyes, or what? “Coolidge, I need the ambulance at the threshold end of the runway and another vehicle at the far end, both facing each other with their headlights on. Then I will attempt a landing”. “Oh, man. Standby”. There is a long pause during which I ask myself just how bloody stupid I am being. “Alpha Mike, Coolidge. De hospital rent a taxi. De driver hurrying urgent. Dey write down the instructions fo‟ him”. Oh, good. A West Indian taxi. That‟s all right then. If the Air Registration Board in charge of British Caribbean aviation ever get wind of this they‟ll be perfectly relaxed about it, won‟t they… Well, that‟s the good side considered. The secondary good side is that I am fat with fuel. Now, while the taxi‟s coming, let‟s think some more about the not-so-good side… The slightly awkward bit is the geography of Montserrat, which is far from flat. In fact, much of Montserrat is an extinct volcano, and in the south the only flat bit is where they have laid their not over-long runway. It is coastal so the sea almost laps one side. So don‟t run off there. But that isn‟t the real problem. Place a pencil on the table and put your fists at each end of it and you have the surrounding topography. There is a mountain spang in the way on finals, and another spang in the way on climb-out. Neither are hideously close, but close enough to oblige all aircraft to make a curving approach, since a straight-in would involve drilling through several hundred feet of rock. Not a problem – by day, when you can see the mountains. A bit of a problem by night when you know the unlit mountains are there but are far from sure where there is …. So… Plan A. If the taxi arrives and if I can see its lights from up here then I will fly out east over the sea, circle down to 500 feet indicated, then finally descend towards the line of the

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two vehicles – if I can still see them adequately – angled off by 30 degrees. By this means I must miss the mountain on approach. (Mustn‟t I…?) Then as I pass over the ambulance at very low level I will crank left and hopefully get sighted on the runway while hauling round to point at my second approach-aid, the taxi… Okay, that‟s Plan A. Plan B – well, there is no plan B, except that if A goes wrong, cram on full power and execute the steepest instrument climbing turn I can manage until either I make it back out to sea or there is a brief fireball on the second mountain. I wriggle in my seat and feel sweat sliding down my face. Down in the abyss a new white light crawls up alongside the flashing blue one. The taxi. After a moment the ambulance headlights come on and the two sets move off, one following the other. After a short distance they split 180 degrees – they‟ve gone down the taxiway and separated, and are now heading for the runway ends. Oh shit! My legs have suddenly developed mysterious tremors. I suppose I can still call Antigua and chicken out, but my mouth is too dry. You thought of it, so now live it… Plan A, to my own utter astonishment, actually works. In the last throes of my approach – more like an attack-run – on the ambulance I find myself in a steep powered side-slip to keep the thing in sight as long as possible – and then, miracle of miracles, the grey line of the runway suddenly becomes visible in his headlights. I muscle the Cherokee round to point at the taxi at the far end, see the runway now in my own landing light, and the world snaps into place. Chop the throttle… and the wheels thump inelegantly onto the concrete. I taxi back, shut down, and climb out into the hot night. While the ambulance staff load up the medivac I sink down onto the grape-grass beside the runway and try to still the thumping of my heart while the night-crickets chirrup around me. The take-off will be easy enough – but how could I have talked myself into that approach? How could I have been that stupidly, thoughtlessly reckless in an aeroplane…? Some 40 years have passed since that night. In the intervening span I have often pondered on the thin line between determination and stupidity. Was I driven by the plight of that critical patient who was carted out to the aerodrome at my behest and would have to return to probable death if I failed? Or was there – horrible thought – an element of hubris? On the lines of having said I‟d do it, I‟d bloody do it… That night taught me to fly an aeroplane with my tiny brain, not with my big mouth. As a matter of record, the patient died two days later.

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THE QUIET AMERICAN To all aviators come lessons in humility

The rapid tropical dusk is falling. Crickets and tree-frogs chirrup and whistle as I padlock the tiny wooden hut grandly titled the ANTIGUA AERO CLUB. There is a gentle cough in the trilling gloom. I close my hand round the Smith and Wesson in my pocket – de rigueur in this time and place – and snap; “Yes?” “Oh… Sir, I‟m sorry to trouble you, but I‟d really like to rent an airplane if I can”. Squinting into the twilight I find he is a small-ish, round-ish, sixty-ish American. No resemblance to the local Mafia, with whom I‟ve had the odd slight contretemps just recently. I release the gun, and with a flourish re-open the door of the Antigua Aero Club. Coral grit blows in. The ever-present easterly Trade Wind has suddenly wound up into a spiral and elected to blow most firmly from the south-south-east. “We will be most happy to hire you our Cherokee. I will just have to check you out…” He blinks. “Oh Sir, I do want a serious check-ride. I haven‟t flown…” he hesitates… “er, a Cherokee for a long time”. A trifle odd, that sounds. But whatever… “Okay”. I flip open the diary. “How about Monday at 1530?” “Sir, I wondered if we might do it tonight?” “Tonight?” “Sir, I know it may not be convenient, but I kinda wanted to use the airplane tomorrow if that is possible in your schedule. So I wondered if we could fly a checkride now…” The grit rustles on the clubhouse steps. There are twin hills cuddling the threshold of Antigua‟s easterly runway, and the same wind which is blowing the coral is also, I know, curling over those hills in a distinctly unfriendly manner, creating most interesting turbulence over the threshold as a fortissimo to the 20 knot almost 90 degree cross-wind. And this tubby American wants a check-out in this at night… On the other hand, if he „kinda wants to use the airplane tomorrow‟ then this is a good thing business-wise. I know without looking that the Cherokee is lamentably free of commitments for tomorrow.

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I am tired. I say; “Okay, how about we fly some circuits now, and we‟ll go over the paperwork later, over a beer?” “Circ…? Ah, yeah”. A small smile. “D‟you know I haven‟t heard the expression „circuits and bumps‟ for maybe 20 years – we call it „flying the pattern‟. And yes Sir, that will be fine by me”. It is only sort-of-fine by me. I‟ve by now got him earmarked as probably an airline pilot, and on the evidence of my recent experience most airline pilots have brains located 15 feet above their heads, because that is where they generally try to land the aeroplanes in my charge, sometimes with the most attention-grabbing results. Doubtless if I were to try landing their machines from their lofty perches I‟d reverse the error and drive straight into the ground before even thinking of starting the landing flare – but just recently I‟ve rather had my fill of rescuing stall-ins from arrogant First Officers swaggering along for a „quick check ride‟, and then becoming truculent when I announce that a bit more dual is going to be required. Mostly they stalk off in a huff accompanied by the gorgeous airline hostess they‟d hoped to impress and I much lusted after. This guy… maybe seems different. We will see. It is now fully dark. In the hot wind we walk out to the Cherokee, rocking slightly against its tie-downs. My new companion, whose name is Miguel, says; “Sir, would you conduct the walk-round so I can follow you, please?” I hesitate while the wind thrums and the crickets chirrup. He, this Miguel, ought to do the pre-flight inspection while I watch him – but it‟s late, I‟m tired, and if he genuinely wants to refresh himself on type… I switch on my torch and talk my way – patter, we call it – through the walk-round. We get in. “Sir, would you mind doing the start-up and taxi? I‟d appreciate just taking it in”. I look at him a bit sideways. He just sits there, quiet and impassive. I fire up, call for taxi to the holding point, do the run-up and pre-take-off checks – complete with patter – and get take-off clearance. “Okay, you have control”. “Sir, would you mind doing the first take-off? So I can follow you?” I glare at him – completely lost in the darkness, of course. But whatever… I take off. Antigua‟s runway ends in the sea so any night take-off requires an abrupt transfer to instruments on breaking ground. I so fly on the dials, thumping up through the turbulence. As we climb through 500 feet I say; “You have control”. Miguel says; “Sir, would you take it to downwind please, so I may observe?” I take it to downwind.

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“You have control”. “Sir, would you mind taking it round the pattern to final?” I say nothing. Fly down base leg, set up the descent, turn on to final approach, set off the considerable wind-drift, start to wrestle with the turbulence roiling over the hills… “Sir, would you do this first landing, please?” Ohferchrissake… I rattle on down through the bumps and the cross-wind – now very much near-limits – kick off the wind-drift, and plunk the Cherokee down in a workman-like manner. The landing roll slows… “YOU have control”. “Sir, would you mind doing the take-off?” Now I am thoroughly irritated and not a little suspicious. I power-up and take off. Passing 200 feet in the climb, still in the turbulence zone with the needles all jumping, I say loudly; “YOU HAVE CONTROL, MIGUEL!” Hold my hands up for emphasis, but on a hairspring to grab it all back when this Miguel turns out to be a freak… Miguel says quietly; “I have control”. We instantly drive off a rutted cart-track onto a motorway. It takes me seconds to realise what has happened. It isn‟t that the turbulence is gone – but suddenly we are riding it, not fighting it. The difference is vast. We do not turn crosswind and then downwind. We flow cross-wind and downwind. Out of the low-level turbulence the Cherokee suddenly becomes a sitting-room which has ground-lights peacefully revolving under it for our scenic enjoyment. When we level the altimeter needle splits the 8 meaning 800 feet and stays pinned there. I glance across at the silent figure of Miguel. He is slumped in the left seat, totally relaxed, holding the yoke with just the thumb and second finger of his left hand. He does not appear to glance at the altimeter. In the dim cockpit lighting his eyes seem half-closed. I feel an eerie echo of sitting beside Juan Manuel Fangio while he drove a car… Halfway down the downwind leg I reach up and close the throttle. Not very fair, of course, but… “Miguel, engine failure” “Okay…” We do not seem to formally adopt the glide, now do we turn onto a formal baseleg at 90 degress to final approach – we simply flow from downwind to finals. For a while I think Miguel hasn‟t used flaps but when I touch the lever just before landing I find we have full flap – I just hadn‟t felt him putting them down.

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We flow through the grinding turbulence – which, mysteriously, hardly seems to be there any more since my last circuit, despite the Tower reporting a wind increase – and touch-down, to my envious chagrin, so gently that the tyres don‟t even go squip. It is the performance of a virtuoso. My own demonstration has palled firmly into the category of a labourer pushing a wheelbarrow over a ploughed field. I swallow. I say: “Miguel, you‟re checked”. He gently opens the throttle. He says: “Sir, I‟m not comfortable yet. D‟you mind if we shoot a coupla more patterns…?” We shoot a coupla more patterns. I just sit there in the night and watch Piper‟s unlovely assembly of aluminium become a genuine bird of the air – smooth, assured, and amazingly nimble. On his last circuit – at night, in humping turbulence – Miguel elects to execute the steepest slipping turn I have ever seen, flow it out at the last moment, and flow onto the runway such that wheels meet tarmac – again without a sound – in the exact centre of the white-faced numbers. With no apparent effort. Later, over a beer, I look at Miguel‟s documents. His logbook is an unfamiliar format to me. I say; “Hey, Miguel, you‟ve got more than 6,000 hours!” He coughs quietly and attends to his glass. I look at the logbook again. It begins to take form. “Miguel… this 6,000 hours is multi-engine jet, right?” “That‟s so, Sir”. “Then this column – this is multi-piston, yes? Another 12,000 hours?” “That‟s so. Means little, Sir”. “Miguel…” I am still looking at the book. “Miguel, if I read this aright, there‟s also another 5,000 hours single-engine….” “Oh…” He waves a fly off his beer. “I learned on Yennies and then there were the fighters…” This man learned to fly on Curtis Jennies, then flew wartime fighters, then went into the airlines… I look some more and swallow. “Miguel, you‟ve flown 23,000 hours!” “Ah, yeah, somewhere about that, Sir”. “And you wanted a serious check-out in a Cherokee?” “Well Sir, fact is I cain‟t actually remember whether I‟ve flown a Cherokee before or not. Probably have, I guess, but…” I take a long swallow. Then I say; “Miguel, you take our Cherokee whenever you want. And Sir, I‟d be most deeply grateful if you‟d teach me how to fly it” He did. He most kindly did, for a couple of short hours. Perhaps a little tiny bit of it might even have rubbed off onto my humbled flying soul. It would be nice to imagine so.

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TEACH LEARNS A LESSON The problem of a not-crosswind

Comparatively few things in the creation of a pilot are actually hilarious. Okay, the instructor will make the odd crack, and the student – if he or she has any sense – will endanger a rib laughing regardless of the actual comedy of same. But by and large learning to fly is more a matter of deep inner satisfaction than high mirth. On this afternoon nearly 40 years ago I am suppressing mirth, keeping my mouth shut, and most studiously looking everywhere except where we are actually going. Beside me my student – a Canadian civil engineer by the name of Malcolm and one of the best students I ever had – is distinctly uncomfortable. My name for Malcolm is Canada. He calls me Teach. And Canada has small beads of sweat running down his temples. Why so? Well, no obvious reason apart from the ever-present tropical heat. We are on a five-mile straight-in final approach to Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, and the circumstances are greatly benign. The weather is Caribbean-perfect and the wind straight down the runway, as it almost always is at Piarco. Canada is clearly aware that something is awry but can‟t quite decide what. Okay, we are a bit high and he hasn‟t realised that yet…. But that is as nothing compared to his heading problems. At the start of the approach Canada does confidently point the Cherokee‟s nose twenty degrees to the left of the runway to counter the crosswind. Whereupon we promptly drift off to the left. Canada frowns. I do my best to look innocent. After a few moments Canada decides the error must be the wrong way and eases the Cherokee round to point 20 degrees to the right… As we accordingly drift off to the right I find an absorbing interest in the scenery passing below. At about three miles out it finally occurs to Canada to try the outlandish experiment of actually pointing the aeroplane at the runway. Where of course it obediently stays pointed….. A phenomena which Canada has never encountered before. Indeed, nor has he ever encountered a five-mile straight-in approach in his entire flying career, which to date consists of about 15 hours dual and one hour solo. For I have been teaching Canada to fly at a small aerodrome called Blackburne on the West Indian island of Montserrat. And Blackburne has some – well, interesting

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features. One of which is that a five mile straight-in would involve flying through a small mountain. And another of which is….. Well, I personally blame a man called Frank Delisle. If the legend has any truth in it. We‟ll come to the legend in a moment. Firstly, visualise Montserrat. A small, pear-shaped Caribbean island which rejoices (or frequently fails to rejoice) in its increasingly rare status as a BOT – the rather unfortunate bureaucratic acronym for a British Overseas Territory. Montserrat is very mountainous indeed, dominated by the Soufriere Hills at the southern end of the pear, which are themselves peaked by Mont Soufriere, an extinct (it says here) volcano towering to 3,000 ft above sea level. It is nearly impossible to find any part of the island flat enough for even an eensy-teensy airport. In the late 1950‟s there was a small strip near the capital town of Plymouth on the western coast at the foot of the Soufriere Hills… Which was a problem. The West Indies have a prevailing easterly trade wind. And if you have a prevailing easterly hitting a 3,000 foot mountain it is not the brightest idea in the world to locate an airfield on the western – downwind – side of the mountain, where all the downdrafts, rotors and general turbulence vent their spleen. You will – and Montserrat did – have accidents. The proper place for an airport is on the windward side, where there is a smooth sea-tracking wind. If you can find anywhere flat enough to put it. Enter Frank Delisle. Frank founded Leeward Islands Air Transport (LIAT) in 1956, out of Montserrat. Frank was a polymath. While starting LIAT – which grew into one of the biggest airlines in the Caribbean – he also founded a radio station. And also negotiated with the ARB – the British Air Registration Board – for a new airport on Montserrat. He had found this new site on a flat(ish) coral beach on the eastern side of the island… The ARB travelled up from their base in Trinidad to look at it. “No”, they said. “The only possible layout here would be a runway 15 / 33, and the prevailing wind is 090. Easterly. A 60 degree crosswind. Too much”. “No, there isn‟t”, said Frank. “Because here the prevailing wind is south-easterly, from about 130…” “How can that be?” said the ARB. “All the wind in the Caribbean is easterly”. “Must be a local effect – maybe topographical”, said Frank, innocently staring out over an ocean most distinctly devoid of any topographical features whatsoever for at least 4,000 miles.

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The ARB shook their heads. Frank persisted. Eventually the ARB said; “Look – we‟ll put a recording anemometer on the site for a year, and see what the wind really does. That make you happy?” Which brings us to the legend. Understand I cannot vouch for this legend. I knew Frank fairly well in the 1970‟s but when I asked about it I got a piercing glare down his eagle‟s-beak of a nose and an abrupt change of subject. But legend says that the day after the recording anemometer was installed, one F. Delisle did land a LIAT Twin Otter on the beach in a flurry of coral dust, shin up the anemometer pole, un-bolt the wind-vane from the top of same, turn it round by three splines, and bolt it back up again. Then 360 days later did the same thing again and bolted the vane back into its original position… And so Montserrat got its small but shiny new airport. Complete with a minimountain on the extended centre-line to runway 15 to ensure that all approaches were gently curving, and another on climb-out so that departures were similarly bending. Plus of course a more or less permanent 60 degree crosswind from the left. On this runway Canada and my other Montserrat students learned to fly. I instructed at Montserrat one day a week. There came a day when I was expecting to send Canada solo but the wind was a solid 15 knots smack across the runway. The following week it was 18 knots across. The third week it was 20+ knots across but I was running out of excuses. This was a student who could use a combination of crab and wing-down in a 20 knot crosswind and top-off the performance off with a competent one-wheel-into-wind touchdown right on the numbers. “Okay, Canada. Pull into the taxiway and let me out. You‟re off solo”. As I watched him line up one half of me said; „You had to send him off or start destroying his confidence‟. The other half said; „Fine and dandy, Buster, but how‟re you gonna tell the accident investigation that you sent off a first solo with a 20 knot wind straight across…‟ And I thought – thanks, Frank Delisle. Malcolm was, of course, fine. What would have been a howling crosswind to any other student was perfectly normal to him – he‟d never landed in anything other than a howling crosswind. Which is why his weaving approach to Piarco this afternoon is causing me such inner mirth. I have seen plenty of students have trouble with crosswinds – but this is the first time I‟ve seen a guy having trouble with a not crosswind.

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Canada arrives over the threshold high, and then proceeds – this student who can put down on a short runway in a strong crosswind off a curving approach – to try landing the Cherokee 10 feet above Piarco‟s huge expanse of tarmac. “I have control…” As we taxi in I can feel Canada‟s eyes on me. Slightly hurt. As well he might be. My performance as an instructor over the last ten minutes has been non-existent. Over a beer Canada comes out with it. “You didn‟t help me…” “Nope. It wasn‟t your flight”. Which it wasn‟t, because Malcolm‟s company needed something collecting from Trinidad and were picking up the bill as a charter. “You had a freebie navigation lesson getting us all the way down here from Montserrat, and you did well. You‟ll have another freebie going back, then later we‟ll do crosscountries for real and you‟ll have a head start. But the last part of today‟s flight wasn‟t for you. It was for me”. “For you…?” “For me. I wanted to see how you‟d react. I wanted to learn”. Canada frowns: “You? Learn? And what did you learn, Teach?” “I learned – or re-learned – that every pilot‟s tainted by the place he learned to fly. With the start you‟ve had you won‟t have a problem landing anywhere in the world. Today you flew your first-ever approach without a crosswind – which was just plain funny. You then misread the height perspective because your brain tried to shrink the big runway to what you were used to seeing – and therefore you flared out for the landing too high. And didn‟t recognise it. Those things we can rectify in an hour. But I re-learned that nobody‟s training is ever going to be complete until they‟ve been to a variety of aerodromes. So you‟ve helped my future students. Prost, Canada”. Malcolm swirls his glass, still looking rumpled. Then he slowly smiles and raises it. “Prost, Teach”. And because he too knows the legend, he raises it again. “Prost, Frank Delisle”.

Frank Delisle was a true father of civil aviation in the Caribbean. He died aged 83 in 2002 just hours after being knighted Sir Frank Delisle. Since then the island of Montserrat, too, has known its tribulations The word Soufriere literally means sulphur. It is frequently used in the naming of volcanoes. In 1995 the Montserrat Mont Soufriere suddenly woke up from its long sleep and proved itself to be not in the least extinct. The rapid series of eruptions effectively obliterated the southern half of the island, and were followed by others over the years. To this day the southern half of the island – which means the majority of it – remains an exclusion zone. Nobody is convinced Mt Soufriere isn‟t going to do it again…

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The erstwhile capital, Plymouth, (where the hospital in a previous story was) is now deserted under lava like a latter-day Pompeii. Blackburne aerodrome was likewise obliterated in under two minutes. One threshold of the old runway is still left sticking out weirdly from under a huge solidified lava flow. At the time of writing a new (and very short) airport is being constructed at the north end of the island.

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FIKI? FORGET IT How far do you trust one engine?

I am an old pelican. I admit it. And today I read that the newly re-equipped singleengine Cirrus SR22 is now available with a FIKI clearance – Flight Into Known Icing conditions. It has a de-icing system adequate to gain Airworthiness Certification. Well… whacko. But… There are times when I think Airworthiness Authorities are permanently out to lunch. I wouldn‟t fly the thing into known icing without being paid danger money. A lot of danger money. But not for the reason you might think. Not at all. For that, we need to go back awhile. To a Caribbean night. A long, long time ago. Caribbean nights are normally quite magical. Placid, silky-smooth and with a spread of stars to take a flying man‟s breath away. This night, however, is much out of kilter. Hurricane season is upon us, and although there are no hurricanes approaching right now the air-mass can still become truculent. For one thing there is a most unusual high overcast blotting out the stars, and for another storm clouds are brooding. Storm clouds are not unusual at this time of year – but in combination with the overcast and a certain swinging of the trade wind? Hurricane a‟coming…? On the island of St Kitts I walk out to the Cherokee. The black night is filled with the usual chirruping and zinging. Inside me a little small voice says; “Hey, look at the sky. You sure you should be doing this…?” I say to the little small voice; “Ha!” I am young and proud. I am also the Chief Flying Instructor of a small Caribbean flying school. I some time ago decreed that no club member shall fly a single engine aeroplane over-water at night because in the event of engine failure the chances of surviving a night-time ditching are extremely remote and any prospect of rescue if you did happen to rise to the surface – non-existent. The only person who can defy this edict is me, and although I would deny it vigorously there is a certain savage satisfaction in the God-like arrogance of saying; „Do what I say, not what I do!‟ Oh, I am such an important person to the life-pulse of this business endeavour that I have to be back in Antigua tonight. And I am the Chief

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Instructor who can do what the hell he likes. And I have a shiny new instrument rating… Twenty minutes later I am a very much smaller man. For the Gods are showing me how they will urinate on a foolish person‟s pride. Very literally, and with Olympian disdain. I have with confidence climbed up on instruments into the black night. The Gods have chuckled uncaringly and moved a seriously ambitious tropical cu-nim into my path. Which I had no way of seeing… I have never before flown into a tropical cumulo-nimbus. The result is appalling. Suddenly the already black night is complete and utter ebony. Suddenly a celestial pugilist punches the Cherokee in the guts. Suddenly maps and pencils fly around the cockpit in the turbulence – turbulence the like of which I have never known, an unending series of massive impacts which would make me worry for the wings if I wasn‟t so pre-occupied with the totally chaotic instruments – or what‟s left of the instruments, since what we called back then the Artificial Horizon has toppled at the first wallop. Given 2,000 ft excursions in updrafts and downdrafts I am at something like 6,000 feet above mid-ocean but in danger of drowning anyway, because rain thunders on the aeroplane like a cataract, a roaring, solid wall of water which spurts in through the door-seals and all but drowns out the drone of the engine. All but. But not entirely. Because at this point the engine goes Cough. And I find I can hear that with the most horrible clarity. It goes „Cough‟, and winds down. It then picks up, running roughly, goes „Cough‟ again, dies for a few seconds, picks up, and commences to run in spasmodic jerks like a very old farm tractor. At this point I wish to tell you that I think; „Oh, bother‟, and calmly run through a checklist. I wish I could say that – but sadly it is not true. What actually happens in this thunderous night is that I think „F***ING HELL!‟, and my hands fly around the cockpit in a paroxysm of pure terror. Mixture – full rich. Boost pump – on. Tank – change from left to right. Magnetos – switch to right, switch to left, back to both. No change. Cough. Spasmodic power. Cough… another wham of turbulence… Suddenly two things happen at once. The cloud spits me out like an unwanted pip and I can see the lights of Antigua 30 miles away over the black ocean. And the engine keeps coughing. We – the Cherokee and I – are losing height. The lights of Antigua might as well be on the moon. I am not going to get there. My clothes are wet from the rain that has come in. No matter – they are about to get a lot wetter. Coughing down through 4,000 feet I try calling Antigua but either

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they‟ve gone home or the massive cu-nim behind me is swallowing all radio signals. Not that they could do anything for me anyway, but it would be nice to say something. Such as goodbye. 3,000 feet. In the stark night my hands go through the rote again, now strangely languid in the minutes before probable death. Fuel tank – changed again. Boost pump – confirmed on. Mixture; confirmed full rich. Cough. Power for a few moments. Cough, backfire, cough…. 2,000 feet. Magnetos checked again – no difference. Carburettor heat to hot…. And the engine coughs mightily one last time, splutters, clears its throat, and settles to normal running, a bit down on power. And a fool makes Antigua. Lands most carefully, and later over a serious communion with a rum bottle thinks about carburettor ice. It can‟t have been carb ice, surely, not with an Outside Air Temperature of + 27 C,,,? And in the morning it comes to pass that indeed it was not carb ice. The sheer impact of the rain in the tropical cu-nim stripped the propeller of paint and turned the air filter element into papier-mâché. Which became more or less airflow-opaque and then commenced to break up and sporadically spit lumps into the carburettor air intake. Selecting Hot Air, which bypasses the filter, gave the engine oxygen again and thereby allowed one very frightened person to place his wheels on the ground, taxi into his parking-place, shut down, and then think seriously – unsuccessfully, but seriously – about taking up religion. Yes – I should have thought about carb heat before I did. Yes – I taught all my students to use carb heat before they throttled back before landing, because they wouldn‟t always be flying in the Caribbean. Yes – I was an idiot. That was a long time ago. I may or may not be slightly less of an idiot now. But I have never forgotten the absolute blood-curdling horror of that engine coughing in the black, black slamming night. With certain death below. And that… And that is why I ain‟t never gonna have nothing to do with Flight Into Known Icing in a single-engined aeroplane. It isn‟t the icing itself that worries me so much – if the FAA have cleared the system I presume it works – but the whole concept of voluntarily putting yourself into such an environment whilst sitting behind one single engine.

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There are two conditions which have to be fulfilled before airframe icing can occur – oh, accrete. You have to have visible moisture – rain or cloud – and below-freezing temperature. This can happen in freezing rain in visual conditions below cloud – or, far more often, within cloud. And what the f*** are you doing, droning along in freezing clouds, possibly over the Alps, possibly at night, possibly over-ocean – on one engine? Okay, you might quote statistics. You might say – and perhaps with some spurious accuracy if you look at certain statistics – that the instances of cruise-flight failure of a modern piston aero-engine are extremely rare. 1.3 in every 100,000 flying hours, or some such. If you look at certain statistics. Of course it does kinda depend on who‟s producing the statistics. Civil aviation authorities worldwide are remarkably reticent on this issue because they know fullwell they have incomplete data. So most of the statistics come from engine manufacturers… Me? I‟ve logged about 7,000 hours, and in my flying lifetime I‟ve had five catastrophic engine failures – „catastrophic‟ being where the engine suddenly becomes stilled forever, leaving you to a brief and somewhat sweaty lesson as a selftaught glider pilot. I have also had six or seven partial engine failures which have caused me to divert hurriedly to the nearest aerodrome. And there to take a swift and surreptitious glance at the condition of my underpants. This adds up to an engine incident about every 600 flying hours. Not quite the same as 1.3 in 100,000… Okay, I realise my experience may not be entirely typical. If you fly veteran aeroplanes for a while and then spend a quarter-century thrashing aerobatic engines – then yes, the chances are the Gods are going to take a nip at your heels every now and then just to make sure you‟re paying attention. And yes, I‟d certainly have to say that once we could afford nice new aeroplanes on a fairly regular basis the puckerincidence diminished very considerably. Nonetheless, a lifetime average of an engine incident every 600 hours remains just that. And an engine problem at 50 feet inverted – which some people seem to feel might be hazardous – I can deal with. (Well, probably). An engine problem – particularly one which has an interesting crunch associated with it – at 5,000 feet in an ice-laden cloud with an unknown base over ocean or mountains, possibly at night…? Nah. Forget it.

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So you won‟t get me up in one of them new-fangled things. FIKI or no FIKI. Not on one engine, you won‟t. Because I‟ve never forgotten that Caribbean night…

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PREACHER MAN AND THE COWBOY Aeroplanes and idiocy making a nervous mixture There are some aeropla… no, no, wait. I was about to use the word „aeroplanes‟. Let me re-phrase that. There are some historical ruins which you catch a glimpse of and then stop in your tracks to stare at. This ruin looks like an artwork called „Effigy of Plane‟‟ thrown together by one of these new-fangled modern sculptors during a big session on the LSD. But it wasn‟t here on this hot tropical apron on the American Virgin Island of St Croix this morning – which suggests the almost incredible conclusion that it must have actually flown here. It is a Cessna 140 – the taildragger which preceded the 150. American registered. I walk round it, consciously trying not to gawp. Both wingtip fairings are missing, and the ends of the wings have been extensively repaired with what looks suspiciously like cut up baked-bean cans hand shaped and pop-riveted in place. So does the fuselage area around the undercarriage mounts. The engine cowlings are not present, and the little Continental C90 engine has had its sump removed and is dripping oil disconsolately into a tin tray. The fuselage right back to the tail is dripping likewise onto the concrete apron. While I am so gawping a lanky figure in a purple shirt topped off with a dog-collar emerges from the hangar, opens the 140‟s door, and grabs a small bag. He notices me and says; “Good day, Brother. And how are you, this fine day?” I do my best, probably unsuccessfully, to stop gawping. The face above the dogcollar is finally chiselled, deeply tanned, and sporting a short squared-off beard. His eyes are blue and piercing. He looks rather like a young Abraham Lincoln. “Oh, er, I‟m fine”. I gesture vaguely at the !40. “Is this your, er, aircraft?” “Why yes, my Son, it surely is. Mine and the Lord‟s”. He pats the top of the fuselage. “This is Mary, and we‟ve been together for two years, spreading the Gospel. She has been anointed by the Lord as the bearer of His Message”. Oh no she hasn‟t. She‟s been anointed by W100 aero-engine lubricant as the bearer of a massive oil leak. Trying to think of something to say, I stammer; “T-two years, Sir. Have you been looking after… Mary… yourself?” “Don‟t call me Sir, my Son. Father is just fine. And no I haven‟t. The Lord did not see fit to equip me with mechanical skills. But the Lord will always provide, and He

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has provided me with a faithful friend, Mr Coburn, who knows about these things”. He gestures at a nearby Piper Pawnee crop-duster. “That‟s Mr Coburn‟s airplane right there. He spreads the Gospel but in a kind of different way, by spraying purity on the Lord‟s good grain and fruit so that His Children might eat of plenty”. He quite obviously means every word of it. And in fact I have a nasty feeling I can see a gospel-spreading gleam coming into those gimlet eyes right at this moment. I mumble something meaningless and start to edge away. “Fly with the Lord, my Son!” I sidle over and glance at the Pawnee. The very – how shall I say it – lived-in Pawnee. Sun-crazed paint, sun-starred windscreen, battered wing leading edges, stained concrete under the engine cowling. In the cockpit the spray-lever worn shiny with use, various sightless holes in the instrument panel, and on the seat what looks like an electric pump with pipes running from it, one of which leads out of the (nonexistent) left cockpit window and into the hopper loading hatch, which can‟t fully close because of it but is held down by a rubber bungee cord. “Ah see you met the Preacher Man, fella”. I turn. He is squatting in the hot sun by the hangar door. He could have stepped out of a Western. Cowboy boots, hundred-mile Texas prairie stare, western drawl, Stetson – the lot. On one side of him is a welding set, on the other an incredibly wrinkled and bean-canned Cessna 140 chin-cowling, and In between his knees a sort of modern-art metal urn with a beard on one side. “Uh, yes. You‟d be Mr… Coburn?” “That‟s me. Randy Coburn. People call me Cowboy. Pleased to meetcha”. His name would be Randy, of course. And he would be known as Cowboy, of course. I offer my pack of Lucky Strikes and search my brain for the rarely-used tact bone. “Ah… your Preacher Man seems something of a character…” “You better believe that, fella. That is one hell-fire and brimstone preacher. He‟s been a-missionary-ising in Venezuela. Talks up a storm, but he don‟t take no whisky nor no free-food coupons along, so I guess he ain‟t had one hell of a lot of converts. Don‟t seem to hold him up none, though”. “And he gets around in that 140?” “Ye-ah. Kinda. That‟s how I met him – I been spraying in Venezuela since „Nam. Only thing is, Preacher Man‟s better at preachin‟ than he is at flyin‟. He says he feels closer to God when he‟s up there. Plain fact is, he‟s closer to God when he‟s landin‟”.

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I search for something to say which won‟t get me into a prairie gun-fight. “It does look sort of… ageing”. “Waal, it kinda aged quite a lot in about 10 seconds. Preacher Man suddenly finds hisself real low on gas one day. He‟s discussin‟ the matter with the Lord when he sees an oil refinery, so he puts down on the entrance road. But what the Lord ain‟t told him about is a pipe gully runnin‟ across the road, which catches them little-bitty wheels, bends the landing gear back, and sends ole Mary tippity-up on her nose and skatin‟ on down the road, with her wingtips banging on the ground first one side an‟ then the other. Sure didn‟t do ol‟ Mary no good a-tall”. “So you…?” He spreads his hands in a sort of git-along-little-dawgies gesture. “Well, Preacher Man‟s now in a kinda fix. He ain‟t got no money – which he would have had if he‟d been haulin‟ liquor instead of bibles – and he sure ain‟t got no insurance. I‟d just finished my sprayin‟ contract, an‟ I‟m an A&P [US Federal Aircraft Administration – FAA – Airframe and Propulsion engineer‟s licence – BL] so I kinda helped him out. Guess I felt sorry for him. Liked him for his sass. Fixed up the landing gear mounts, fixed up the skins, and here we are. Just gotta get this sump back on”. I suddenly realise that the metal urn between his knees is a C90 engine oil sump, shaped a bit like a small globe with the top cut off and topped with a flange by which it is bolted to the bottom of the crankcase. Not pretty, but perfectly effective. Except that this one is never going to be either effective or perfect again because the „beard‟ is the biggest mass of weld I have ever seen on a fairly small object. He catches my glance. “Yeah, well, this turns out to be the biggest problem. As the airplane slides down the road the nose-cowl kinda backs up into the sump an‟ it cracks a ways around the flange. Ah welded it up, but it ain‟t sorta taken. I‟ve hadta re-weld it twice more since we started flyin‟ up the islands. The maintenance outfits don‟ wanna know, but Preacher Man talks „em into lending me welding gear provided I‟m outside their hangar an‟ they don‟t look”. I try to stop my jaw dropping. Weld anything once and it becomes more brittle. Weld it three times and you could probably crack it with an egg-spoon. And looking at the skin repairs I shudder to think what the undercarriage mounting-box might look like. Not to mention the propeller, which must surely have been bent, plus the shockload on the engine… I swallow. “And where are you headed for?” “Waal, we‟re goin‟ back Stateside. So up the island chain an‟ then Florida, for starters”.

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“Florida! Why, you‟re only just about a quarter of the way there, yet”. My eyes go back to the weld-bearded sump. “Yeah, we got a-ways to go. Long way for a Pawnee, too”. “Ah… that pump, in your cockpit?” “Yeah. I put about an extra 50 gallons of fuel into the spray hopper, then pump it into the main tank as we go. Works real well. Soon as I get that sump on we‟ll fuel-up and git off”. I don‟t want to touch either of these craft in case I leave fingerprints – not that they‟ll matter if they‟re at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea or the Atlantic. But simple human decency… “Do you want a hand putting the sump back on, Cowboy…?” “Kindaya, but naw. I gotta wait for the Preacher Man anyway. He gits real mad if‟n I put any part on his airplane without he‟s blessed it first”. Blessed it. Right. Silly of me. I start easing away, but have one last question. “Cowboy – why…?” “Why‟m I doiin‟ this? Well, I kinda admire sass, like I said, and Preacher Man‟s got sass comin‟ outa his ears. “An‟ also…” he settles back against the hanger door and pulls his hat down over his eyes. “Preacher Man‟s got the compass and an ADF an‟ the only workin‟ radio…” I sidle off, and then start walking away purposefully. By the end of the day they are gone. For the next several days I listen out for news of at least one aircraft lost. There is none. Even now, after nearly forty years, I still wonder what became of Preacher Man and the Cowboy. I suppose I should say that this exposure to idiocy mixed with aeroplanes taught me a lesson which lasted my flying life. Well, maybe it did. I‟ve certainly always remembered it. Or maybe it was just one of very, very many lessons… But certainly I‟d like to say that I‟ve never abused an aeroplane, got into one without adequate preparation, or deliberately flown a lash-up. I‟d like to say that… “Izzat so, Buster?” Damn. It is my personal Gremlin, who has lived inside me for decades. His speciality is prodding me with a goad of guilt, frequently at most inconvenient moments. “Just for one example, what about the time you stopped that Chipmunk‟s prop in a stall-turn and didn‟t even know if the bloody thing had a starter-motor? And there are plenty more…” Aah…

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Well, yes, okay. Point there. I‟d landed after a previous display slot and trotted over to a Chipmunk which had already been started-up for the slot-after-next. Chipmunks can have various possible starting systems, ranging from hand-swinging to cartridge to a posh electric starter-motor. And I‟d not flown this particular aircraft before. And all Chipmunk carburettors can vary in their reaction to zero-G. And so when this prop stopped in mid stall-turn I did indeed not remember whether this Chipmunk had a starter-motor or not. And did indeed hit the signal-light button on the left-hand panel because that was where most late-owners connected up a startermotor switch. And sure enough the engine fired-up… So okay, okay, Gremlin. Point taken. There is a bit of the Cowboy – if not the Preacher Man – in me.

Is there in you…?

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THE SOPWITH CAMEL And the art of shooting yourself down The first aeroplane I seriously displayed was a 1917 Sopwith Camel – and before you reach for the age-calculator I should mention that this was in the swinging 1970‟s, and that the aircraft was a full-sized, full-scale replica. It was in fact a most faithful replica, an exact copy of the original airframe. Complete – very complete – with original foibles. The only significant difference was that it was powered by a 160 (supposedly) hp Warner Super Scarab radial engine instead of the original 130 hp Clerget rotary. At first glance I regarded this as an historical shame but a practical Good Thing, since the Scarab was a modern design – well, a mere 40 years old – and could therefore be expected to function more reliably than a motor dating back to the dawn of aviation. I probably still believed in the Tooth Fairy as well. The first time I flew the Camel I climbed out very gingerly and straight because the initial response upon leaving the ground convinced me that the ailerons had become disconnected from the stick. At height, cautious observation proved they were all moving as advertised – it was just that they didn‟t actually work. Back in 1917, if you wanted an aircraft to roll faster you simply made the ailerons bigger because that was the obvious thing to do. As a result the Camel had four ailerons the size of barn doors and hinged just the same way – like barn doors. No differential, no Frieze effect, no slotting, no reflex – who the hell had heard of those things in 1917? The result was huge, momentous aileron drag. You banked left – and the right ailerons, going down into high-pressure airflow, created so much drag that the Camel instantly and most positively wished to yaw right. Okay, the Tiger Moths in which I learned to fly did it to some extent, and some modern aircraft still exhibit traces of such tendencies – but in the Camel the opposite yaw was awe-inspiring. It is truly said that driving along a dead-straight motorway is in fact a series of tiny steering corrections you never even know you‟re making. Similarly with straight and level flight; any tiny turbulence upsets are invariably in roll, and in a modern aircraft you simply correct them with tiny aileron inputs with no awareness that you‟re doing it. If you take your feet off the rudder pedals it makes little difference – sloppy practice, yes of course, but it makes little difference. Not so the Camel. Take your feet off the Camel‟s rudder bar (not pedals – a wooden bar) in straight and level flight and the first time you moved the ailerons in

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even the very mildest correction the thing would immediately yaw the other way. (Left aileron, for example, would cause it to cantankerously yaw right). Aileron drag. Keep your feet on the floor and it would within seconds rack itself into the steepest side-slip it could manage. That was its natural flight regime. At first acquaintance disconcerting. But in fact no real problem once you reprogrammed your brain. It wasn‟t so much difficult, just different – and of course if you‟d flown it in 1917 it would have been no surprise at all because all aircraft of the day behaved like that. Well, okay – but now you also have to keep your eye on the fuel pressure. The main fuel tank, just behind your backside, is pressurised to two or three psi to keep feeding the engine. This pressurisation is provided by a Rotherham pump, which closely resembles a single-cylinder model aircraft engine attached to a centre-section strut. It sort of works in the reverse-sense to a model engine. It doesn‟t provide power – its little ten-inch propeller is blown round by the slipstream to drive the piston as a pump, and the pump pressurises the fuel tank. Only thing is that pressure control is not automatic – you the pilot have to control it with a small valve-lever lest it become too high and burst the tank or too low and stop the engine. No problem in normal flight but apt to fluctuate wildly in aerobatics… The Camel was not difficult to land. With one proviso. If – and it was a big IF – you were pointing exactly into wind. If you tried conclusions with a cross-wind you could wheel it onto the ground all right and roll out more or less straight so long as the tail was up. The moment the tail sank the rudder stopped working, blanketed by the fuselage, the into-wind wings lifted alarmingly, and the whole caboodle threatened to dig in a wing-tip and cartwheel as it weathercocked into wind. At this point, with no brakes and a non-steerable tailskid, you the pilot had little say in the proceedings. You either sat it out with adrenaline pouring out of your ears, or – providing you were not pointing at anything solid – opened up, took off again, and found some alternative location to alight more into-wind. Being a neophyte in the temple of the display world, I was anxious to investigate the Camel‟s aerobatic possibilities – an endeavour much hampered by the bloody Scarab‟s propensity for mechanical failures. For various reasons I accumulated four forced landings in the craft before I had actually notched up one whole flight hour in it – a statistic which struck Warner engines off my Christmas card list for life. Once the engine did condescend to keep running I found that things like loops and stall-turns were pretty straightforward, rudder and elevator both being light and effective.

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But oh, those ponderous ailerons. Where was the „Camel‟s lightning turn‟ that I used to read about in Biggles books? This thing rolled into a turn with all the alacrity of an ocean liner. The answer was two-fold. Firstly, what was „lightning‟ in 1917 was understandably not quite the same thing sixty years later in 1977 – and secondly, in 1917 the Camel had a Clerget rotary engine providing massive torque and especially gyroscopic reactions. A knowing pilot – especially one prepared to ignore the niceties of balance and tramp hard-ish on the rudder – could use the gyroscopics to most astonishing effect. Indeed, reading a set of 1918 Pilot‟s Notes for the Camel revealed instructions for „rolling‟ the aircraft which were remarkably akin to what we would regard as a flick-roll today. Eyeing the Camel‟s low wing-loading and sparsity of construction – which was weight-saving to the point of flimsiness, the wings actually rippling in harmony with the engine whilst taxiing – I most seriously doubted that the radial-engined version would execute a flick-roll at all, or at least not without shedding important components in the process, such as the wings. It followed then that in WWI, Camel pilots were not really flicking, but inducing some sort of rolling-pitching evolution which owed its felicity to the gyroscopic force of the rotary. With teeth-gritted practise I managed to persuade the Camel to perform an elephantine barrel-roll – but what I really wanted was a proper slow roll. The prospect of this made me swallow hard, and left to my own devices I may well have decided that discretion was the better part of valour. However the then king of British aerobatics, the redoubtable Neil Williams who seemed to be a permanent fixture as British Aerobatic Champion, had flown the Camel and pronounced that it „was probably impossible to slow roll‟. Ho! Is that so…? I was much younger then, and my aerial wisdom extremely suspect. In fact, it did slow roll – slow being the operative word. The technique (a generous term for sheer brutality) was to dive the thing to its Velocity Never Exceed of 145 kts – a speed it was most reluctant to achieve – level off, and then roll to the left using both hands on the stick to ensure full aileron deflection. If the spade-grip didn‟t chip the woodwork on the left side of the fuselage-frame you weren‟t trying hard enough. If you were trying hard enough the Camel would oh-so-slowly embark on the adventure. The engine, having no inverted fuel system, would quit shortly after passing wings-vertical, leaving you with an eerie whistle of wind in the wires which I have personally heard in no other biplane. In the presence of this whistle you kept rolling with all the usual control inputs but carried out in weird slow-motion – with the

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added incentive that when it came to getting rid of top-rudder nearing the inverted it paid not to be tardy. If you were late the combined effects of yaw and aileron-drag were perfectly capable of stopping the roll altogether and leaving you stranded on your back like an up-turned turtle. Provided you did keep going the roll would continue its dignified progress and the engine would chime in again shortly after you regained erect flight. At the conclusion your airspeed was a whole resounding... 70 knots. A Chipmunk rolls in six seconds, the dismal Tiger Moth in about 11. The Sopwith Camel took 23 seconds to go round. Only an idiot would persist with this. I did so persist, slow-rolling the thing at displays throughout a whole season. Eventually I found during a walk-round that the left bottom wing-tip went clonk-clonk over a range of nearly an inch if you tugged it in a fore-and-aft plane. Investigation revealed that the 5/16th inch diameter steel rod securing the spar fittings to the fuselage had fretted through 50% of its girth. At a stroke I decided that slow rolls were something I could do without… Before we finally parted company the Camel had one last fling at me, which I most certainly deserved. It had a filmic-style „machine gun‟ system. The cockpit contained pressurised cylinders of oxygen and Propane (which discouraged me from smoking my pipe in a way no other aircraft has ever achieved) and when you pressed the „gun‟ button, valves squirted a volatile mixture of the two into the barrels of the replica twin Vickers, the breeches of which were mounted disconcerteningly close to one‟s swede. Spark-plug-type devices in the barrels then ignited the oxy-propane mixture, producing a staccato ripple which sounded more like a machine-gun than any real machine-gun ever did. This system worked to perfection – on the ground. In the air, however… In the air the changing pressure in the Vickers‟ barrels according to airspeed led to the odd contretemps. Sometimes the guns would go bang-bang-bang as advertised. Sometimes they would remain mute. Sometimes they would make a noise like an elephant executing a bowel movement. And sometimes they would wait a few seconds and then go BANG, big time. So cantankerous was the system that if it was your turn to be shot down in the dogfight enactment you first checked the Fokker Triplane was on your tail as per scenario, then fired your own guns before pulling smoke and endeavouring to disappear behind a hangar. The thinking behind this being that if the Triplane‟s guns were working then all you had was twice the gunfire – no bad thing – but if they weren‟t, at least there‟d be some sound of shooting. Embarrassing to be shot down without any gunfire…

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The oxygen and propane bottles being in the cockpit, in the event of a total malfunction there was a great temptation to fiddle with the valve taps in the pious – and usually vain – hope of altering the mixture to something a bit more volatile. This increased the cockpit workload quite a lot. You were flying a looping tail-chase, managing the always-quirky fuel pressure system, and at the same time fussing with the oxy and propane valves. A chap did tend to run out of hands and ideas. But if the guns had gone on strike it was like at itchy scab – you know you shouldn‟t scratch it, but you do anyway. One thing we learned was that if you did feel the compulsion to fiddle, DON‟T keep your thumb on the firing button while you were doing it. A non-firing gun would rapidly fill up from barrel to breach with oxy/propane. If you took your thumb off, in a few seconds the airflow would wash it clean. But if you kept your thumb on the button, then within that few seconds the mixture would inevitably reach explosive quality… And – BANG. Needless to say, in the heat of the moment we tended to forget the fiddle-pausethen-fire edict and kept our stupid thumbs on the firing button… I was possibly the greatest offender. Which resulted, during practise on the eve of a Farnborough air show, in the Camel‟s guns going BANG on me one time too many. The explosion blew the engine cowling off into the propeller, shattering same and creating 20 vibrating horizons in front of my eyeballs before I got the engine shut down and placed the aeroplane back on the ground. So… my one claim to aerial combat fame is that I was the last person to shoot down a Sopwith Camel. I was also the only person in history to shoot himself down in a Sopwith Camel. If I‟d done it four more times I‟d have been a fighter ace. A German one…

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BARNSTORMING WITH A STAMPE Where a dream has to earn its keep

When I first took delivery of it, my friends told me politely that I was bananas. Oh, they allowed that it looked beautiful sitting out there on the grass with the sun on its new orange and blue paintwork. But looking beautiful, they pointed out, was not going to pay the bills. And, they added, the bills associated with a 28-yearold wood and fabric Stampe SV4C biplane were likely to be considerable. If you really had to own an aeroplane, they said, you should have bought a Pawnee or a Cessna 150 or a Chipmunk or something. That way you could have crop-sprayed in it or leased it out to a flying school or done some instructing in it. Something – anything – to get some money coming in as well as going out. All of which was quite correct, of course. Except that I didn‟t want a Cessna 150 – nor a Chipmunk nor a Cherokee nor a Piper Cub nor a Pawnee nor any other of those sensible flying machines. The aeroplane I‟d always wanted, for almost as long as I could remember, was a Stampe SV4, and preferably a red one. My Stampe – the pristine, oil-free, unblemished Stampe that I was one day going to own – had been a dream for so long that when the day finally arrived that I actually had enough money (or convinced myself I had, which is not quite the same thing) to purchase an aeroplane, no other alternative entered into it. It was a Stampe or carry on wishing. Mind you, when I met the beast for the first time I needed the sustenance of that dream quite a lot. For this Stampe was not pristine and not unblemished. And in fact not even fabric-covered. It was a wooden skeleton, and the only reason it was oil-free was because it had been standing dejected, dusty and dismantled in the back of a hangar since Pontius was a pilot. Its owner was a villainous-looking flying school proprietor named John Chicken. He was a man who was later to prove himself one of the few utterly honest people I have ever known – but when I first met him in that hangar there, the price he wanted for the Stampe as a re-built and fully-certificated going concern made my stomach feel hollow and my knees go weak. It seems to be a sad fact of life that if you cherish a dream for long enough you tend to get overtaken by the cold hard reality of fiscal inflation. In fact, I very nearly ducked out there and then and said the hell with the dream and a man can‟t always get what he wants – and all the other platitudes you offer yourself when you‟re trying to excuse a good old fashioned bottle-failure. But then

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John added that if I took it I could have it painted any colour I liked as part of the deal; any reasonable paint-scheme I cared to design, and he‟d see it was done before I took delivery. And that did it, of course. I could have it red, orangy-red. I looked at the dusty stack of uncovered wings and it was suddenly the Stampe in the dream, all red and shiny in a summer sky. I shook hands with John Chicken – the only form of agreement we ever had, and the only one you need with a completely honest man – and drove away from there with a warm happy glow all over. All over, that is, except for a chilly voice of sanity somewhere in the back of my brain which kept saying; “Lecomber, you‟re CRAZY! By the time you‟ve dredged up enough bread to pay for that antiquated heap of rubble there is NO WAY you will be able to afford to run it. You must be finally out of your tiny little cuckoo‟s nest, man!” And the voice was dead right. Just like all my friends were. I sat down a few days later and worked it out; what it was going to cost to operate that aeroplane in dear old England in 1977. It came to £4,500 for a year if I flew it for 150 hours, say around £30 an hour. Sounds cheap now, but if wasn‟t back then. It was huge. It was also no great surprise: after ten years of fooling with aeroplanes (with old biplanes as something of a speciality) I‟d known the figures would be somewhere about that mark. I‟d known also that I couldn‟t afford to subsidise a dream to the tune of fourand-a-half-grand a year. So the figures merely confirmed the inevitable conclusion – to wit, that my Stampe was going to have to be a working aeroplane. The dream was going to have to earn its keep. Which created an interesting situation. Because, as anyone concerned in aviation will tell you without the slightest hesitation – at least, they certainly told me without the slightest hesitation – England in the late 1970‟s was not a place to operate an old biplane at anything approaching a profit. Indeed, what with the combination of our weather and our bureaucracy, the British climate was not really a suitable place to run any aviation enterprise at a profit – never mind a wood-and-fabric albatross out of a bygone era. “Hell,” these knowledgeable people said: “Just look around you, man: you can‟t spit on an English airfield without hitting a well-run flying school with modern equipment which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. So just what in the hell makes you think you can do any better?” But they didn‟t have The Dream. So I said: “Well, you‟re probably right. But all the same I guess I‟ll just kind of try moseying around the airshows and picking up display work and sort of see what happens…”

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“Oh Lordy,” they said – “Barnstorming, no less! Listen”, (they said) “barnstorming is passé… long gone… legislated out of existence. You with your leather jacket and solid ivory head are half a century out of date: you cannot possibly exist in this modern world of electronic flying and spiralling costs by going barnstorming…” “Well, yeah,” I said; “Again you‟re probably right, but I‟m still going to give it a try anyway. Especially as I don‟t exactly have any choice…” So I went barnstorming. Or at least, travelling around England, Ireland and France giving displays, which was as near as you could get to barnstorming in the fag-end of the 1970‟s. Perhaps it was part of the dream of the Stampe. I don‟t know. All I do know is that right from the start, I lived! The first show, by chance, was a whole weekend of displays in France, down in Bordeaux. I‟d had the Stampe for just two weeks before we went off on that, and England was muggy with mist and low cloud on the day we left. This is a circumstance with which the Stampe is singularly ill-equipped to deal, especially if the compass has recently decided that what it really ought to point towards is the rear cockpit rev-counter cable – which has mysteriously become magnetised. So we got lost on the way to Lydd to clear Customs outbound, and later on snarled across the Channel with me staring up over the top wing to keep us more or less level with the vague blue sky above the mist and more or less straight in relation to the position of the sun. The weather in France, however, was marvellous, and I remember sitting there at 1,000 feet singing my lungs out as I followed the straight French autoroutes down south to places like Bernay, Saumur, St. Thernac and Liborne. The trip out took eight hours flying and I was a king: I was in my own orange-and-blue Stampe flying over a foreign land on my way to do aerobatic performances. Hell, I was a barnstormer, man! For real, in the 1970‟s! The French people were marvellous, as French people always seem to be when you grin and try unsuccessfully to speak their language. They were also lavish with advice, for the Stampe is to French aviation what the Tiger Moth is to the British and the Stearman to the States. At every second airfield I dropped into there was at least one crusty old former pilote de chasse who had 4,000 hours instructing in Stampes and was more than willing to pass on The Word to an itinerant Englishman. I learned that I ought to re-rig the ailerons just so in order to improve the rate of roll (which was rubbish); I learned that I should refrain from snap rolls altogether (which was also rubbish, although it did prompt me thereafter to go into my snaps rather gently); and I learned that if I wished to prevent little bits of main bearing flaking off during inverted

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flight and finding their way into the oil pressure relief valve, I should pour a couple of tins of STP into the oil tank every twenty hours or so (which was an extremely valuable piece of advice). Something else I learned – rather to my shame, since I had hitherto always prided myself on caring whole-heartedly for any flying machine which came into my hands – was that when it‟s your aeroplane, it makes a difference. It it‟s someone else‟s you might put it away dirty and wipe the oil off in the morning when you‟re feeling fresh and enthusiastic. But when it‟s yours, when it‟s your orange Stampe that you‟ve wanted and dreamed of for so many years, you wipe it off now. Not just as the end of the day but right now, after each flight. It almost physically hurts to have it looking dirty – which, since M. Renault elected to design an engine which is perfectly capable of tossing a quart of oil down the underside in fifteen minutes‟ aerobatics, means you‟re in for a lot of wiping. It‟s not unusual to find black oil over the tail after a hard session, never mind the fuselage. Another odd thing you find when you start flying your brand new old biplane is that you acquire a whole new attitude to the sound and texture of the engine. On that thirty-hour trip to Bordeaux and back I learned that a new Stampe owner can hear fifty different tiny clattering sounds under the steady flat blare of a Renault PO3, and that each of these sounds exist only and solely between his ears. I also learned that the oil pressure gauge can hold that same new owner utterly mesmerised. If you stare at it long enough it is extremely easy to convince yourself that the reading is a pound per square inch less than it was ten minutes ago. You watch it like a hawk, you eye the temperature gauge thoughtfully as you weigh the connection between temperature and pressure, and after a while you even find yourself moving your head from side to side in order that you may supply the explanation of parallax error in support of whichever particular optimism or pessimism is reigning at the time. The habit becomes as infuriating as a nervous tic, and in the end you even contemplate taping over the oil gauge in an attempt to kick the addiction. Two days after returning to England, and with a display tour of the country to promote a book due to begin in another 48 hours, the Renault abruptly decided to blow a head gasket. That was when I discovered that certain allegedly hard-hearted engineers apparently have a soft spot in their hearts for a 28-year-old Stampe whose owner is stupid enough to go barnstorming. While I was labouring at the cylinder and wondering how the hell you get a spigoted head surface machined flat on a Sunday afternoon, a man called Geoff Masterton, Pitts builder and engineer extraordinaire whom I had met just once before in my life, rolled up to the hangar in his mobile

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workshop with a big friendly grin all over his face. He put in twelve hours of practically non-stop work on my engine, that hard-headed engineer; and at the end of it all he would accept was the dubious privilege of making the test flight. The generosity of people was part of a great deal that we learned, the Stampe and I, as that first summer wore on. We learned, for instance – after much nervous investigation – that the steady reduction in oil pressure throughout an aerobatic routine was nothing more serious than a slow-acting gauge, which we finally changed. We learned that if the bolts holding the steady plate on the top of the carburettor became even fractionally slack, the inlet manifold would promptly crack as if it were made of porcelain. We also learned that the infantile dual needle-valve carburettor fitted as standard on the Renault PO3 engine is quite beyond redemption. It has one valve which operates under positive G and another which operates under negative G – which is all fine and dandy until you hit zero G for a few seconds, whereupon both of them work at once and the engine quits dead with a rich cut in a splatter of black smoke. This is somewhat less than convenient at, say, the critical moment at the top of a low-level stall-turn (hammerhead), when – quite apart from anything else – you really would appreciate a bit of a draught to help blow the tail around. No amount of tinkering had the slightest effect on this distressing habit, so eventually I threw the standard carburettor away in disgust and fitted a highly complex membrane device which originated (I think) from a WWII Dewotine fighter. This ran perfectly in any attitude and at any G; but what it did not do, for reasons known only to its designer, was control its own mixture strength. So we rigged up a manual mixture lever, and I then had to re-learn the interesting First War technique of operating separate air and fuel levers in sufficient harmony to ensure that the engine received a more of less correct mixture of fuel and air at least some of the time. Alongside these minor contretemps, the Stampe and I were also slowly learning how to get along with each other in the air. Where I had found the rudder heavy and disharmonised on first acquaintance, now it felt just so. Where we had first needed 110 knots to do a roll off the top or a half-loop or a quarter vertical roll and fly-out, now we could do it from under 100. Much of the growing-together was the usual slow process, but there were the occasional milestones. There came an evening when I did my first full outside loop (bunt) and an inside-outside Cuban eight. And another evening, one of those rare crystal-clear sundowns, when the Stampe and I clambered up and up into the fading heavens and taught ourselves how to do the Lomcovak. We came down from that exultant, but completely covered in oil from

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stern to stern – which gave me a very anxious twelve hours before I discovered that it was merely the oil tank pressure relief valve blowing off under the rotating negative g. We found out more peaceful things, too – among them the art of navigating from display to display without the tedious distraction of a useable compass. When I finally got fed up with chasing the errors – which was a losing battle for a long time, since the rev-counter cable, even when replaced, was apparently capable of producing at whim a considerably varying magnetic field at least equal in strength to that of the Earth‟s magnetic poles – I evolved a method whereby before embarking on any particularly featureless or over-water stretch I would take care to fly exactly the right track by landmarks for a period of about ten minutes beforehand. This way I could carefully note what the compass had to say about that particular heading today, and thereafter fly that indicated heading – which might be anything up to 50 degrees off the actual bearing – until such time as the surface of the earth again condescended to offer up a few tangible clues as to our whereabouts. We went all over England and across to Southern Ireland like that. Not advisable, of course. But there didn‟t seem to be a great deal of choice at the time. Naturally, we also discovered a great many things about people during that summer. We found, for one thing, that a gaily-coloured biplane making a lighthearted pretence at barnstorming is a key to the hearts of a great many individuals both inside aviation and out of it. Small boys would spend hours wiping the oil off just for the privilege of sitting in the cockpit for a few minutes. Elderly gentlemen would touch the fabric and look on quietly; and you knew that they too had known the world aloft framed in a biplane‟s wings in the long-ago. In Ireland a mob-crowd had to be kept from flooding in around the aeroplane by three burly helpers armed with fire extinguishers. Yet later a number of that same crowd stayed on to push the Stampe carefully into a ramshackle shed in the corner of the field and there erect an electric fence across the open front to ensure that the cattle would refrain from eating the wings. On another occasion an old-time showman and two of his helpers turned out at three in the morning in lashing torrential rain to check my tie-downs. Not satisfied with the hefty ropes and the fact that the Stampe was already in the lee of a huge roundabout, they formed a circle round it with three showman‟s trailers to further protect it from the force of the elements. There were, inevitably, many times when the Stampe and I had to shake off our carefree 1930‟s nostalgia and slot into the modern world. The big displays in England are almost like family events, because you meet the same people flying the same aeroplanes at just about all of them, all through the summer. I have mixed feelings about big displays; I like the atmosphere and the camaraderie but not the crowd

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control and the timing, both of which invariably seem to spring a considerable leak somewhere down the line. It‟s not too bad when you know your way around – when you know that so-and-so in the Spitfire will over-run his slot because he always does, and that when what‟s-his-name in the Harrier gets airborne you‟d better go and hold the Stampe down before it gets blown into the next county – but even so there is always more tension about the place than there is at a smaller event. The Stampe often seemed to share my slight underlying nervousness at big displays; whenever she decided to baulk at starting or contract a sudden mysterious radio failure it was always in front of a very minimum of fifty thousand people. [I should point out that these words were written in the late „seventies. Airshow organisation, both large and small, has come on apace since then – BL] No – the displays we really preferred were the out-of-the-way smaller ones, where everyone was Bill and Tom and the crowd actually showed it when they enjoyed the flying. At displays like that we added to our store of knowledge about our trade. We learned – or perhaps re-learned – that no aerobatic manoeuvre, however spectacular, is worth performing at more than a base height of 500 feet at the very highest because above that height nobody will be watching it. We also learned that you can split your corset doing Lomcovaks and twelve-point rolls off the deck and that‟s all well and good – but what the crowd really like is a good crazy flying act. All you need do is slip through the trees, leap-frog the crash wagon and then bounce it all over the field when you land; you‟ll get a cheer like the Osmonds just walked on stage. Yeah, we liked the little shows. We did our 150 hours of flying and more through that summer, the Stampe and I. We covered enough mileage going to and from displays to have taken us halfway around the world. We flew from grass fields, corn fields, farm strips, and international airports in between the Boeings. We flew for crowds and we flew for cameras; aerobatics, crazy flying, tied-together formation. We evolved a slick answer for bigtime controlled airspace: “Ah, negative transponder Sir, but I‟m painted bright red”. And the controlled airspace in the modern electronic world nearly always parted just a little and let us through on our way. Maybe it was the people in the Towers and in the jet cockpits. Maybe they, too, had dreamed of a blue and orange biplane in the sun. Yeah, we had a good summer, the Stampe and me. Barnstorming. In the late 1970‟s.

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AN ASPIRANT IS HUMBLED High mastery being very difficult of achievement

Some 40 years ago. Silverstone. I am in the front passenger seat of a brand-new Mercedes six-litre coupe, a car heralded for its raw power but reputed to possess the handling qualities of a shopping trolley at one of these new-fangled supermarket places – themselves a fad which will never catch on. In the windscreen Woodcote corner is rushing at us at an entirely obscene rate – a snatched and terrified glance at the panel reveals something in the region of 130 mph – and our driver shows not the slightest sign of slowing, apparently blissfully unaware of the shopping-trolley reputation. My own right foot is denting the floor-pan but Mercedes have omitted to provide a brake pedal for panic-stricken passengers, so I have no effect on events whatsoever. What will happen will happen. What happens is that the driver lazily turns his head slightly to the right so that his hooded, heavy-lidded eyes are looking at the exit of the bend. He is holding the wheel merely with the thumb and second finger of his right hand – his left rests casually on the transmission tunnel. As we careen to certain destruction he twitches the wheel just once. He apparently does nothing else. The Mercedes kicks into the bend and immediately starts sliding. And not just sliding, but lurching, pitching, yawing, wriggling, and howling as the tyres scrabble for grip. Not wishing to see the particular point of impact coming at me I find I am looking at the driver. His body shakes with the lurching, as mine does, but otherwise he is a Buddha - completely calm and static. The wheel – which if I was suddenly given control of would be sawing desperately in a certainly vain attempt to avoid disaster – does not move. The thumb and finger grip does not change. Suddenly we are exiting the bend. Our driver again deigns to move his hand just once. Twitch – and the Mercedes suddenly and instantly obeys, the lurching and bucking stops as at the flick of a switch, and we are powering down the pit straight. All serene. Oh, except for the minor detail that in the course of careering round Woodcote we overtook a full-blown race-prepared De Tomaso Pantera driven by a current wellknown racing driver. As we overhauled him in this great flabby Mercedes I imagined I could see a thinks-bubble over his cockpit with a question-mark in it. As we went past him I fancied this question-mark just sort of evaporated helplessly.

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We carry on for three more laps like this, and I learn to keep my eyes open because this is an awe-inspiring experience given to few persons. On this a supercar test day there are many fast things on the track – and we are unbelievably the fastest by a long chalk in a fat sprawling Mercedes, driven by a slightly tubby, not-young, semi-retired director of that staid company. Eventually we pull into the pits. I climb out on rubbery legs. Our driver hops out with considerably more grace and casually resumes a conversation which had presumably been interrupted by the chore of ambling us around the track. I stagger around the car – which is stinking in a most un-Mercedes-like manner of burnt tyres and overheated transmission fluid – to thank our driver. Over all these years, I still remember what I said. “Sir, that was the experience of my lifetime. If I can ever be anywhere near half as good at anything at all, I will feel I have achieved something worthwhile”. The driver smiled vaguely. He was Argentinean, and was said not to speak English. His name was Juan Manuel Fangio. I would never get anywhere near half of that ability. And even then I knew it. Forty years on, I still know it. My chosen field was aerobatics and I hope I achieved something – but I was never a Fangio. Never even a quarter of a Fangio. But I tried. And that ride with Fangio lived with me. So many mornings I pushed an aeroplane out of the hangar and stopped and considered in those quiet moments before I got in. Felt my heart thumping at the prospect of some unknown manoeuvre I was about to attempt; heard the still small voice of cowardice within me saying „Why the bloody hell are you doing this?‟ And then, quite often, I would remember Fangio. For him – who must surely have known his own mornings in the acquaintanceship of jangling nerves – the oracle had eventually become normality. I wanted to achieve that state of grace with a lust deeprooted in my soul – that Fangio Factor. That extra savagery, that drive to push through to another plane of skill. In our world Neil Williams had it. So did Eric Muller. And de Lapparent and Strossenreuther, and a handful of others. Maybe I touched it a time or two, but in my heart I know that my fingers always slipped off. Perhaps it was just as well, because people with the full measure of Fangio Factor are invariably obsessive and frequently short-lived. They are frightening to be around. Normal mortals experience an unexplainable queasiness in their company. Normal mortals, for example, usually feel nervous when they gird up their loins for a flight deliberately dedicated to aerobatics. This is especially so in the early learning days of such endeavours – however thickly the shellac of bravado may be applied,

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inside there is always a small nervous voice saying; ”Look, why don‟t we do this tomorrow….” For many – indeed, the majority – of pilots, this small voice has a habit of winning, which is why a remarkable number of aeroplane-drivers go through their entire aerial lives knowing nothing more adventurous than the odd teeth-gritted loop once in a very, very long blue moon. My sympathies go out to those souls, for their affliction is the very opposite of the Fangio Factor, and their temerity only serves to close them off from the most finelyhoned tools in the pilotage box – their hands. For aerobatics, even at the most mild beginning stage, teach an aviator to fly by feel as well as by numbers. Aerobatics teach the hands and the ass that the aircraft is always talking to you, telling you about the relative airflow and its happiness or otherwise about the state of same at any given moment. Aerobatics teaches that an aeroplane does not give a squashed sausage for either speed or attitude in relation to terra firma – it is only interested in airflow. Angle of attack – alpha. Nothing else. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about airflow. Just alpha. Just airflow. Aerobatics teaches you to feel that airflow – feel the angle, sense it. Not all at once, not in a blinding revelation, but as a drip-drip accumulation of piloting sense coming in through the hands. After a while you lose your fixation on the myth of „stall speed‟ – a really most dangerous and misleading fingerpost, however beloved it may be by conventional training dogma – and start to feel the temper of the aeroplane, which is the only important thing. The airflow. At the same time aerobatics further teaches you authority and confidence – why, you can hold the nose up inverted, you can stop a spin on heading, the machine will do as you command it. It can be wings on your shoulder-blades… Proof be it to watch almost any aerobatic pilot execute the mundane task of landing. Where the plane-driver sets up the numbers and drumbles in under power and fixation, the aerobatic person cannot resist the temptation of a flourish. He will land if at all practical from a glide; he will adjust his descent with whatever weapons are given to him – flaps, sideslip, slats – and he will aim for a reasonably sensuous reunion with the ground on or near the exact point of intended touchdown. He will not always succeed in total – we all sometimes fail in the last couple of feet and burn with shame for dropping it on or bouncing it – but never mind that; his landing will still have been a predetermined settlement, not just an arrival. It is a kind of sacrament – part of his pride in aircraft handling. This is not the full-blown Fangio Factor. But it is an important start.

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The full Fangio Factor is in many ways rather bleak, and not best suited to rounded personalities who have other challenges, and mouths to feed. But five, perhaps ten per cent of the Fangio Factor will be the best thing you‟ve ever done for your flying skill. And for your safety and your inner self. The first step is small but big. It consists of saying to yourself; „Yes, I am going to fly this sortie dedicated to aerobatics‟. Carry that through, and you‟re already one of a small percentage. The chances are a billion to one against you ever becoming a Fangio. But if you go on to even Standard level aerobatics, that already makes you one citizen in a million. Find a school doing the basic AOPA course. Visit www.aerobatics.org.uk website for the British Aerobatic Association, who are very good and will help get you started. Live a bit. Take a deep breath. Take on board a little bit – no more than that – of the Fangio Factor.

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“BLUE, ROLLING… NOW!” Psyching-up a gestalt “Rothmans Blue, the display site is on our left nine o‟clock. Centre-point is in front of the mosque on the Corniche. Wind is crowd-right on-crowd” The Leader‟s voice crackles in our ears. Straggled across a hundred yards of sky, our four Pitts S2s bank gently left as we circle Kuwait City‟s main waterfront. Four helmeted heads crane over four cockpit sides, assessing this particular workplace on this particular day. The on-crowd wind means we‟ll have to watch for being drifted in; goldfish-bowl vis and a glassy sea can deceive a man‟s eyes at 200 mph and make him think he‟s pulling out higher than he is; two spaceship-shaped water towers at the crowd-left end are a lot higher than we‟ll be at times – not a problem, but just remember they‟re there… There‟s a dead cat curled up in my stomach, and deep inside me a still small voice is saying; „Why don‟t you get a nice steady job in a bank?‟ I am well acquainted with this still small voice. In eighteen months with the Rothmans Aerobatic Team I have listened to it over the airfields and beaches of Britain, the steamy skies of Malaysia and Borneo, and now over the dusty cities of the Arabian Gulf. Its sentiments are always an interesting contrast to the fine fighting spirit which possesses me when we are planning new aerobatic sequences in some bar. I haul on the seven trap-ends of my harness, wriggle my feet on the rudder pedals, then unclip my microphone-mask for long enough to lick the palm of my right glove – a filthy habit, but one which I have somehow convinced myself is essential to the proper maintenance of adhesion between my hand and the stick. So much for the rituals. Now we are ready for business. “Blue; box, box, GO”. We skitter together into diamond formation, Marcus Edwards as Lead, Rod Rea in the Two-slot behind his right wing, Mike Findlay on the left as Three, and myself as Four, line-astern on Lead „in the box‟. As we close up I can hear the snarling of the other engines under the roar of my own. The dead cat evaporates from my guts. The still small voice shrugs and gives up. My whole world narrows down to the pale blue undersides of the Pitts‟s ahead and on each side. This is the total concentration of formation flying: you stare at Lead, you‟re aware of the other guys in your peripheral vision – and that‟s it. That‟s

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the limit of your universe. If Marcus should elect to fly into the side of the Hilton Hotel – an unlikely event considering the prices Hilton charge in the Gulf – the chances are the rest of us won‟t even see it coming. Paradoxically, what I can see of the lead aircraft is in fact not very much at all, owing to one Mr Curtis Pitts having thoughtfully placed the top wing of my own aircraft slap-bang in the direction you need to look when you‟re flying in line-astern. When I‟m in the right place, Marcus‟s elevators and tailwheel are visible above the wing and his main wheels below it – and that‟s the lot. The rest of his aeroplane – all of the rest of it, wings and everything – is completely hidden by that bloody blue aerodynamic slab in front of my noodle. Nowadays I have long since grown used to this phenomenon, but it takes little effort to recall that when I was first introduced to the box position I was almost sick with fright and damn near quit on the spot. “Blue turning left and descending for the box loop and split. Smoke, smoke, GO”. Four thumbs flick four switches as we tip into the dive. Diesel oil pumps into eight exhaust pipes and the smoke comes on, the stink of it acrid even in our open cockpits. Marcus‟s smoke gushes backwards over my head, making his tailplane even harder to see. “Blue, pulling up NOW”. I instantly cease juggling the throttle and whack it fully open. If you think about it, the box-man in a formation – who is perforce sitting several feet below the rest of the guys – has to go round a slightly bigger radius in a loop than everyone else. Ergo, he must also be going a little bit faster than everyone else or he is going to get somewhat left behind, which is mucho embarrassing. So as the horizon drops away I hit full grunt and do the unnatural thing – move forwards as if I was trying to overtake Lead under his belly. The wingmen disappear out of the back of my vision and still I come forward, until my propeller is a Hartzell circular saw ten feet under Marcus‟s seat. The moment stretches on – and then the horizon appears above our heads and we‟re over the top. The equation of speed and radius balances out and I slide back to my proper place, still blasting away on full power. That was a good loop. It is going to be a good display. It is a weird experience, flying in a formation team. After a while it‟s almost like telepathy, especially during the first manoeuvre of a show. That loop may have looked exactly like a hundred others from the outside – but to us, it has carried a stream of subtle messages which are much more of a communion than words. A foot of positioning here… a tiny jerk and bobble there… these signs and others far less obvious have revealed the mood of the gestalt today, and shown whether we are likely to be very sharp on this display, medium-sharp, or maybe not-so-sharp. We call

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it being “psyched-up” or “de-psyched” – and if one of us is de-psyched, then so will we all be. Not enough so anyone watching could tell the difference, maybe; but we‟ll all know, all right. It can be eerie sometimes. Part of it, probably, is a function of the way we live. When we‟re on tour we‟ll do 70 or 80 displays in three months or so, moving on from one place to the next every few days. This very naturally tends to separate us from the mainstream of humanity, so that we end up existing in a close-knit mobile limbo of our own. There are ten of us – four display pilots, four engineers, one support aircraft pilot and a tour manager – and we even speak a language of our own, laced with our own peculiar jargon and humour. Thus, in our lingo, the pilots are RATs (for Rothmans Aerobatic Team), the engineers are Grobbits (the origin of which is obscure), and the support pilot is The Pink Thing (for reasons I am not at liberty to discuss). Outsiders encountering the whole team together and overhearing such a remark as; “Dwarf Rat‟s on auto-whinge about Buggsy‟s bloody smoke-off again” – a sentence which is perfectly lucid to us – do tend to thereafter regard us as a sort of ten-headed monster which might do something sudden at any moment. We bottom-out the loop. “Four split NOW”. I ease the power for an instant, reverse a few feet back out of the formation, then firewall the throttle again as I pull back hard. There is a brief thump as I go through the vic‟s wake-turbulence, then I‟m into the vertical and hitting the flick-roll. This is the first solo burst of the display and I‟m the solo man – not because I‟m any better than the other guys, but simply because the box-man is the only one who can pull out and leave a symmetrical vic behind him without reshuffling the formation. Re-shuffling is not a good idea because we are all pretty much „handed‟ to our own positions. It takes long enough to work-up a pilot to the slot he is going to fly, never mind moving him around to somewhere he generally isn‟t. Seventy seconds later the first solo turn is over. I clear out crowd-left on my back and press the stick-button to make 20 percent of my total radio transmissions for the day. “Out”, I croak. “Roj”. Marcus‟s voice. “Blue, for the Super Bunt. Smoke, smoke, GO”. I half-roll to erect flight and wheel round, climbing hard. The vic, towing its smoke like a mile-long bridal veil, peaks out above me at the top of a 45-degree climb. “Pushing NOW”. The three noses push down. And carry on pushing. This is the full outside loop in vic formation, a manoeuvre unique to the Rothmans Team. I‟ve plotted and schemed

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for months trying to figure out a way of getting a box-man in on it too, but so far without success. It is a frustration I feel deeply in the bar of an evening, but which I have to admit carries rather less conviction in the here-and-now in the air. There are some funny effects in inverted formation flying; funny-peculiar, not funny-ha-ha. For example, if anything goes wrong and a wingman wants to get away, he can no longer do it by the instinctive expedient of rolling away from the leader and pulling: now, in inverted formation, he must roll towards the leader and push, which is by no means natural… Quick glance at the crowd. The whole of Kuwait City‟s waterfront – sorry, Kuwait‟s Corniche – is a solid mass of stationary cars, and the people are a deep furry hedge along a mile of shore. There may be 70,000 people – which is nice to see, because we have to work hard on the beach shows. When we fly at an air display we‟ll do maybe a fifteen-minute slot – but on a beach show we keep going for a full 28 minutes – which can be tiring, especially if you‟re suffering from prickly heat and Asian gut-rot at the time, sometimes to the extent of wearing a hotel towel as a nappy. So it helps if there‟s a good crowd; it keeps you psyched-up when the sweat‟s trickling down your back and your stomach‟s having second thoughts about last night‟s curried eggs. Some of the best crowds we‟ve ever had were on our last tour, in Malaysia and Borneo. We‟d go snarling out over the jungle – real dense tropical rain forest, a solid green carpet as far as the eye could see in every direction – and I would distinctly hear myself thinking that this is crazy; that we couldn‟t be grinding out over this inhospitable terrain on single engines for the purpose of carrying out an air display. Quite apart from anything else there seemed to be nothing from horizon to horizon to perform an air display to, unless the monkeys and tigers were avid readers of Pilot. And then we‟d come across a turgid yellow river and turn and follow it for a few miles; and sooner or later there‟d be a little loop of road peeping out of the jungle and touching the river bank. And there they‟d be – thousands and thousands and thousands of people, right in the middle of nowhere. Several times we had crowds of thirty or forty thousand when the nearest township, maybe ten miles away, was known to only have a population of about half that. We were told of folks – people who had never seen a biplane or an aerobatic manoeuvre – who had travelled six or seven hours on donkeys or on foot to come and see us… You really try for crowds like that, of course. You accept the terrain and the heat and the thought of the crocodiles in the river, and you fly like it was Farnborough. It makes a difference, the crowd.

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The Super Bunt is completed, and so is the half-Cuban which follows it. I roll on my back and pull down to rejoin the formation, tucking in among the engine noise and the blue undersides as we turn at the down-wind end of the crowd-line. “Blue descending for the Slow Roll”. Now there‟s a funny thing about formation aerobatics: some manoeuvres which are comparatively easy always make the crowd go ooh-ah; whilst certain others which are very diverting indeed from the cockpit don‟t look anything like as spectacular when viewed from the beer tent. The box formation slow roll is one of the latter – but like the Super Bunt, no other team in the world does it. So it‟s our showoff manoeuvre; the one we do for the pilots in the crowd rather than the crowd in the crowd. Marcus bottoms the dive-in at 190 mph. At this instant when I first joined the Team I used to find myself wishing most fervently that I was wearing the parachute which the company had so thoughtfully provided – a reaction which was pure jitters of course, since the chances of successfully stepping out from as low as 300 feet after a mid-air tangle are fairly microscopic. (In fact, none of us wear parachutes on display, for a variety of reasons. We are issued with them – Rothman‟s aren‟t mean – but the only times we wear them are on the more nasty transit flights, such as a couple of hours over solid jungle or three-and-a-half hours over the South China Sea from Johore Bahru to Supadio in North Borneo). “Rolling… NOW”. Slowly, the lead aircraft starts to roll to the left. I stare at its tailplane and go with it, keeping my top wing parallel with the elevator hinge. When we were training two winters ago this was the moment that used to terrify me more than anything else; I used to see myself missing the start of the roll and sliding sideways into one of the wingmen, yugging down into Marcus halfway round… you name it, I‟ve done it in my nightmares. I used to drive to the airport with a cold ball of fear in my guts because we were going to have to practise the box slow roll… And hell – in line-astern I‟ve got the easy job. The way the wing-men have to work is something else again. A quarter of the way round, and Rod and Mike are stepping hard on top rudder. The roll may look elegant from the outside – but from within the formation it‟s anything but. The wingmen are heavily crossed-up, their undersides looking weirdly skewed out of their normal riding positions. Then as we pass through the inverted we all „change rudder‟ and start crossing-up the other way for the second half – only now the wingmen have to be even more brutal, because the speed has decayed and the

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controls are less effective. Coming to the last quarter… hell of a heave on top rudder… this is where the wingmen‟ll go out if they‟re going to… Shiver of turbulence, Rod‟s wingtip overlapping Marcus‟s for a second… only 45 degrees to go… Level. Everyone still in. Breathe out. A rather old breath. The show goes on: Double Mirror; Leapfrogs; the Bomb Burst; Tail-chase… the main solo then re-join… the Prince of Wales Feathers Burst and Threadneedle. The radio is short and sharp. Flick NOW… Leapfrog GO… Three still smoking… Pulling up NOW… Burst NOW… Then (quite suddenly, it seems) the last opposition flicks are done and all that‟s left are the individual flypasts. Marcus does a knife-edge pass. Mike flies by inverted, very low. Rod does a four-point roll and I do an eight-point. Then we climb away. Another show is over. My tee-shirt is sodden with sweat and my arms and shoulders are aching. I slacken my harness off a fraction. In spite of the folded towel under my flying suit I know there will be livid red strap marks on my hips tonight. At Kuwait International Airport we re-form into box, go to echelon right, and make a fighter run-and-break to land. When the propellers swish to a stop we climb out, rubbing eyes and easing cramped limbs. As we de-brief, the Grobbits swarm over the aircraft, checking things and diving into front cockpits to refill the smoke tanks. It is a normal day. Bob Hall – „Gopher Grobbit‟ – says the refuelling guys won‟t be along for half an hour. The Pink Thing says the Islander‟s low on gravy as well so we can‟t mother-hen off it. Marcus says we ought to give the fuelling guys some Team tee-shirts and Rod says if they‟re going to be half an hour late a knuckle sandwich might be more suitable. The Scattlebad Grobbit agrees to adjust my propeller Constant Speed Unit because it won‟t quite hold red-line revs all the time, and Rod says he‟s lost his pocket screwdriver. The Grobbits get all his seats out and are moleing their way down the rear fuselage – since loose articles are a very strict no-no – before Rod remembers he lent it to me and I remember I left it in his bag before we went. The fuelling guys turn up and ask point-blank for „geefts”. Marcus gives them four tee-shirts, Rod gives them a dirty look, and I steal one tee-shirt back when they‟re not looking, to give to the driver of the hotel bus we‟re using. Mike says the idiots have filled up his tank when he only wanted it half full – fuel weight being a significant factor on display – and where‟s the siphoning tube? I suggest we ought to give some tee-shirts to the air traffic controllers. Everyone says what a good idea and

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looks pointedly at me and then at the Tower half a mile away across the dusty concrete. I decide it‟s too far to walk and suddenly become very busy tying my aircraft down and putting the cockpit cover on. The fuelling guys finish and ask for Aerobatic Team pens. Rod tells them to sod off and The Pink Thing gives them five. Mike says Les has got the fuel carnet and Les says he gave it back to Marcus and The Pink Thing says Marcus has gone off to see if the bus has arrived. The fuelling guys stand around guarding their remaining tee-shirts. Skippy Grobbit says he‟s found a cracked exhaust pipe in my aircraft and he‟ll change it before we go. Marcus comes back at just about the same moment The Pink Thing remembers he‟s had the carnet in his own pocket all the time. Skippy Grobbit says the new exhaust pipes are under about fourteen tons of spares in the Islander and he‟ll change it in the morning. And suddenly, we‟re ready to go. The Pitts‟s are tied down in a quiet line, fuelledup and smoked-up ready for the next display tomorrow. We clamber into the bus, sweaty and dusty and tired. My right arm still aches. But it went well, this afternoon. And I‟d never really have enjoyed working in a bank.

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BRIEFING! The way it used to be

It is a nice day for an air show. The sun is shining. The wind is ten knots crowdright, slightly off-crowd. Our team – the Rothmans Aerobatic Team – have the day fully planned. The aircraft are fuelled-up, smoked-up and pre-flght inspected; the aerobatic sequence cards are in place on the instrument panels and the altimeters are set and double-checked. We have time to waste, nothing else to do… Might as well go to the display briefing. We arrive five minutes early and go through the usual hellos and sip the usual sheep-dip coffee. People fall into the usual categories. The young civilian participants are looking keyed-up and talking politely. The older civilian participants are talking keyed-up and looking relaxed. The young military pilots are just looking keyed-up, period. And the older military pilots are looking for crumpet, of which (as usual) there is none about. I note that there are quite a number of people at the front who are going to address us, which is usually a bad sign. The first is the guy who introduces the Boss Man. The second one is the Boss Man himself, the RAF Station Commander, who states with great sincerity that we are all ever so welcome, and that if there is anything they (the organisers) can do to help us (the participants) we have only to wiggle our little finger. I belch discreetly and Marcus, our Lead pilot, kicks my shin. We have all learned from long experience that the more effusive the welcome the more difficult it is to borrow a 3/16 AF spanner or get four gallons of diesel for the smoke system. Some sort of inverse law. We don‟t mind – after all, they‟re paying us to put on an efficient appearance, and there‟s no reason why we should arrive ill-equipped. Indeed we have a whole Britten-Norman Islander crammed to the gills with spares and engineers, so we‟re actually more likely to be able to help them than them help us. But the paradox can be confusing until you get used to it. After the Boss Man, up stands the guy who gives the weather. He is human, and makes a thing of pointing this out when he feels that his prognostication may be subject to any kind of error. If he is absolutely confident he smiles a lot, which is always a good guide.

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Then there is the air traffic man, who tells you about the runway in use and the diversion airfields and the crowd line and the noise-sensitive areas and where not to fly and where to taxi and where not to taxi. He is usually very good. Then cometh the man with whom I and the rest of the Team do not always entirely establish an immediate rapport. We operate on a different wave-length. We do not immediately see eye to eye. In fact, as he stands up there is a sort of weary resignation on both sides. He is The Man who is going to brief the Rules of the Display. Marcus mutters that he wants a hamburger – which marks him down as a man of foolhardy courage at the average airshow – but we are stuck with staying put, as the old military pilot on my right has gone to sleep and it would be cruel to disturb him. The Man opens up by going through the programme item by item - and by his manner of so doing can one read his experience of dealing with that peculiar animal, the display pilot. If he mentions each performer or team by name and seems eager to discuss timing in every detail from slot time to start time to taxi time, then two things will happen. Firstly, all the prima donnas will feel that they ought to utter their tuppence-worth and whitter on for ages about their own cares and woes; and secondly, since we are all prima donnas or we wouldn‟t be there, the rest of us go to sleep whilst the intricate negotiations of other people take place. If The Man is very wise he does not discuss times and taxiing in detail. Because we have just dealt with taxiing, and times will have been sorted out by the pros three months ago when they made the booking. (And those who are not pros will not stick to their times anyway, so the matter becomes irrelevant.) If he is very wise – which this guy is not – The Man will simply run through the programme slot by slot in a loud and challenging voice, making no mention whatsoever of the timings which are clearly printed out on the briefing sheet for all to see. By this means those who actually do have a tuppence-worth to put in get a chance to do so, whilst the rest are encouraged to keep their traps firmly shut lest The Man‟s steely glare goes straight through them and sticks four inches out of their back. This Man, of course, goes through the lot, and Marcus has gone to sleep by the time he has finished. I have swiped the girlie magazine from the old military pilot (also sleeping) and am engaged in trying to flick little balls of torn-off paper into Marcus‟es mouth when he – The Man, not Marcus – finally comes to the interesting bit. “The Rules of the Air Show”, he says gravely. I sigh. Marcus wakes up.

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“There will be no spinning below 1,500 feet”, says the Man. I stick my hand up. “There will be no flick [AKA snap - BL] manoeuvres”, says The Man. I open my mouth and Rod, our Number Two, flicks a ball of paper into it. “All aerobatic manoeuvres will be completed by 500 feet agl”, says The Man. I say: “Please sir”. The Man‟s eyes swivel round to me like a double-barrelled water pistol. We are like a couple of ancient pterodactyls preparing to defend yet again our conflicting territories. “Yes, Brian”, he says with extraordinary politeness. “Please Sir, our display contains 30 manoeuvres which incorporate 42 flicks of various sorts, and our normal base height is twenty feet.” “Ahem”, says The Man. He gives me a why-do-you-do-this-to-me? glare. After a moment he catches the eye of The Boss, and the eye of The Boss presses the usual button. The Man says plonkingly; “I-am-not-empowered-to-issue-exemptions-fromour-normal-display-rules”; and turns hurriedly to the pressing business of something else. And Marcus and I and the rest of the team are left fuming. Marcus drags me out before the smoke coming out of my ears sends the whole room into Instrument Metrological Conditions. You know, this really irritates me. These guys know – Christ, even the Boss Man knows – that a Pitts Special team performance is going to do flick manoeuvres and base at twenty feet. Hell, if it didn‟t they wouldn‟t employ us, and quite rightly. It‟s that kind of aeroplane. But they will not say it out in the open at briefing; and that really annoys me on two counts. The first is that the buck has now stopped with us. Everybody expects us to break the rules and nobody will say anything when we do. Indeed, if we obey them and perform up in the stratosphere in the tiny Pitts‟s then nobody will employ us again because we will have been nigh-on invisible. But should anything go wrong then nobody else has dirty fingers; we broke the rules and that‟s that. We even brought the matter up in briefing… Okay. That I can live with. I know, as everyone else in the game knows, that blanket minimum base heights are a stupidity and dangerous and a fool‟s paradise and a TCIC. (Thank Christ I‟m Covered.) That I can live with. But…

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The bit that really annoys me is that there are going to be some pilots at this show who have not attended hundreds of biefings, and who do not know that there is an unwritten law operating here. This is maybe their first or second display, and as far as they are concerned The Word from The Man at briefing is somewhat akin to the Holy Grail. They are planning to obey every word of the spiel themselves, and they naturally expect everyone else to do the same. So what is the first thing they are going to see? Well, the first thing they are going to see is us bottoming-out manoeuvres at twenty feet with the Rothmans Team. And then they are going to see somebody else doing the same thing in a Spitfire. And somebody else doing it in a Mustang. And somebody else in a Stampe, and somebody else… And so they are just naturally going to say to themselves that this precious briefing is nothing but a load of equestrian faeces; there go Lecomber and all these others taking no notice whatsoever, so why should I be the odd man out? There‟s no reason why I shouldn‟t bring my display down a little bit lower… And that, of course, is precisely and exactly what kills people. If you suddenly on the day bring your base height down below that to which you have practised, you will alarm yourself and your flying accuracy will lose its edge just when you can least afford it to. Note I use the word will. Not „may‟, but will. Without any shadow of doubt. Every time. I can name people it has killed over the years. And the stupid thing is that this pressure need not be there. It is perfectly reasonable to say (and pardon me if it sounds arrogant; it is not intended to be) that a professional team or solo with hundreds or even thousands of displays under their belt is entitled to come down to twenty feet while other people in different aeroplanes and with less experience are not. If it is said, then people will accept it – SO WHY CAN‟T WE BLOODY WELL SAY SO AT THE BRIEFINGS? One or two briefists do say so, of course. They state baldly that so-and-so and such-and-such are cleared down to different minima than the other participants, and then range the steely glare round the room to make sure the message has gone home. And that is all it takes. With those few words the briefing has achieved the authority it ought to have, and nobody is going to feel under pressure to bend the rules that apply to them. To those few wise briefists, thank you. And the wives and children of new display pilots thank you, too.

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This was written well over 30 years ago. I‟ve been told it was widely read in the corridors of aviation power. Be that true or not, it is fact that since then, the British Civil Aviation Authority led the world by establishing a Display Authorisation (DA) system, whereby civilian display pilots are tested annually and graded according to experience and ability – effectively, being licensed to perform certain classes of manoeuvres in certain classes of aeroplanes down to certain personal base heights. (The topmost qualification in aerobatics being Unlimited manoeuvres down to a base height of 30 feet – in reality meaning no restriction at all). This system is not perfect – no such system ever can be – but it is good. And as a sort of by-product it has largely – not completely, but largely – eliminated stupid briefings, because briefists can now say; “Fly to your DA limits‟, and that‟s that. Briefist‟s ass covered. Age and health have now retired me, kicking and screaming, from active display flying. But I confess to being proud to still be Evaluator (Examiner) # 3 on this programme.

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WHO WAS REALLY FIRST? Not all firsts may be quite as they seem

On 17 December 1903 a bicycle-maker from Dayton, Ohio named Orville Wright made the world‟s first flight at an unsung and freezing location called Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. Not a world-shattering event at the time, and definitely not one to prompt futures-buying of airline tickets. The flight lasted all of 12 seconds and covered 120 feet. By the end of that then-unsung day Orville and his brother Wilbur had completed four flights, the last (by Wilbur) making 852 feet (260m) and lasting 59 seconds. The first flights of Mankind. But were they? Er, well, no. Not so. Not by a fairly long chalk. Concentrating on heavier-than-air (in other words disregarding – with respect – balloons and airships) maybe a couple of dozen other people had already left the ground with the aid of wings. The first was Sir George Cayley in 1853 – 50 years before the Wrights. Or rather it wasn‟t Sir George himself – he having a bit more sense, not to mention being 79 years old – but his coachman, whom the good Sir George bid to climb into the vaguely canoe-shaped nacelle of his newly constructed „glider‟ and had the whole assemblage towed off the top of a hill at Brompton Dale, Yorkshire. This device did in fact glide – well, sort of, within the meaning of the act – but unsurprisingly crashed on its re-union with terra firma. The coachman was unhurt but also unhappy, as well he might have been, having just become the world‟s first test pilot without benefit of either training or flight pay. Obscurely, history does not record the poor guy‟s name, so the world‟s first fixed-wing pilot remains… anonymous. (In fact the Cayley design was not so far-fetched as it might sound. Cayley was the first to invent dihedral for lateral stability, the first to do rudimentary C of G calculations, and the first to realise that a flying machine would need movable control surfaces at least in pitch and yaw. A replica of Cayley‟s glider was created in the 1970‟s, and successfully flown behind a tow-car by legendary glider pilot Derek Piggott in 1973). Then there was Felix du Temple‟s monoplane, in France. Powered by a most ingenious lightweight steam engine of his own design, this aerodynamic monstrosity

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left the ground under its own power in 1874, albeit with the assistance of a sort of skislope run down a hill. History doesn‟t seem to record how far it flew, but by contemporary accounts not very far. It then disappeared into obscurity probably for very good reasons. But it was powered. And it did fly. And 14 years later came Clement Ader, another Frenchman with a self-designed steam engine, in his bat-like creation Eole. It is well-documented that in October 1890 this became the first machine to lift itself off level ground under its own power. However there wasn‟t a lot of power. Nor a lot, if any, control, because the flight achieved the resounding height of about a foot and continued for a whole 160 feet. But it did fly. And in fact went slightly further than Orville Wright‟s first flight… And then in the 1890‟s there came what we might call nowadays the hang-glider pioneers. These canny folk came to the conclusion that powered flight wasn‟t really a starter quite yet, all power units presently available being either too feeble, too heavy, or both. Steam engines were after all designed for railway locomotives or ships, weren‟t they…? They were right. And so the likes of Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher, Octave Chanute and others made extensive calculations about lift and above all control, then took deep breaths and threw themselves off the tops of hills to prove their theories on the way down. In many ways these were the real pioneers of flight, because they were doing the much-needed raw research. The Wright Brothers also started with gliders, and followed the experiments of the others avidly. This gaining of knowledge did not come without penalty. In 1896 the doyen of them all, Lilienthal, was killed in a glider crash – but not before achieving an incredible 2,000 glider flights. Percy Pilcher was similarly killed three years later. All these people, from Cayley onwards, have variously been dubbed „The Father of Flight‟. Flight had a lot of fathers. All of this of course in no way diminishes the deeds of the Wright brothers, who are quite correctly regarded as the real „Fathers of Flight‟. Behind their great achievement was their sheer determination. They made their own petrol engine. They made the first wind-tunnel for research. They calculated, tried things out, changed things, re-calculated, re-experimented, and just doggedly kept going until they not only had a powered aeroplane but also a reasonably controllable aeroplane. They thoroughly deserve their timeless acclaim. But they were not the first… Cut now to 14 October 1947. On this day there is an eerie b-bang over Muroc US Army Air Force Field (now Edwards Air Force Base) in California. It emanates from 46,000 feet as one Captain Charles Elwood Yeager – Chuck Yeager – flying the air-

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dropped rocket-powered Bell X1 becomes officially the first person in the world to exceed the speed of sound. Mach One. But was he the first past Mach 1? From 1903 to 1947 is just 44 years – an incredibly short time-span for the aviation progress compressed therein. In 1903 the four-cylinder Wright engine produced maybe 12 hp. Now, nurtured by the combustible fuel of two World Wars, V12 aero engines are producing 2,000 hp plus, and huge multi-row radials well over 3,000 hp. Aeroplanes are universally made of metal, weigh from several to a great many tonnes, and are capable in some cases of speeds getting on to 500 mph. And there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Even the great visionary, Cayley, would have watched with his jaw dropped. And yet even these vast phalanxes of aircraft are already doomed. Because there is a new kid on the block – the jet engine. Invented during WWII – indeed, initially just before WWII – the jet is still young, but long past kindergarten. Speeds are inevitably going to rise further in this new manifestation. But… Even in the piston era, these increasing speeds have already caused new problems. Problems which reared their dragons‟ heads in the latter half of WWII, and were both baffling and frequently fatal. The Head Dragon‟s name is Shockwave. Start an engine in a stationary aircraft and the sound waves expand in a concentric circle like ripples on a pond, these ripples all travelling at the speed of sound. However, fly the device at 200 mph and the ripples in front are compressed by that 200 mph. The wavelength in front gets a bit shorter so the sound frequency increases, while the waves behind get longer and the frequency decreases. Hence „eeeyoouw…‟ Doppler Effect. Not a problem. Until the Head Dragon rears its swede at Mach 1. At Mach 1 you outrun the sound-waves and so crush them up into a badtempered shockwave. This is the sound barrier – because it is, quite literally, a barrier. The drag-rise is enormous and the huge instant pressure change from low in front of the shock to easily twice as high behind it produces the supersonic bang. Straightforward, yes? Well of course, no. Airflow around any aircraft is not all moving at the same speed. Wherever the slipstream has to go round a curve it has to speed up (which of course we have to be grateful for because that‟s how wings produce lift). And so some regions of airflow might be going supersonic while the craft as a whole might still be subsonic…

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This is the transonic region – generally from about Mach 0.85 to Mach 1. And this is where the Head Dragon breathes brimstone. Shockwaves disrupt the airflow big-time. And until scientists found solutions in heavy wing sweepback and other exotica, the transonic region was all too apt to rustle up a shockwave at the fastest point of the airflow over a straight wing. And where was this fastest point? Well, roughly along the line of the mainspar. Instantaneously dumping 90 per cent of all wing lift. And since much the same was happening on the tailplane, robbing the elevators of authority, the total effect was more than slightly disconcerting. Some piston fighters of late WWII could achieve this unhappy state of affairs in a dive, rendering a number of terrified pilots unwitting – and sadly very short-lived – pioneers of transonic flight. If they could have accelerated further, up to Mach 1, the shocks would have moved aft to the trailing edges and the wings would have worked again – but they didn‟t have enough power to do that. And with the ground rushing up there wasn‟t always time to slow down out of the transonic region… And so we come to one Hans Guido Mutke. In 1945 Mutke is one of the Luftwaffe‟s elite fighter pilots entrusted with the world‟s first operational jet fighter, the Messerschmitt 262. Diving in combat he well exceeds Herr Willi Messerschmitt‟s designated Velocity Never Exceed (VNE) – and strange things start to happen. Very quickly. The 262 commences to buffet so violently that rivets pop out of the airframe. Many rivets. Mutke wishes most fervently to pull out of the dive, but the elevators no longer respond. By some divine intervention he tries rolling back the trim-wheel, which in the 262 lowers the leading edge of the tailplane. Still accelerating, the aircraft starts to pull out – at which point the buffeting suddenly ceases and the world‟s first jet fighter becomes stable again and answers its controls. Mutke keeps pulling and belatedly thinks to slam the throttles shut. This flames out both engines but he is far beyond caring about minor details. As he recovers the dive and the speed reduces the airframe again abandons all sanity and resumes its imitation of a maniac road-drill. Mutke resigns himself to the hereafter… But as the speed falls further the shaking stops. And he successfully lands his tattered aeroplane minus a remarkable number of rivets and all of his bravado. Later it will be conjectured that Mutke may well have passed through the evil transonic region and achieved the relative smoothness of supersonic flight. That he was perhaps the very first homo sapiens to travel through dragon territory and return to mankind. Was he? Of course I do not know. But…

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And there is yet another contender. The Bell X1 is not the only experimental programme operating at Muroc Field in Nevada in the autumn of 1947. Also present is North American, who are testing their new XP-86, which will become the highly successful F-86 Sabre. Bell and North American personnel might mingle of an evening in Pancho‟s famous bar near the air base, but they are human beings and so there is a certain rivalry. Which rivalry is not exactly reduced by an edict from the Secretary of the US Air Force that ON NO ACCOUNT must the XP-86 break the sound barrier before the Bell X1. North American might seethe – but seethe is about all they can do, being as how both the X1 and the Sabre are Air Force programmes and feeding off Air Force funding… Enter one George Welch, chief test pilot of the XP-86. Now at the ripe old age of 29, Welch is the possessor of a chestful of medals from WWII and also a wry sense of humour. Legend has it that very early on in the testing of the XP-86 – and two weeks before Yeager‟s record – Welch, with the connivance of his chase-plane pilot, climbs up to 35,000 feet, enters a 40 deg dive at full power, and produces a most impressive supersonic bang which rattles the windows and teeth of the denizens of Pancho‟s bar. This was most definitely not part of his announced test profile, and North American – if they knew about it, which surely they must have – made a point of studying the ceiling and whistling innocently. Welch then, so the same legend goes, repeated the unauthorised performance on October 14 – just 20 minutes before Jeager dropped from the air-launch B-36 and lit up the X1‟s rocket for his official Mach 1 run. Apocryphal? Well, I don‟t know, I wasn‟t there. But plenty of reliable witnesses were… Did Air Force officialdom know? Again I don‟t know – but if they did, they certainly kept it under their security hats. In those days at Muroc the breakfast eggs over-easy were Top Secret, and it was a considerable time before even news of Yeager‟s „official‟ record was finally released. Was the XP-86 actually capable of Mach I? Well, the answer to that is certainly yes. Just one month later Muroc‟s USAF „Radar Theodolite‟ formally tracked the XP86 over two authorised runs, one at Mach 1.02 and the other at Mach 1.04. So were there two b-bangs 20 minutes apart over the desert on 14 October 1947…?

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WHO INVENTED AEROBATICS? Of a very special breed of pioneers

I have devoted, wisely or otherwise, the majority of a working lifetime to the art of aerobatics. And I‟ve always pondered the question – who actually invented aerobatics? Oh, of course it was no one person, obviously. Any more than any one person invented the aeroplane. But there were certain pioneers who started the hare running… Well, it is now about 100 years since those pioneers flew the first manoeuvres we today recognise as aerobatics. And if I‟d ever been tempted to think of myself as innovative in an aeroplane, I have only to look at their frontiersmanship to crumble any such hubris. Me? – I was a kitten curled up by the fireside compared to these guys. First, you have to visualise their machinery a century ago. For starters, for the most part there were no ailerons. Okay, the likes of Henri Farman, Glenn Curtis, Bristol and Shorts were just beginning to introduce these strange flipper things on the wingtips, but for the rest, roll control was achieved – or not quite achieved – by warping the wings. The Wright bothers did this first in 1903 by using a sort of shoulder-yoke. If you leaned (say) left, various wires warped the left wing trailing edges up and the right wing trailing edges down. This, needless to say, did not exactly improve the structure, but it did work within the meaning of the act. And established the dubious norm for the next decade or so for what might loosely be termed “lateral control‟. Well, you weren‟t gonna fully roll a wing-warping aeroplane, that was for sure. Or was it? We‟ll come to it. But a measure of wing-warping‟s efficacy – or lack of same – might be that several aviation pioneers regarded it as a means of keeping the wings level at all times, not for banking into turns – oh dear me, no. Sensible pilots turned by means of rudder-power and strenuously avoided banking at all. Banking could lead to sideslips and who knew where they would end up…? In fact, back then, you could even say that banked turns were the source of aerobatics – a word which in any case did not exist at the time. Banked turns were for stunters.

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That period passed quite quickly, but this was an era when crowds would turn out in thousands just to watch an aeroplane fly, never mind bank. And most pilots sat on their aircraft, not in them … And then there was the matter of the strength and power of the things. Any engineer could certainly have made the airframes stronger and therefore safer. In fact totally safe, inasmuch as they would never have left the ground at all, being too heavy for the typical 35 – 50 hp engines of the day. So early aircraft were light, flimsy and flexible. And early aircraft stress calculations were… well, early. But there‟s always going to be someone. Someone who thinks; „Hey, we can do more than this‟. In 1913 there were a handful of such people around the world. People who – by coincidence or otherwise – mostly flew wing-warpers. Some of whom had already achieved steep banks which had the crowds paying out good mazuma to witness them. And of course these legends vied with each other… So okay, maybe you couldn‟t roll a wing-warper. But perhaps you could pitch it. Maybe if you dived to maximum speed of a dizzy 80 mph, then pulled back… well, maybe a man might go right round in a vertical circle in the sky. Maybe… The Russian Pyotr Nikolayervich Nesterov was the first person to put his life where his mouth was. Born in 1887, Nesterov embarked on a military career, and turned to military aviation. Qualifying in 1912, by May 1913 he was the flight leader of a section in Kiev, undertaking – almost unbelievably – night formation flying. Known as a thoughtful young man, or alternatively a bloody idiot, night formation was not enough for Nesterov. He decided that if he kept pulling back in his Nieuport IV –a wing-warping tractor monoplane powered by a 70 hp (maybe) Gnome rotary engine – he could indeed fly a vertical circle. And so he did – after a mighty dive to gain speed – at Syretzek Aerodrome on 9 Sept 1913. The world‟s first loop. Generally regarded as the invention of aerobatics. For which he was placed under 10 days close arrest for „risking government property‟. Only to have that order rescinded two days later and being promoted instead, the government having clocked that there‟d been a considerable crowd at Syretzek, and that Nesterov had just become a modern Russian folk hero. Then there was the Frenchman Adolphe Pegoud. A truly fabulous character. Pegoud looped a specially strengthened Bleriot monoplane on 21 Sept 1913, 12 days after Nesterov. But to students of aerobatics it wasn‟t that which really distinguished him. It was what he did before that… Born in 1889, he gained his pilot‟s Brevet on 7 March 1913, following his French military service. Note the date. Less than a week later he joined Louis Bleriot‟s

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company at Buc, south of Paris, starting as a mechanic and soon becoming both an instructor and test pilot. Very soon. On 13 May ‟13 he demonstrated the Bleriot XI in front of the visiting King of Spain. From shiny new licence to test and display pilot within two months… Pegoud wanted a stronger aircraft and a stronger harness, so Bleriot doubled the bracing wires on his demo machine and devised the first lap-and-shoulder harness in history. Because Pegoud was actually planning to fly upside-down. Which he did on 1 Sept „13, after rolling to the inverted – in a 50hp wing-warper Bleriot XI… Records are hazy about this, but my guess is he started a sort of wingover and at the apex kept rolling and pushed instead of pulled. It worked – sort of… But it certainly frightened Pegoud. So he thought of a different way of becoming inverted. At height he slowed the Bleriot up straight and level, cut the engine – and then pushed the control-wheel to the forward stop. The nose plunged down. And as it passed through the downvertical Pegoud – with gritted teeth and braced shoulders – still kept pushing. Until he ended up level-inverted at the bottom of the world‟s first outside half-loop. Followed by an inverted pass for about 30 secs and then pulling round in the world‟s first positive half-loop. Would I have done that? Well, I have done it, or modern variations thereof, several thousands of times. But would I have done it for the first time, in 1913? I‟d like to think I might have, but… No. Kitten curls up again on hearthrug. Pegoud went on very quickly to perform rudimentary stall-turns (hammerheads), tail-slides – and of course, shortly afterwards, the loop. After his previous activities I can‟t quite see why a simple loop proved such a psychological barrier… But then of course I wasn‟t flying a 50 hp wing-warping Bleriot in France in 1913. Nor indeed a Curtiss biplane in America. Like the legendary Lincoln Beachey. Born in 1887, Beachey‟s first job was with an American dirigible pioneer, where he rapidly progressed from dogsbody to airship pilot in about 1905 at the age of 17. After a period of doing that he decided that fixed-wing was the way to go, and went to the Glenn Curtiss Flying School in 1909. With a remarkable similarity to Pegoud‟s career he almost immediately went onto the exhibition circuit, and in 1911 and ‟12 performed more shows than any other US pilot. One of his first specialities was the „Death Dive‟ – a steep (possibly vertical) dive ending in a low-level pull-out and a fly-by with his arms outstretched from the controls. Easily visible to the crowd because there was no cockpit on his Curtiss D

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111 biplane pusher. In the D 111 – a machine with elevators both fore and aft – he evolved several other manoeuvres. History is contradictory as to what they actually were, but they pulled in the crowds. At one point he hit a fence in Illinois and destroyed the front elevator. He sawed off the remains, flew the next flight anyway, and was “pleasantly surprised” when the Curtiss flew better, not worse. (Glenn Curtiss took the hint and produced the „Headless Pusher‟ – no more front elevator). Beachey, always immaculate in business suit and diamond tie-pin, flew the first full loop in America at North Island Air Station, San Diego, on 25 Nov 1913 – two months after Pegoud. And then went on to a quite staggering career. For 1914 he produced basically a clipped-off and strengthened Curtiss pusher biplane powered by an 80 hp Gnome rotary – a sort of Pitts Special of its day, with a climb-rate of over 1,100 fpm – which he named the „Little Looper‟. In (on) this machine he reportedly flew more than 1,000 loops, many outside loops, spins, and also (maybe) even the first slow rolls. He certainly flew 80 loops in succession on one occasion. He also found that people wouldn‟t pay to go into a stadium if they could watch loops from outside it, so evolved a „race‟ scenario between him and racing driver Barney Oldfield which was so low the good folk had to pay to get to see it. Several witnesses swore they saw Beachey tap a wing-tip on Oldfield‟s head… These were the first aerobatic aces. Born within two years of each other, none of them reached 30 years old. Nesterov sealed his position as Russian Hero a year later in WWI, when he became the first pilot in the world to destroy an enemy aircraft in the air – which he did by ramming it. Which was possibly not a great decision, because he also destroyed himself in the process. (Nonetheless his legend survived him – there were no less than 270 recorded ram attacks by Russian Air Force pilots in WWll). Pegoud died in 1915 in air combat, shot through the heart. Beachey died in 1914, aerobating a monoplane of his own design from which the wings departed during a pull-through Pegoud-like manoeuvre. These guys and a few others actually invented aerobatics. Would I have had the guts? I‟d like to think so. But I very much doubt it.

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SNOWBALL OVER THE EQUATOR Two small switches assume great importance

Horror can come in many forms. Right now horror consists of two innocent-looking switches on the Pitts‟ instrument panel. They are up – On. Christ! Adrenaline floods my body as I snap them Off. And wonder if I have just killed myself. A mile below is the South China Sea, extending to the horizon in every direction. The sky is brilliant blue, dotted with fair-weather cu and the occasional tropical cumulo-nimbus which we have to fly around. In the entire firmament the only sign of Mankind‟s existence is the sprawled gaggle of five dots ahead of me – four more Pitts Specials and our Islander mother-ship. This watery emptiness has been our world for the last two hours, and will continue to be so for roughly the same again until we make landfall. When we eventually land at Supadio-Pontianak in Borneo we will have flown the longest-ever transit in the history of the Rothmans Aerobatic Team – indeed, possibly the longest flights of any Pitts Specials anywhere in the world. Except for the two switches. The two switches which mean that Blue Four – me – is now no longer at all sure of making that landfall. I look down again at the South China Sea. Very shark-infested, I‟ve been told. Wonderful water temperature for them. Oh, good. Or oh, not so very good if the engine quits and you have to bale out into this sea. Baling out is the preferred option to ditching a Pitts, but it is a pauper‟s choice. Firstly a man will be trying not to drown under the collapsed parachute while he scrabbles to inflate his life jacket. Secondly he will be thrashing around again to un-clip the dinghy from his harness and find the lanyard to inflate the damn thing. Not high on anyone‟s list of fun-activities – and still less with the local shark population eyeing you up as hors d‟oeuvre while you are thus occupied. Those two bloody, bloody switches. And my own bloody, bloody stupidity…. Sometime around about now we are flying across the Equator. Even at 6,000 feet in a rumbling open cockpit the temperature is about 25 C.

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Yet suddenly I feel cold. In the nature of the beast I will not know my fate for a while. Maybe an hour-anda-half, an hour-and-three-quarters, maybe a bit longer – or maybe, just maybe, not at all. My destiny is now in the hands of the Gods. I have ample, in fact all too ample, time to reflect. Most uncomfortably. We – the Rothmans Team – are on a display tour of Malaysia. In the past seven weeks we have flown 60 displays on the West Malaysian peninsula – the old Malaya – and now we are transiting from Johore Bahru in West Malaysia to the vast island of Borneo. Borneo is divided into two nations – Indonesia in the south and west, and East Malaysia in the north. From Johore Bahru to Supadio-Pontianak in Indonesian Borneo is the shortest route from West Malaysia. It is still, depending on the wind, roughly a four-hour flight across the South China Sea at the speed of a Pitts Special or an Islander. And four hours is wholly impossible for a standard Pitts S2A Special. The internal – and only – fuel tank holds under two hours worth of fuel if you fly it to a dry tank at best-range speed. And so we have these overload tanks, which we rarely use. The tank goes into the front cockpit and is secured by a complicated system of strops and clamps. It holds another 25-odd gallons of fuel and thus more than doubles our range. You climb into the rear cockpit behind it and make a most serious resolution not to light up your pipe. But these overload tanks are not foolproof. They do not feed the engine. Instead they feed the main fuel tank. So the idea is that you fly for a while – say, 30 minutes – then switch on the dual electric pumps to top up the main tank from the overload. The theory is that every 30 minutes you pump for five minutes to keep the main tank replete. Hence the two switches. You switch the pumps on, watch the two transparent fuel-lines routed through the cockpit to make sure the bubbles start moving – indicating that fuel is pumping as advertised – then switch the pumps off when the main tank is full. All fine and dandy. What can go wrong? Sitting at 6,000 feet over the South China Sea, I think about what can go wrong. And in the equatorial heat I reflect grimly on snowballs. How they expand if you roll them downhill… The first handful of snow is this. You‟re filling up a main tank from an auxiliary tank – an auxiliary tank which does not sport the luxury of a gauge. So the obvious thing is to watch the main tank fuel-gauge and see when that‟s full. Right? Right. In theory. But…

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But the fuel gauge on the early Pitts S2A is a thing which looks like a squat saltcellar on top of the cowling. It works by a float driving a very coarse screw-thread mechanism which revolves an indicator inside the salt-cellar, said indicator being duly calibrated from E (empty) to F (full). Crude but effective? No. Just crude. Not effective. The snowball just rolled down the hill a little way and got bigger. The problem is that this gauge sticks, especially at about half-fuel. If you could tap it with your hand you‟d get a reading – but you can‟t tap it with your hand because it is six feet in front of the windscreen. So you tap it with the aeroplane – roll inverted for a moment, pull and push a few G. The gauge then wakes up, recalls itself to its duty, and settles to a roughly accurate reading. Except you can‟t do that with the overload tank in place. The overload tank renders you non-aerobatic. If you roll upside-down or push G there is a fighting chance of the overload tank departing the airframe, maybe taking important bits with it. Such as the pilot‟s head. The snowball just got bigger again. So the main-tank fuel gauge just sticks and stays stuck. So you switch on the pumps for five minutes every half-hour and hope for the best. When I joined the Team I was told it had always worked in the past… I am sure it has worked now. Except that I switched the pumps on about half an hour ago and forgot to switch the bloody things off again. So they have been running for some 30 minutes and will certainly have filled the main tank. And when the main tank is full, what does it do if it keeps receiving fuel? It vents to atmosphere, like any fuel tank in the world. And in the Pitts the vent-pipe is underneath the fuselage where the pilot can‟t see the white stream of departing petrol vapour…. The snowball just got very much bigger. It is little comfort now to realise that this is a classical snowball indeed – take one bit of dubious engineering design, add to it a minor system (the fuel gauge) which is known to be untrustworthy, then stir in a dose of good old human error. A confluence of evils as old as aviation… So now, thanks to the two switches and my own stupidity, I have no idea how much fuel this aeroplane contains. Enough to reach Pontianak? Enough make it to the coast before the engine stops? I simply do not know. The South China Sea looks very hostile.

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My thumb hovers over the transmit button. If you live in a formation team and you have a problem you should tell your Leader. But tell him what? „Sorry Boss, but I‟ve chucked an unknown quantity of fuel overboard and don‟t know if I‟ll make it‟. Fat lot of good that will do. We‟re already past the Point of No Return. Supadio-Pontianiak is the nearest aerodrome on the planet. We‟re already flying at best-range speed. And there is nothing whatsoever the Boss or anyone else can do to materialise fuel in the tank of an idiot. I could ask RAT Two or RAT Three to drop back and formate on me, then switch on the pumps again and get them to tell me if I‟m venting fuel. But again, so what? I know I‟ll be venting fuel after a minute or two. I don‟t need my dear friends to tell me that. If they could tell me how much I‟ve already vented that would be of great interest – but they do not have X-ray eyes and cannot see into my tanks any more than I can. So no, there is nothing whatsoever useful that I can do. I can only sit here in this droning Pitts Special and wait. It will either make Pontianak or it won‟t. In two hours time I will either be sipping a beer in Pontianak or gasping in a dinghy wondering about the (possibly non-existent) Indonesian Air Sea Rescue Service. Or, quite simply, drowned. Two hours can sometimes be a very, very long time… In the event it was not two hours, but one hour forty-vive minutes – we‟d picked up a slight tailwind which we had no way of knowing about, this being long before the days of GPS. I decline to discuss how much fuel I had left after taxiing in at Pontianak – suffice it to say there was not a lot of point in trying to re-fill your lighter by holding it under the gascolator drain. In the heat of the tropical night I thought again about snowballs. And vowed never again to take any aircraft system at face value. To instead to always ask myself; „What can I do to make this go wrong?‟ So often there will be something… I guess it worked over the years. Here I am. Still here.

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A RUNWAY HORRIBLY CLOSE The miss-setting of a pointer can terminate a life

I push the Pitts round the outside loop. Arcing over the top the horizon rises up from under the nose in that weird unnatural way it does when you‟re under negative G. I glance in to check the top-height – 900 feet, which surprises me. 900 feet is on the low side of lovely, but high enough and better than I expected – so I keep pushing. Landscape scrolls up the windscreens and then the Leicester runway fills the gap between cowling and top wing, swelling rapidly. I push on, past the downvertical, past the point-of-no-return… And then abruptly realise, with a certain cold objectivity, that I did NOT top at 900 feet. That I am in fact 230 feet lower than I thought I was. That I topped at around 650 and kept pushing. The runway is suddenly horribly close… It started off as a fairly normal day. I was separated from the rest of the Team for some reason I now disremember, and had over-nighted at Leicester. The other three had flown on to Farnborough for the Farnborough Air Show, and this morning I was to join them there. Not exactly onerous. Yawning, I pushed the S2A out of the Leicester hangar into the morning sunshine. The aggressive – back then – hunch of the Pitts S2-A seemed to me as a shark among the drab minnows of the basking Cessnas and Cherokees. And above all it had what I fancied was the ultimate badge of honour writ large down the sides – ROTHMANS. This was an aeroplane of the Rothmans Aerobatic Team. Of which I was the pilot. My quiet pride knew no bounds. No way I could know that such hubris was shortly to receive a terrifying comeuppance. No way I could know that on this day my foolish pride would be shattered forever by a tiny detail. I just went my happy way. I pre-flighted the aircraft – all fine. Fuel – full. Front cockpit – cushions and my meagre overnight bag lashed down firmly by the front straps, because even then I had an almost pathological fear of loose articles. Front cockpit cover – a curved thin aluminium drain-cover which effectively sealed off the front cockpit and turned the

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two-seat S2-A into a single-seater, bestowing a marked improvement in performance by removing the drag of the gaping front hole – firmly Dzus-fastened in place. Irritatingly, also Dzused in place was the front windscreen. Normally, when „soloizing‟ the aeroplane for display the front screen would be taken off and left on the usual detritus pile of front-seat cushions, overnight bags, parachutes etc which always decorated the perimeter of wherever the Rothmans Team happened to be parked on any aerodrome anywhere in the world. On this day the front screen was Dzused in place. The sight of it offended my eye as I looked at the aeroplane – there it was, a totally unnecessary pimple on the otherwise lovely lines of my beloved Rothmans Blue Four. Bloody thing. For a moment I thought about taking it off. Five minutes work to unfasten and restow everything, and in any case always a slightly tetchy matter, because things like crescent-shaped front windscreens take on an amazing likeness to a lozenge-shaped bar of soap when you try to stash them in stasis under the front cockpit five-point harness. Did I feel that strongly about it…? From the clubhouse wafted the tantalising aroma of bacon and eggs. I looked at the Pitts, mildly marred by the presence of the front windscreen, and made one of life‟s small command decisions. Thought “F*** it, it‟s only a transit flight. Go and have breakfast…” So I shrugged, and went and had breakfast. It was only a transit flight. As I ate my bacon and eggs the clock ticked down towards my probable death. Jesu! Christ! I am MUCH too low. In seconds the Leicester runway has become much too big in the windscreen. I‟ve no options left here but PUSH…

The breakfast made me burp. Possibly it was the local mushrooms. I walked out to the Pitts and strapped in. Burped again. Fired up, went through my checks whjile the mighty – it seemed to me then – Lycoming stormed around my ears, warming up. Trim – yeh. Prop – yeh, to come. Pumps – off. Fuel – full. Gauges… wait; think. Engine gauges good, but altimeter…? Leicester 470 ft elevation, Farnborough 240, set altimeter at + plus 230 ft so it will be right at destination – the habit of a lifetime, combining my faint distrust of pressure-settings as delivered by ATC coupled with my total distrust of heavily-aerobated altimeters to exhibit much more than a nodding acquaintance between pressure-setting and indicated height. Hatches – secure. Harness – secure. Ready. “Leicester, Rothmans Blue Four taxi depart”.

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“Blue Four, taxi to hold for 28, QFE 998, QNH 1014”. The runway is coming up. God! Save me! I don‟t want to die like this… “To hold 28, 1014, Blue Four”. I taxied to the hold. Did the run-up, did the checks. “Blue Four ready depart”. “Blue Four cleared enter 28, backtrack and take-off. And could you do us a couple of manoeuvres before you leave?” All display pilots are egotists or they wouldn‟t be there. And in all display pilots‟ tiny minds – admit it or not – there is a flattery button. An aerodrome actually asking you to break all their own rules and beat the place up and be admired by all the watchers… well, that presses the flattery button... The Pitts is shuddering under the negative G. I am going to die here, I am about to die… Never mind the flattery. My mind ticked over in the windy, open-cockpit thrustle of the Lycoming. My airman‟s brain said self-brief as you always do, boy. I‟ve got full fuel and that bloody front windscreen on so I‟ll lose energy. So I‟ll do the first three manoeuvres of my normal solo routine, but add 300 ft to my normal start of-dive-in height to make sure I‟m Velocity Never Exceed plus 15 knots before pulling up into the first manoeuvre. So: Torque roll… half-reverse Cuban with flicks (check topheight passing 1,000 ft)… outside loop (check top-height minimum 850)… finish the loop, roll out, rock the wings, and go. Sensible, yes? Unusual weight and drag – duly considered. Okay… So went the brief. The careful brief. I pressed the button and said; “Blue Four ready depart and short display”. “Blue Four clear depart and display”. I taxied out, reviewed the brief in my mind for a few seconds while I lined up on the runway, then opened the throttle and did my usual half-roll on take-off. As I rolled I was now 92 seconds from my closest ever brush with death. I climbed to 1,500 feet, tipped in on the B axis towards the „crowd‟, achieved VNE plus mumble-mumble, and pulled up into the torque roll. One of my better ones – it came back maybe two whole turns, sliding down into the smoke I‟d left on the way up. Yeah! Way to live…!

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Bottom a gentle pull-out at 20 feet. Now the half-reverse Cuban. Left four-point roll on the up-45 line, one-and-a-half flick right, stabilise for a moment on the inverted up45, check top-height… Yea! Bouncing to 1050 feet! Going good! The full-fuel weight and the drag of the front screen defeated by my forethought in getting a bit more energy to start with… I pulled round the back of the half-reverse Cuban. Bottomed at 50 feet. Rolled inverted and pushed up into the outside loop. Topped the loop passing 900 feet so perfectly self-cleared to carry on pushing through the down-arc. Did so push and passed beyond the down-vertical, where all your escape-options and behind you and you are utterly committed to pushing on… And then, and only then, remembered that the altimeter was set for Farnborough, not for Leicester. So I wasn‟t going good – far from it. I wasn‟t conserving energy – far from it. I was simply 230 feet lower than I thought I was. I had topped an outside loop at… oh, hell, screw the maths at this moment… somewhere about 650 feet and then kept pushing… Man! The runway! Just PUSH… I pushed. Memory says I felt the stick hitting the forward stop, but memory may be friable. Certainly I recorded a negative figure on the G-meter which prompted a major inspection of the airframe, and caused the Pitts factory to state that this was so far outside normal parameters that they could not offer comment. Years later, I have little to comment either. It was my fault. I deliberately miss-set the altimeter in the first place, failed to rectify it during my precious pre-aerobatic briefing, then topped it off by failing to notice over two whole manoeuvres that things were going altogether too well for a heavy S2-A with the front screen on. Mea definitely culpa. They told me my fin missed the runway by ten feet that morning. The most impressive low-level push-out anyone had ever seen. Yeah, well, it would have been. The only things I can say are that I know of no-one else who ever pushed a Pitts S2A round from a top height of 670 feet. And that I never did it again…

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ARMSTRONG’S GHOST Not all phantoms concentrate on Halloween

The first time it happened, it happened to me. It was an interesting experience which enabled me to confirm the ancient adage that adrenaline is in fact coloured brown. I was on at 1600, at the peak of the show. I dived in on the B axis, pulled to the vertical, slammed round the half-roll, shifted my eyes from sideways to forwards as I hit the lomcovak… And came face-to-face with a drab-coloured 1918 Sopwith Camel upside-down fifty feet in front of my nose. For a split-second I could see every detail: the faintly hazy trail of burnt castor oil; the pilot‟s helmeted head looking up from the cockpit; the vision cutout in the top of the centre section… And then I hit it. Nothing else I could do. I didn‟t see the impact because of course I did the heroic thing – shut my eyes and thought “Shiit!” – but hit it I did, there not being too many other options available. There was this horrible crunch and… Only there wasn‟t a horrible crunch. There wasn‟t anything. Whilst outsideflicking into the lomcovak I went straight through this Sopwith Camel and didn‟t feel a thing. No crunch, no impact, no instant flash of regret about not paying the gas bill, nothing. Just me doing an entire lomcovac followed by several turns of an outside flat spin with my eyes tight shut and for all I know my fingers poked firmly in my ears. (Last-ditch emergency drill when some small contretemps begins to look slightly inevitable). Afterwards, of course, people were sceptical. Amazing what a narrow-eyed, steely-minded, head-shaking bunch of cynics we have in display aviation. Air Traffic were icily reasonable about it. They pointed out that (a) they had no Sopwith Camel talking to them, (b) the reason they had no Sopwith Camel talking to them was because there was no Sopwith Camel in the display and (c) the reason there was no Sopwith Camel in the display was because there was no Sopwith Camel currently airworthy anywhere in Britain or indeed the whole of Europe. They then sniffed my breath, seemed surprised at encountering nothing but the delicate effluvia of airshow hamburger, and politely pointed out that I was taking up floorspace they required for other purposes.

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The Air Accident Investigation Branch were no better, declining to take any action on the perfectly piffling grounds that they expect to have an accident provided for them before they can investigate it. I, having signally failed in this prime requirement – although the dry-cleaners might think differently about it – was definitely not entitled to the service. Although, they enquired, are you quite sure you‟re feeling all right in yourself…? I left them, discouraged, and on leaden feet trudged to the very last resort, the final refuge you seek when all realistic hope of action on an air safety matter is gone. The Civil Aviation Authority accordingly shuffled me around a number of nameless empires and finally parked me on their Chief Necromancer, who gave me a nice cup of tea, a brain-scan, and various Stanine tests. I was horrified to hear him pronounce that I was fit to fly an airliner, but he seemed to feel that this was some sort of recommendation, and released me with a rather disappointed look in his eye. Of course the crux of the problem – or did I forget to mention this? – was the fact that nobody else had seen the damn Camel. I mean, naturally the first thing I did after landing was rush up to the nearest group of display pilots, gibbering about Did They See That and Where Was The Wreckage? And they‟d just sort of looked at me squiggly-eyed and announced that they‟d seen no such thing as a Sopwith Camel. Hadn‟t seen one for years. And especially they hadn‟t seen one swanning around in my display box at the time I screwed up that lomcovak and came down in that outside flat spin for four-and-a-half turns. Sure you haven‟t been pushing too much negative g, old chap, they asked… So in the end, of course, a bloke rather has to leave it. If the pilots haven‟t seen it and the crowd hasn‟t seen it and the commentator hasn‟t seen it and Air Traffic hasn‟t seen it and the AAIB don‟t want to know and the CAA think you ought to be an airline pilot – well, it doesn‟t take an Einstein to work out that what you have is a faint case of credibility gap, and that you‟d better shut your mouth before somebody sends for the smiling gents in the white coats. After all, everybody‟s entitled to the occasional hallucination. Keeps a chap on his toes. With hindsight, there was in fact a clue at the time in the shape of Dickie Badd. Dickie flies a Pitts and happened to be watching me at the critical moment – no doubt in the hope of picking up a few useful tips on how to go directly into an inadvertent four-turn inverted flat spin from the apex of a lomcovak – and he remarked afterwards that he thought I ought to look at my exhaust gaskets. I said politely that he ought to look at his tailwheel, just by way of keeping the conversation going, but he said no, he reckoned my engine sounded a bit funny, sort of flat and crackly or maybe a bit hissing, as it were, if I knew what he meant. Naturally I hadn‟t the faintest

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idea what he meant, but figured he was either trying to wind me up – and I agree there is nothing funnier that the sight of a hot sweaty display pilot poking around an even hotter engine bay looking for some snag that doesn‟t exist, always providing of course that it is some other display pilot – or he‟d merely heard my teeth chattering over the engine noise from 1,000 feet, which from the way I‟d felt at the time seemed entirely plausible. So I didn‟t think anything of it. I should‟ve, of course. Nothing else happened for a week, until the Pigging Bill Air Show. There, Nic Voreman was flying the Zlin. I watching him as he took off, climbed up, and then dived in to start. As his smoke came on I heard this sharp hissing crackle, just for a moment – and then he pulled away wildly, wobbled around the sky for a few seconds like a goldfish who has just had the plug pulled out of its bowl, and finally gave up the whole thing and landed, executing in the process a passable imitation of the same goldfish having now been dropped on to the carpet and not liking it very much. I went over to him as he stopped, and stood around looking sympathetic. He shut down, climbed out wearing a complexion the colour of a plate of cold baby food, and slithered off the wing to land in a jellified heap on the grass. “(Expletive deleted)!” he panted. “Did you… Jesus, did you (expletive deleted) see that…?” I said gently that no, I hadn‟t actually seen it. Then added casually; “Biplane, was it?” “(Expletive deleted)!” he said; “…‟kin right! Did you see…?” “Er, no, not exactly. Um… Sopwith Camel, was it, by any chance?” “(Expletive deleted)!” “Yeah, thought so. Right in front of you?” “Too (deleted) right! I hit the (deleted) thing! He was right there in front of me! Rolling! Right (deleted) there! Couldn‟t do a thing! Went straight into him…!” I listened to him sympathetically as he continued expleting. I felt very sorry for him: I was an expert on what it feels like to collide with itinerant Sopwith Camels, and what it feels like is most unpleasant. Furthermore, I also knew that he was about to join the Club of the Disbelieved Display Pilots. As the founder and hitherto only member of this club it was nice to have company, but all the same I did feel sorry for the poor soul. Still, he would have one consolation – viz; that he wasn‟t totally disbelieved. Not by everybody. It might not prove to be the hugest help in the world, but for what it was worth, I believed him.

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Because I‟d heard the engine, just for that instant. And if you‟ve ever been privileged to hear that hissing, snarling, crackle it is not a sound you forget. No, you don‟t. The sound of a 1918 130 hp Clerget rotary engine is absolutely distinctive. In fact, I was wrong about one thing, and that was the Club of the Disbelieved Display Pilots. Because, as it turned out, the Camel had only been cutting its teeth on Nic and me; over the next few weeks it really got down to it good, to the extent where no aviator in the display game could ignore it. The day after Pigging Bill it turned up at the Ward Olden Air Show. Bony Tanks pulled round the top of a loop in the Spitfire and suddenly found the wretched thing upside down just in front of his spinner. He smacked straight through it, carrying out a practise coronary seizure as he did so, and thereafter went bumbling around the sky in deep shock for several minutes, mumbling incoherently over the radio to the general effect that if he promised to be a very, very, very good boy in future, would They (identity unspecified) be nice and make sure that that never, never, ever, ever happened again… The following day it appeared at the Widdle Mallop Air Display, prompting a truly magnificent exhibition of hysterics on the part of the girl who does the wing-walking on the Munchy Stearman. She claimed to have collected the business end of the Camel‟s prop-boss right in the t… er, teeth… when it suddenly appeared head-on as they pulled up for a stall-turn. The queue of fliers volunteering to give her the kiss of life stretched all the way to the beer tent. The pilot of the Stearman, poor old Tom Bobson, was ignored in the rush, and snuck away to have his nervous breakdown quietly by himself in a deserted corner of a hangar. Later on the same afternoon, apparently wishing to prove it could get around with the best of us, the Camel pitched up at the Open Day at RAF Walley. There it came at Mac Charliroy while he was engaged in an outside turn, thereby causing Mac to be subsequently required to answer a great many tiresome questions about how came he to push minus 8 ½ G in a hitherto perfectly serviceable Hawk, the property of Her Majesty the Queen. In the next week of two it appeared at the Chivers and Broad Dee air shows. Then at Northend, Fivepee Green and Waddleton. Then at Coningswell, Burton, and Lower Strawford. Two pilots forgot to put their wheels down when they landed in a dither after their encounters. One USAF guy banged out of a Warthog and contracted a serious case of religion on his way down. The Red Harrows performed the most spectacular upward burst ever witnessed in the history of jet aerobatic teams. One of the

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Moleburrow Pitts duo actually tried to formate on the thing in a moment of stress, which was a slight error of judgement since the Camel was at that instant engaged in going straight through the other Moleburrow, who was making an opposition pass: reportedly the originality and artistry of the Moleborrow‟s language when the discussed the matter afterwards caused ladies to faint and strong men to blench for 100 metres all around. And in possibly the most significant trauma-manifestation of all, it was rumoured that two aerobatic pilots were so shaken by their bouts with the Camel that they actually left a certain well-known air show without first prizing their money out of the certain well-known show organiser – an oversight which experience suggested would most definitely prove fatal to their chances of ever getting the matter settled in this life. Clearly, the whole business was getting out of hand. It was time, we decided, for Something To Be Done. The only question was…. what? The meeting was the night before the first day of the International Air Totter, this time and place having been chosen because most people in display flying have to turn up the day before the Air Totter anyway in order the argue the toss with the Flying Control Committee. We met in the main briefing room (sometimes erroneously described as the bar), and all of us being highly experienced airmen with disciplined and incisive minds, proceeded to bellow each other down in a rising hubbub of differing opinions (sometimes erroneously described as a shouting match) until nearly closing-time. Only then did Daddy Izzicott, one of the father-figures of British display flying, finally voice the conclusion which the rest of us had been assiduously trying to avoid. “It‟s a bloody ghost”, bawled Daddy into a sudden lull in the general tumult. “Stands to reason. If it wasn‟t, half the airfields in the country‟d be knee-deep in bits of Sopwith Camel by now, wouldn‟t they? „Course it‟s a bloody ghost”. The shouting died down and we all stood around nodding sagely, glad that someone had finally said it. Daddy surveyed us all, swallowed his gin and tonic, deftly collared someone else‟s, and proceeded to sum up the problem. “It‟s a ghost that only shows itself to pilots, right? To display pilots who‟re actually performing?” We nodded. “Nobody on the ground can see it, right?” We nodded “And nobody on the ground can hear it except for other display pilots, right?” We nodded again.

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“Well”, said Daddy, sounding like Inspector Maigret. “Got to be a bloody ghost then, has it not?” We nodded a fourth time, then all stood around thinking about it for a bit. Then Robby Bows spoke up. Robby flies the Fokker Triplane, which perhaps not unnaturally had made him something of a prime target for the mysterious Camel. To date he‟d been hit five times – including once while taxiing, which was generally felt to be a bit below the belt – and was understandably these days looking a trifle pale of visage and apt to jump three feet in the air at sudden noises. “Well, if it is a ghost”, he said, “Then who is it?” The answer hit me suddenly. “Armstrong!” I cried. “Of course! Captain Armstrong!” Robby said “Who?”, and Daddy nodded wisely. Daddy would. He‟d been around so long he‟d probably known Armstrong personally. “Captain D‟Urban Victor Armstrong”, I explained. “The bloke who really started low-level aerobatics. He flew a Sopwith Camel in 1918, on Home Defence. He used to go around giving impromptu displays and frightening the sh… the wits out of people. They say he used to slow roll the Camel at 20 feet and land off flick-rolls. And fly through a gap in a line of parked aircraft, loop, and go through the gap again as he came out. He was the guy who invented the half-loop and roll off the top; only he used to do it by running his wheels along the ground before he pulled up into the loop”. “What happened to him?” asked Robby. “He hit a hangar and killed himself a few days after the end of the First War. Flick-rolled into it, I think”. Daddy finished his gin (or whoever‟s it was) and said; “Can‟t be Armstrong. His Camel was red”. “It wasn‟t, you know. Well, not then. It was red while he was on Home Defence, but he was posted back to France on night-flying before the end of the War. It was in standard drab when he crashed. Let‟s see, he was 21 when he was killed. If he‟d lived he‟d be ninety now. Maybe he figures ninety‟s a good age to come back for a final fling”. Daddy looked at me suspiciously, probably wondering if my last remark had been a crack at him, but all around people were nodding thoughtfully. As an answer to recent events it might sound daft, but at least it enjoyed the distinction of being the only theory in town. The legendary Captain D V Armstrong had evidently decided to make a ghostly re-appearance among his spiritual great-grandchildren.

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There then ensued further discussion as to what should be done about the said Captain. This went on for some time, until finally all eyes swivelled round to Larry Lightbreeze. Now Larry was a display pilot who had actually taken the unprecedented step – a bit like Genghis Khan getting a nice job with the Inland Revenue – of joining the staff of the CAA. Naturally this had affected his vocal chords, so that he now sounded like a recitation of the more obscure bits of the Air Navigation Order played at fast forward. However, there seemed to be a growing feeling within the meeting that if the CAA couldn‟t control one pipsqueak Sopwith Camel, then what were we paying out all this good money for? Lightbreeze studied the ceiling, studied the floor, then cleared his throat and proceeded to present both sides of the Civil Aviation Authority‟s position on the matter. On the one hand it seemed there was a notable absence of regulatory instruments specifically promulgated to enforce control over the activities or otherwise of non-corporeal aircraft or crew (“Means they can‟t bloody stop him”, growled Daddy), whilst on the other the Authority had to make it clear that whilst the issuance of temporary exemptions from certain Rules of the Air might be subject for consideration by the appropriate committee in due course, in the meantime it should be pointed out that the insubstantial nature of the alleged aircraft in question did not absolve other pilots operating within the FIR or within controlled airspace from the normal obligations of the law with regard to rights of way and traffic avoidance… Since this was clearly going to go on all night, we left Larry talking to the wall and cornered Tom King, who runs the Air Totter. He had nothing to suggest other than putting the matter to the Flying Control Committee in the morning. This would obviously be about as helpful as putting it to his wife‟s knitting circle, but at the same time we felt that something was salvaged out of the wreckage in that it might give the Flying Control Committee something else to do other than interfere with the flying. All of which, however, still left us with the same basic problem; that of facing two days of very busy Air Totter displays with the added excitement of Captain Armstrong zotting through various of our number in his Camel whenever he felt like it… And that was when I had my idea. It came to me in a flash of light, brilliant in its simplicity. I banged my beer mug on the table, pausing only momentarily to regret not emptying it first, and addressed the multitude. “Listen, guys, I‟ve got it. Here‟s what we‟re going to do…” And so it came about that at the Air Totter briefing the next morning the Powers That Be were both astonished and gratified to find that every single pilot in the display had turned up. Normally the only people who go to these big airshow

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briefings are service pilots who have senior officers present, civilians who haven‟t been able to think up a good enough reason for being airborne-in-airborne-out, and a smattering of the rest who mistook the place for the breakfast hall. But on this day they got the lot; and even the fact that some were hungover, some were asleep, and others were mostly engaged in making paper darts out of the Safety Regulations did not diminish their surprise and delight. Their really big surprise came at the end of the briefing, however. At this point Daddy Izzicott, Larry Lightbreeze and I stood up. I went up to the large briefing board carrying the final definitive display programme, and solemnly added the words CAPT. D.V.ARMSTRONG: SOPWITH F.1 CAMEL at the top of the first column. In the timeslot space I put 1252 – 1259, ahead of the previous first slot of 1300. At the same time Daddy picked up a set of briefing notes, ostentatiously wrote CAPT. ARMSTRONG and the same slot-time on the front with a felt-tip pen, and placed them conspicuously in the middle of the document table. Then we all filed out, with the Powers That Be watching us with their mouths open and Larry Lightbreeze sliding up to them to make the explanations, and looking none too happy about it. By 1250 the tension was mounting. By unspoken consent all of us were gathered together on the airside of the crowd-line at display centre-point. We mingled restlessly, yawning, scratching, staring at the sky and the windsock, sneaking away to widdle on the nearest tailwheel, and generally exhibiting all the usual unsavoury signs of tension which manifest themselves in the last dragging minutes before a display begins. The fact that the display centre-point was also the position of the Very Important People‟s marquee was perhaps unfortunate, but then even VIP‟s have to get a glimpse of life in the raw occasionally. Does „em good. 1251 came. A hush settled on our group, and some of us even stopped scratching. The seconds crawled. Ten to go. Nine, eight… And at precisely 1252 we heard it. Faintly, but not the faintness of distance; more as if it was here, right on the display line, but some ethereal hand had turned the sound down low. Faint – but quite unmistakable; the hissing, crackling, open blare of a Clerget rotary engine. It reached centre-point, looped or something similar if my judgement of the Doppler effect was anything to go by, then snarled away along the crowd-line, fading to nothing. I thought I caught the briefest waft of hot castor oil, but I may have been wrong. I also thought I saw the grass wave gently for a moment in between the parked Stearman and the B-17. But I could be wrong about that, too. After the sound had gone, we were silent. We didn‟t even look at each other. We all just dispersed, quietly and in our own time, back to our various aircraft.

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The only person who said anything at all was Larry Lightbreeze, who was heard to be muttering imprecations about lower height limits and coming too close to the crowd. Perhaps he‟d seen the grass waving as well. As I walked away I glanced at the VIP marquee. They were sipping pink gins and chatting among themselves, saying “Eow” and “Soopah” a lot. Obviously, in common with us, they had seen nothing; but it was also obvious that, unlike us, they had heard nothing, either. Unaccountably, I felt sorry for them. The display thereafter ran like clockwork – or at least, as nearly as any display ever runs like clockwork, which is sometimes not so near as you‟d notice the proximity. But all the little cock-ups were the usual cock-ups, and all the squeals of rage from the Flying Control Committee were the normal squeals they perpetrate from time to time to prove they‟re still breathing. No-one had heart failure colliding with a Sopwith Camel, no-one landed bumpily to climb out white and gibbering, and no-one heard any more rotary engines throughout the whole afternoon. It was the same on the second day of the Totter. Again we marked in CAPT. D.V.ARMSTRONG as a new first slot, again we assembled in front of the VIP tent, and again the cackling snarl was borne to our ears, dead on time. Again we dispersed silently. And so it went on. All through last season we did the same thing at every air show; marked in Captain Armstrong for his slot right at the start, listened as he flew for us, and then carried on with the show. It became a routine. You may well have seen us, out there on the various centre-points, a group of pilots unnaturally quiet and attentive. Oh, of course there was the odd minor hiccup. Sometimes Air Traffic would accommodate our whims to the extent of letting us write anything we liked on the master display programme – which after all nobody but us saw anyway – but would balk at actually freezing all aircraft movements during the time-slot we allotted. This resulted in the occasional very frightened last-minute VIP arrival. It has to be admitted that some of us felt this couldn‟t be all bad, and took to waiting eagerly to see if we‟d caught any of our particular un-favourite politicians, but after a while the word got around and most of the controllers quietly and unobtrusively just happened to leave that particular time free anyway. Unless of course they happened to have a particularly un-favourite VIP coming in… So that was how it sat. The Authorities quietly smouldered because they couldn‟t put Armstrong into a pidgin-hole, couldn‟t stop him, and couldn‟t even acknowledge either the problem or the solution without developing serious fractures of the official

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dignity and having to answer embarrassing questions in the House. We, the pilots, quietly sniggered for exactly the same reasons. Generally speaking we are in fact a pretty law-abiding and reasonable lot – well, fairly law-abiding anyway – but it is beyond the ability of mortal man not to enjoy the odd titter at the spectacle of the entire weight of the Establishment treading on a top step that isn‟t there. The fact is that after a little while most of us became rather fond of old – or should it be young? – Armstrong. He became a sort of talisman. Nobody knew quite why, but practically all of us felt the same way about him. He wanted to fly, we gave him a slot, he was one of us. Hell, in a way he was the granddaddy of us all; he practically sowed the seeds of British display flying. And as time went on we noticed something else, too; that there were never any accidents at air displays he „appeared‟ at. Of course that was obviously coincidence – I mean, there aren‟t that many display accidents anyway, whatever the papers say – but nonetheless there it was… And then the blow fell. Nobody knows whose dastardly hand performed the deed, although I for one have my suspicions. Just follow my eyes. The really annoying thing is that I actually saw it. At the end of the briefing at RAF Bingdon Air Show I added Armstrong‟s name to the flying programme in the usual way, then ambled out. And as I passed the document table I vaguely noticed this great stack of paperwork on it; sort of noticed but didn‟t notice, if you understand me. I mean all briefing rooms have paperwork spilling out of every crevice, and of course nobody ever reads any of it except perhaps the Met forecast if they want a good laugh, or page three of The Sun if someone‟s left that lying about. Paperwork‟s just one of the itches in a display pilot‟s life, like athlete‟s foot. Nobody ever actually registers it, do they…? And that, of course, was the day that Armstrong failed to turn up. We all waited at the appointed time in the normal way – and nothing happened. Nothing. The silence was eerie, as if we‟d all gathered in church and the organ had gone phut. We stood around for a bit, puzzled and uneasy, and then dispersed. What else was there to do? As I reached my aeroplane I caught a glimpse of Larry Lightbreeze nearby. And for some reason that reminded me of the document table as I‟d left the briefing room earlier. And suddenly I remembered what I‟d seen; remembered what all those papers were, fanned out there on the table. The Air Navigation Order… Notams (Notices To Airmen)… Rules of the Air… CAP 403, Regulations Relating to the Conduct of Aerial Displays… Flight Crew,

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Requirements of Licences (Aeroplanes)… Conditions of Issue of Certificates of Release to Service… And on top it all off, the display briefing with Armstrong‟s name on it. And Armstrong‟s name also in bold felt-tip pen on the front of every blasted booklet, every clamp-bound wodge of documents, every accursed statutory instrument… Someone – some… some… well, someone – had presented poor Armstrong with copies of every rule, every law, every sub-section, every dot and comma of every regulation relating to pilots and aeroplanes and air displays in the late 1980s. The whole lot would have been around eight inches thick, and about as comprehensible to a 1918 Sopwith Camel pilot as a microwave cookbook would be to Chief Sitting Bull. And about as rude and insulting, too… Needless to say, we never saw or heard of Armstrong again. Oh, we carried on putting his name on the programmes and gathering on the flight lines, but in our hearts we knew it was no use. You couldn‟t blame him; by all accounts he had been a shy and retiring young man, and the modern display world had snubbed him. By the end of the season we had to accept it. The greatest of them all had been with us for a while and was now gone. And would not be coming back. We silently mourned him. The authorities were silently smug. So that is the end of the story. Finish. Except… Well, except that I went on holiday after the end of the season. Just an ordinary passenger, down the back of an aluminium tube. And it was misty when we came back, and so British Airways diverted from Heathrow to Gatwick. And naturally Gatwick Ground parked us miles from the terminal so that we had to be collected by bus for the statutory three laps of the airport before reaching civilisation. And as we came down the steps from the 747 I stopped abruptly. Several people collided with me and the hostie at the bottom of the stairs gave me a British Airways Pointed Look. I didn‟t feel any of it, not even the look. I just stood there and felt a great grin spread over my face. Because I heard it, just for a moment. Faintly but very clearly, through the mundane background whine of the jet movements. That hissing, crackling, snarl. And through the dull reek of the kerosene I caught a sudden whiff of castor oil, there for a second then gone. At the bottom of the steps the hostie‟s hat blew off, although there was no breeze. I looked up at the lofty 747 cockpit and gave them a small wave which they didn‟t see. No, we won‟t be seeing Armstrong again. Not on the airshow circuit, we won‟t…

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Captain D‟Urban Victor Armstrong was indeed the father of display flying as we still know it in the 1980‟s. The fledgling RAF cleared him to go around their squadrons to provide inspiration – proof of what could be done. Armstrong was a South African, and I was privileged to visit his grave in 1985 after competing there in a World Masters Aerobatic competition.

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ONE MINUTE TO GO… Tension being a palpable thing

It tastes, of course, like a lukewarm cowpat tastefully presented between two lumps of carpet. They always taste like this, airshow hamburgers. I know this to be one of the immutable verities of life, and yet I have fallen for it all over again. When there‟s half an hour to go before my slot-time the smell of cooking wafting over the crowd-line becomes too much, and I just have to have one. So over the ropes I go. Queue up in front of the delicious smell. Apply just the right amount of mustard and ketchup. Back through the ropes to the aircraft line with the curious eyes of the crowd following me… And as usual it‟s the cowpat-and-carpet job. Shallow learning curve. I spit out the first bite and consign the corpse to the grass beneath the nearest aeroplane, which happens to be the Junkers 52. I suppose I shouldn‟t do this, but any grass which is being assaulted by the oil leaks from a Junkers 52 will probably have other things on its mind than an airshow hamburger here or there. Twenty-four minutes to slot time – the moment I am on. As usual I cannot keep still. The people nearest me in the crowd, who have observed the ritual with the hamburger, are watching with interest to see what I might do next. I decide on impulse to go and look at the Spitfire, set off at a brisk pace, suddenly remember that I haven‟t checked my shoelaces yet, stop and do that with enormous concentration, then forget I was going to look at the Spitfire and wander aimlessly back to the Pitts Special. I am, of course, in the midst of the winding-up process. Buying the hamburger, throwing it away, walking about… it‟s all part of it. I am in that twitchy period of limbo which precedes getting into the aeroplane to fly a performance. It is not a good time for an autograph hunter to hop over the ropes: his reception will be uncertain. Twenty-one minutes to go. I watch the Harrier performing, mostly stationary behind its battering wall of sound. It holds my attention for perhaps half a minute, then I go back to walking round the Pitts. I check my pockets over again for loose change or open zips – the combination can be lethal – then light my pipe for a final pre-flight smoke. It promptly goes out.

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There are those pilots, of course, who would have you believe they do not suffer from pre-show nerves. There might even be some for whom it is the truth, although in a period encompassing about a thousand performances I personally have yet to meet such an animal. The symptoms of tension are always present, if sometimes curiously contrary. The noisy may become taciturn just before a display flight, whilst the normally retiring might suddenly be prey to loud gusts of laughter and shouted ribaldry. Some engage comparative strangers in deep and earnest conversations of which afterwards they can recall not one wit, while others become excruciatingly polite to any being who crosses their path. Me, I do all of these things, according to mood. And also I walk about, in a great hurry going nowhere. I must walk miles at every airshow I go to. Fifteen minutes. I suddenly think of something and haul the map out of the Pitts‟ cockpit to re-fold it for the next leg. Discover I have already re-folded it. Check the departure heading and find – surprise – that it‟s the same as the one in my head and on my knee-pad. Light my pipe again. I sometimes fancy that inside every hardened display pilot there is a little scared man who wants a nice job in Tesco‟s. Most of the time this little man does not get to air his views – but in the immediate run-up to slot time he grabs the stage, hauls himself up to his full height, and yells plaintively: “Christ, what am I DOING here?” He‟s scared of everything, this little man. He‟s scared of crashing. He‟s scared of an engine failure. He‟s scared of structural failure. He‟s scared of missing a radio call. He‟s scared of over-running; he‟s scared of having an off day. He‟s scared of not getting high enough, and he‟s scared of not getting low enough. He‟s scared he‟ll suddenly lose the picture and fly like a wimp and people will laugh at him… He‟s really scared of every-damn-thing, this little man. I‟m glad he‟s not me. All I have to be scared about in the world is that… he might be. Fifteen minutes. My pipe of course is going nicely now that it‟s time to put it out. I bang it against my heel and tread the embers carefully to death in the wet grass. Then I stare suspiciously at the windsock, position myself in front of the spinner, and proceed to hand-fly the sequence I am about to perform. This is an activity which occasions much mirth among those who behold it. What I am actually doing is treating the spinner as crowd centre-point and running through the display with my right hand as the aeroplane, the better to impress upon my feeble memory the points at which I shall have to make corrections for the wind of the day. What I look as if I‟m doing is a sort of cross between a tic-tac communication and a

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Mexican rain dance, the whole punctuated by muttered incantations and jerky nods of the head. This never fails to crease up the casual observer, and also serves to ensure that I have the undivided attention of everybody in sight for my next act, which is to stroll round to the other end of the aeroplane and wee-wee elegantly behind the tail. This is again an eminently sensibly thing to do – a chap can do without the last cup of coffee trying to squeeze its way out of his ears during an Unlimited aerobatic performance – but it has to be admitted that it is not exactly one of the high points in my never-excessive repertoire of social graces. It is perhaps just as well for me that by this stage of the winding-up process the crowd has receded to a distant part of my consciousness: if they all turned green and started bleeping like space invaders I probably wouldn‟t notice. Twelve minutes. I go for a last circular walk, resisting the temptation to get into the cockpit prematurely. At this point I wish I was back in a formation team. The tension‟s easier in a team, because you share it. From time to time I catch myself looking sideways for the old Rothmans Team guys who aren‟t there any more. They haven‟t been there for six years now, but still I sometimes fancy I hear Al whistling tuneless hymns or see Marcus squinting at the sky and saying; “Time to go and do it, matey”. Sometimes even the little scared man remembers and is comforted. Ten minutes. At last. Action. I swing myself into the cockpit, nerve-endings tingling with relief. Three large guys have materialised in front of the aeroplane. These are people whom I have approached each and singly with the request that they be present at this moment for the purpose of swinging the Pitts‟ prop. It does not of course actually require three persons to swing one prop, and so they are all looking at each other with a slight air of puzzlement. The reason there are three of them is that I have this terror of start-time coming round and finding me without a prop-swinger in sight. This is a phobia which has matured over the years into full card-carrying paranoia, and which thereby sometimes leads me to small excesses in the matter of press-ganging volunteers. In fact, three persons is quite a modest assembly by my standards when I am faffing well: it is not unknown for me to elicit the aid of four stalwarts, all of whom then regard me with the offended manner of a physician called out in the middle of the night only to find the patient‟s bed already surrounded by three acupuncturists and a witch-doctor. I keep trying to stop myself doing it, but then the little scared man jumps up and down and bawls; “You have to be sure, you have to be sure…”

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This is not of course quite the moment to be explaining all this, so I solve the embarrassment in the usual way by casting a feeble grin all round and then staring purposefully at the bod who is nearest. “Fuel on, brakes on, throttle closed, switches off. Priming. Now sucking in, please”. The swinger swings the prop four times. The cylinders glug. “Throttle set. Contact”. The swinger swings again. And again. The engine goes poff once and does nothing else. The swinger looks at the ground, then at the sky. He puffs out his cheeks before addressing himself to the top blade again. My nerves scream GEDDONWITHIT! My temples are hot and there is a sinking feeling in my stomach and the little scared man is wailing; “You‟ll be late you‟ll be late you‟ll be late…” This is what the ten minutes are for. I grin encouragingly at the swinger and try to look cool. He flexes his arm and swings again. The engine fires, barks raggedly, then picks up in a blaring snarl. I check the oil pressure. Switch the magnetos through momentary dead-cut. Wave thanks to the swinger while the slipstream ruffles my hair. Then I close the canopy. The snarl changes to a rumble, and my world changes with it. It is absolute, this metamorphosis. Up to now I have been prancing mentally like a nervous racehorse – but with the closing of the canopy I have shut out the last of the everyday world. My universe now is the aeroplane and the engine and the artform to come. Nothing else exists. In the rumbling cockpit my hands move around with a sureness they do not normally achieve. Folding the towel which goes over my hips. Fastening the straps. Tucking away the loose ends. Pulling on headset and gloves. It was not always this way. When I started display flying this used to be the moment of maximum twitch. My legs would be quivering and my right heel actually drumming on the cockpit floor as I taxied out, while my mind played a repeating tape saying WHAT AM I DOING HERE WHAT AM I DOING HERE? Now for some reason I am icily detached as soon as the canopy closes. Odd. I call for taxi, hearing my own voice distant in the earphones. On two occasions in the past eighteen months I have heard myself speaking just as calmly a few seconds after aeroplanes have crashed a short distance away. Afterwards people said I was nerveless or brave or just plain callous, according to their lights. The truth is simply that in this period of trance even calamity will not register unless it actually

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falls on my head. On both occasions I found myself looking almost casually at the sudden wreckage and blossoming flames which enshrouded a colleague, and watched myself coldly taking into account the movements of the fire trucks and how I should be alert for the sadly redundant activities of rescue helicopters. It is not callousness: it is self-defence which might even qualify as air safety, since it would clearly not be a major contribution to the remnants of the day if I were to carry shock in the cockpit with me during my own performance. The fact that I am afterwards slightly sickened by my own reaction is neither here nor there. Two minutes to go. A last tug on the straps. Last check on the altimeter. Lick the fingers and palm of my right glove. Flex hands and feet in their familiar roles as ailerons, elevator and rudder. “Toyota Pitts cleared take-off, and cleared into display”. Out onto the runway, which looks huge and empty and wide. Too wide. Taxi to the left hand edge and line up. Adrenaline thrumming smoothly through my body, all geared up. Open the throttle, finger flicking the smoke switch. Massive snarling acceleration. Hold him on, hold him… now ease off the ground, ease up to thirty feet…and roll NOW. The half-roll to inverted on take-off is a critical moment. Not so much for the obvious reason that it is inadvisable to lose height during the exercise, but rather exactly the opposite. Being aware that the deck is a teeny bit adjacent has a powerful effect on a chap‟s resolution, so that the manoeuvre sometimes degenerates into a sloppy half-barrelling affair which ends up fifty feet higher than it started. This is safe enough, but less than elegant; and so one is ever striving to flatten it out a bit, hopefully short of frightening oneself to death. In time, the success or otherwise of this endeavour comes to assume the status of an omen. If you do a really slick whammo then the runes are in your favour and the performance will go well; whereas if you throw the roll skywards beyond the normal margin of cowardice you are having an off day, and more than usual determination will be required to lay the hex and put a polished edge on the rest of the display. A Pitts Special in fact exacerbates the problem of rolling on take-off by neatly placing its top wing bang in your forward line of sight while inverted. This means that when you look up – or down, that is – over the top wing, you cannot see the horizon or the surrounding countryside, only the ground unrolling rapidly from fifty yards ahead. This can be mildly unnerving, and certainly does not provide an ideal cue for fine judgement of height. It is in fact why I take off close to the side of the runway; if I can see the edge of the grass it is marginally more helpful than looking up at totally

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featureless tarmac. The latter can sucker a chap into sinking gently until his fin makes abrasive noises on the ground. Briefly, of course. On this day the roll is average. I feel us go up a bit, but not too much. Average… I feel the speed. Not enough yet. Wait, with the tarmac streaming past over my head. Wait… wait… now. Push to minus four, check in the vertical, half-roll now. Check again…and push now until the horizon appears from under the nose. Check in level flight and sit poised, hands and senses feeling the temper of the airflow as the Pitts claws itself away from well below stall speed. Top of climb. Smoke off. Curl round now, positioning for the dive-in. The equation running through one more time in these last seconds of grace. Windsock… cloud shadows… centrepoint the big white tent…A and B axis boundaries there and there… Tip in… NOW. Rolling dive, wind and engine noises rising to a howl. Flick the switch; oily smell of smoke in the cockpit. Level out low for an instant, with the crowd rushing towards the cowling. Now hard pull to vertical. Roll right slam. Check - and lomcovak, full right rudder, full left forward stick. Round, round, tumble. Through our own smoke, oil smell swirling heavier for an instant. Gyration decaying, nose clubbing down and round as we fall into an outside spin. Check now… down-vertical. Roll hard left to point crowd-right. Check. Pull out, yawing slightly during the pull to bottom seventy yards further out because of the wind… You cheat the pull-out of course. A hard-ish pull until you could level at maybe 200 feet, then ease it and fly on down to the deck. Safe – safer in fact than trying to base at 200 feet, since by coming down to the deck you get accurate start-speeds every time – and hopefully spectacular. When in doubt, cheat. You get the odd guy coming into the business who hasn‟t hoisted that in. You see him bottoming 4 G pull-outs to fifty feet, if you can bear to watch. They always change, though: either into a safer pilot or a very thinly spread-out one. The pull-out bottoms where I want it, on the far edge of the runway to allow for the on-crowd wind. A cross-wind component of say ten knots may not sound very much when you say it quickly, but in a hectic display it is a very very very important factor. This is because when an aeroplane is going straight up or down – which a Pitts Special is a great deal of the time – there is no way in the world of correcting for drift. A big vertical figure may take as long as 25 seconds from pull-up to pull-out. In that 25 seconds you are going to move 150 yards even in a light breeze; in a strong wind it can be as much as 500 yards, which calls for a certain amount of anticipation.

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Hence the pre-flight walk-through and the muttered incantations and the fixation with the windsock and the cloud shadows. Hence also the dislike shared by most display pilots for on-crowd winds: for in the on-crowd situation you have to pull up a goodly distance out from the display line and hope you have assessed the drift correctly so that you are in the right place when you come down. If you overdo the caution your performance will be too far away and the crowd will wander off to the beer tent. If you underdo it you may actually be over the crowd when you start back downhill, at which point your reputation deteriorates rapidly and the Civil Aviation Authority will quite rightly swat you on the head with a large law book. On this pull-up I am in just the right place. I hope. Check the vertical… hard roll right… check… hard roll left. Hold the vertical, speed decaying to nothing. Snatch a glance at the altimeter – a vital glance because now, with the aeroplane almost stopped, is one of the few moments in the sequence when a pressure instrument can be relied on not to be telling porky pies. Nine hundred feet. Okay. The Pitts shudders gently. Full left rudder, smoothly. The nose clubs round the stall turn. Check in the down vertical, half roll… and then push. The push-out to inverted has a fascination of its own. On a pull-out you look up over the top wing and see your target on the ground: whereas a push-out affords no such visual luxury for the simple and adequate reason that the front end of the aeroplane is in the way. All you see in a push is the ground moving up the windscreen and expanding most excitingly towards you, until such time as the sky suddenly appears under the nose and there you are, levelled off and inverted. This means there is very little scope for finesse: either the horizon appears as per contract or there is an extremely brief thumping noise followed by an embarrassing interview with St. Peter. So it is that if a man would push out at low lever he must school himself with some care: establish the top height of the preceding vertical, establish the push-out height which he can guarantee a hundred times out of a hundred, and then slowly work his training height down until he reaches his chicken point. Mine is pushing out at a minimum of 150 feet. I have seen people do it lower, but most of them are no longer with us. I have now done it many thousand times, but never without an echo of the willpower it required to do it the first time. It is definitely not the same as pulling out… This time we‟re a touch high, maybe 200 feet. Clearly a chicken day. Still, the line is right, the runway central on the ceiling over my head, with the hangars hanging down on one side and the upside-down crowd on the other. Got the wind right…

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Push up to the inverted climbing 45 line. Roll left, outside flick right. Check the altimeter again: 950 feet. Start pulling round, slowly at first. The ground appears over the top wing and slides on down. Passing through the down vertical I screw on a tad of roll to cope with the wind. Now a fast deep breath: as the G of the pull-out comes on I feel it for the first time in the display. It isn‟t much – only a piddling plus four or so – but my limbs feel leaden and the headset is suddenly made of concrete. The reason for this is simple physiology. When you pull positive G your brain suffers from a paucity of blood and therefore oxygen: this causes it to send out peevish messages to the heart to speed up and the arteries to dilate. When on the other hand you push negative G the opposite happens; the heart slows down and the arteries contract in order to stop the blood spurting out of the top of your head. This is fine and dandy until you push a lot of negative and then suddenly follow it with plus seven positive. God, it seems, had not thought of Pitts Specials when He designed the human frame, and the abrupt change from one extreme to the other blows the system quite some. In fact, if you are not careful there is a distinct tendency to go bye-byes as the positive comes on. I am now mildly debilitated from negative G and heading upwind at twenty feet and 160 mph for a heavy centre-point pull-up. This is therefore an appropriate moment to take such steps as are available to minimise the effects of positive G, and accordingly I brace my stomach and grunt like a pig as I pull to the vertical. Vision greys slightly as I look out along the wing, then I am checking in the straight-up and the pressure is off again. I am actually rather proud of this grunt. It is a full-bodied affair, starting at the diaphragm and rasping in the larynx. It has happened in the past that I have caught the transmit button with the fold of glove between thumb and forefinger, and therefore treated everybody on frequency to a bloodcurdling imitation of a big day in the local abattoir. I am told by jet jockeys that it sounds like every warning horn in the aircraft going off at once, and could well lead to the odd laughable misunderstanding if it came at a chap suddenly. This can‟t be all bad if you have a sense of humour, but the RAF have promised that if it causes a spurious ejection from a loitering Tornado they will send me the bill. Now, with the display well under way, my labouring brain is occupied by three fundamentals. The first is the individual manoeuvres, which actually do not require a vast amount of concentration since they are by now practically reflex actions: the second is the ever-shifting, ever-vital equation of positioning, which most certainly

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does demand attention. And the third is the metronomic, intangible but absolutely vital matter of rhythm. The rhythm is almost impossible to describe to anyone else. It is a beat, a swing, a… well, dammit, a rhythm. It is present when a display is going well, and is not when it is not. Maybe the crowd notice the difference, maybe they don‟t – but if the rhythm doesn‟t develop then you the pilot will most certainly know, and be discontented as a result. Most aeroplanes – a Stampe, say, or a Spitfire or a fast jet – give a chap a clue in this by having a natural rhythm of their own, a beat created by their speed range and the limitations of their agility. This dictates the style of the display, and if you force the pace it rapidly becomes obvious that you are trying to be too bloody clever. In such machines the old adage can be written in letters of fire: you display the aeroplane, not the pilot. A Pitts, however, is different. A Pitts, or any other Unlimited machine, will within reason do anything you wish at any tempo you choose – and having no constraints, has by the same token no natural rhythm of its own, or at least very little. So now it becomes your dance; and if your own sense of timing is unlovely the performance will not sparkle and you may very well never know why. Quite simply the adage has been reversed: in a Pitts the aeroplane displays the pilot. Warts and all. Successful rhythm must have the ingredients there in the beginning, of course, in terms of the choreography of the sequence. If you elect to fly several long drawn-out verticals followed by a series of rapid looping-flick-rolling figures you are obviously doomed from the start: fly you never so well, the effect is still going to be like Swan Lake suddenly turning into Twist and Shout half way through. But even when you‟ve got the choreography planned you‟ve still not got the symphony hacked. There‟s still that magic, mysterious tempo to be hit during every display; that coming-together feeling when all the rills and crescendos click in on the right beat. That… rhythm. Now, today, it is clicking. Oh, I‟m making mistakes – yawed a touch stopping that last vertical flick, over-rotated on the up-45 lomcovak, could have been sharper on the vertical four-point – but that‟s usual. If I ever do a perfect performance I will undoubtedly die of shock. But the rhythm‟s there; the feeling is right. At the same time I am rapidly getting tired, both from the G and from the sheer physical exertion of slamming the stick around in the cockpit. My hands are aching heavily and I can feel the sweat sliding down my face as I pull. I flex my fingers on the stick and pull hard again, up into the torque roll. Hit the vertical, check. Hard roll left now. Watch the horizon streaming past the wingtip… roll slowing a little… pitch

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forward just a tiny bit to remove the need for rudder… watch the streamer on the strut… watch it… smoke off now… The streamer suddenly whips forward; the only way I can tell the exact instant the Pitts starts sliding backwards. Reverse the ailerons – a left-hand roll going backwards requires right aileron in a Pitts – and hold rock still for long seconds. The rotation rate increases and suddenly there‟s smoke acrid in the cockpit as we slide back into the column we left going up. Hold… hold… smoke rushing past… enough now. Stick hard back and ease the power momentarily. For a second nothing and then wham, the Pitts slams over like a dart dropped tail-first and indulges in its nasty little habit of snapping straight into a fast outside spin in whichever direction it happens to feel like today. I snatch back momentarily, the airflow re-attaches, and the spin stops before it has properly begun. Now roll smartly in the down-vertical to point crowd-right while the runway swells up in the windscreen…. Pull out. That‟s the torque-roll done. That was the last of the hurdle manoeuvres, the adrenalin-makers. Now there‟s only four figures to go, and they‟re easier because you don‟t put the critical ones down the back end of the display where you know you‟ll be tired. Chinese half-Cuban with one-and-a-half knife-to-knife flick… now you‟re coasting… up-vertical outside flick, stall turn, down positive flick… nearly through now, just settle the height, feel secure… twelve points of eight-point roll, push up to half-vertical, pull over, down half-roll… and now you‟re there. That‟s it. Finished. End of display. Just the knife-edge pass, show the big red TOYOTA on the top wing. Pull up at the end of the pass. Rapid flick stopping in the left knife-edge, then the blast of the engine dying back to a groan as the Pitts and I translate into a wingsvertical slipping turn to land. Careful round the turn, careful; plenty of speed because in my fatigue I don‟t have the feel which is normally there and it would be annoying if my numb hands should flick us cloddishly into the ground at this stage… I bounce the landing, of course. It‟s almost a trademark, bouncing the landing at the end of a performance. After 15 years the only thing I have truly learned about air show landings is not to worry about them unless they are truly exceptional ricochets. Taxi in. My wrists are aching mightily and my hands are numb dough. Sweat is drying like Velco on my face and my mouth is a parched gritty desert. “Did you fly well? Was it worth all that?” It is the little scared man, back again now that the concentration is over. With the tension running down he is now the querulous tight-lipped critic. “Did you fly well?”

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Well… no and yes. The balance between confidence and soul-searching is a delicate one. On one hand the day-to-day repetition of low-level aerobatics unarguably calls for a certain self-confidence if a man is not to go dotty. On the other, it is equally unarguable that too much confidence can eventually only have one ending, which is a smoking hole in the ground surrounded by various experts shaking their heads and saying; “Why in the hell did he do that?” So you have to strike a balance. You have to have an answer for the little scared man because it is important to him; but that answer must always be ruthlessly honest and also always equivocal. “No I didn‟t fly well. Yes it wasn‟t too bad. Shut your whingeing cakehole.” The little scared man shuts up. It may not be a sparkling riposte but a least it is one of the ones he is used to; the next most common being fretful self-castigation when I have perpetrated some particularly crass error or failed to find the rhythm. I taxi past the pilot‟s tent. Some of the guys are either warming their hands of being kind enough to clap, which means a great deal. Someone once introduced me as the pilot who the other pilots come out to watch, which was certainly a whopping great lie but also the nicest compliment I‟ve ever had. Back in the aircraft line I check the magnetos, check the gauges, and pull the mixture. The prop goes wishy-wishy-washy and stops, and the sudden silence leans on my ears. I slide the canopy open, haul myself out, and stand there pulling sweatsoaked gloves off while the world slides slowly back into focus. The trance-like state of the display takes a couple of minutes to drain away. Slowly people become people again and the wind becomes a soft summer breeze instead of part of an equation. Slowly I am no longer an integral part of the aeroplane, but a tired man with aching arms and a dry mouth who could do with a coffee. It‟ll have to be a quick coffee, though, because I have to get fuelled-up and smoked-up and away to the next display ninety miles away. I‟ve got… check… 48 minutes to take-off time. Perhaps when I‟ve fuelled I‟ll walk over to the Spitfire. Perhaps I‟ll get a hamburger.

This was written in 1984. Over the following two decades nothing much changed. BL.

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OF FRIGHT AND A PAWNEE The most forgiving aeroplanes are not proof against a fool The farmer‟s field revolves under the Pawnee‟s left wing-tip. The third new farmer‟s field of the day. No airstrip, just an ordinary pasture. Not lengthy, but not so short as to concentrate the mind. What does concentrate the mind is the slope of the land and especially the line of high-tension pylons running along just inside the eastern hedge. With the wind a stiff westerly I shall be approaching over the hedge and landing underneath those wires. Therefore the height of the hedge and the lowth of the wires are matters of more than passing interest. I stare down, studying the wires. Legally they should be at least 23 feet above the ground at their maximum sag, but in the real world I am most aware that this may not in fact always be the case… Abruptly, the Pawnee starts to vibrate. My eyes whip in to the engine gauges. Temperatures, oil pressure, manifold pressure – all normal. The shuddering, if anything, increases. A plug gone out? – no, too much shaking for one plug. Cracked manifold? Dropped valve? Seized hydraulic tappet…? Surprise is the detonator of alarm. I roll out of the turn pointing downwind. In the matter of a moment I can chop the throttle, make a slipping-turn approach, and squeeze over the hedge and under the wires with a dead engine no matter how high the hedge or how low the wires… As I roll out the vibration ceases. In a tingling instant I realise the buffeting had nothing to do with the engine and everything to do with the fact that I‟d bloody-near stalled the aeroplane and not recognised it. My mouth is full of ashes, fright and shame in equal measure. The whole happening occupies perhaps 10 seconds. Ten seconds more than 35 years ago. Ten seconds I have remembered ever since. The lonely post-mortem in a quiet pub was not complicated. I had been cropspraying in the Piper Pawnee for a while. The pattern was set. You took off with a full load of chemical – 600 lbs of liquid in the hopper in front of the cockpit. In this state you were, obviously, heavy. So you started by spraying the long and easy bits of the

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target first, pulling up into gentle wingovers at the end of each spray-run. The average spray-sortie lasted about 12 minutes, and you were flying an aeroplane which became ever-more manoeuvrable minute by minute as it lightened. At three minutes you‟d chucked out roughly the weight of one average passenger. At six minutes, two passengers, and so on. As the weight reduced, so a man‟s flying could become significantly more pugnacious, hardening the pull-ups and tightening the wing-overs. Mostly you didn‟t look at airspeed or anything else so crude – you felt the weight and the buoyancy through your flying bones. When the content was near the bottom of the hopper – like, the last 10 gallons or so – the thing handled as much like a lightweight fighter as it was ever going to. So then you‟d fly into impossible-looking corners of fields surrounded by trees, pull up hard, and at the same time yank the emergency hopper-dump so as to throw the last of the chemical into places that other lagers couldn‟t reach. Great fun. We called it playing the weights, when we referred to it at all. In fact we didn‟t refer to it much simply because it was so obvious. To any spray pilot playing the weights rapidly becomes a part of life as natural as breathing. You spray, you get lighter, you fly harder. You‟d no more mention it than you‟d say; „Hey, folks, did you remember to keep breathing all day today?‟ Until you got it wrong. Well, this time I‟d got it wrong. And the chances were that if I‟d carried on getting it wrong for a few more seconds even the patient Pawnee would have shrugged it‟s shoulders, stalled, and spun into the ground, rendering my small but wiry body the crispy epicentre of a minor crater in an East Anglian field. A mundane way to die. So why had I got it wrong? Why had instinct so failed me? Technically, not difficult to work out. In the nature of British crop-spraying in those days you flew out of farmers‟ fields all the time. Your were paid for spraying chemical onto a certain field – maybe 10 to 15 minutes work. If you had to transit 10 minutes there and then 10 minutes back that made the total sortie-time 35 minutes – much too long when the aphids were savaging the crop and farmers were queuing up waving money so long as you sprayed their fields yesterday or preferably the day before. So you operated from one field and serviced a radius of maybe ten miles. Then you smartly upped-sticks – aeroplanes, fuel bowser, chemical-loader and all – moved 15 miles away to another field, and then sprayed within a ten-mile radius of that. Normally these moves were organised by the ground-staff while you the pilot were airborne dodging wires. You‟d land and stay strapped-in while one guy re-fuelled you,

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another cleaned the bugs off the windscreen – very essential – and another re-filled the hopper. As aircraft pit-stops went we were pretty slick. Schumacher might sneer, but in those days Schumacher was barely out of nappies and we were turning cropsprayers around in about eight minutes. In the midst of this the crew-chief would jump onto the wing and shove a largescale OS map into your face showing the next field you were going to be spraying. And sometimes he‟d then plunk a greasy finger onto the map and say; “And when you‟ve done that don‟t come back here, but go to there, because we‟re moving. Got it?” On this day, on the second move, the planets shifted slightly. As fuel glugged into the tank and chemical sloshed into the hopper the chief appeared on the wing and said; “Look – you‟ve nothing to spray on the way. Just take the load there and the farmer will meet you and tell you the first field he wants sprayed. By the time you‟ve done that we‟ll have caught up with you. Okay?” I stifled a yawn. It was eight hours into the day and four hours to sunset. It was understood that crop-sprayers never stopped during the woefully brief money-making seasons, and so I was destined to stay in the Pawnee‟s straps until I could barely see to land. But he might have brought me a sandwich and a Coke. “ ‟Kay. See you there”. He dropped off the wing. I checked all clear, cranked the Pawnee up, growled off in an unaccustomed straight line, and found the new field. Circled it – and damn near stalled out of the turn. Why? Well quite simply because, in my mind, I was landing. And when you were landing, you‟d emptied the hopper and were light. Always. In fact I couldn‟t remember ever landing a Pawnee with a full load before. So even when offered clear and ample evidence in the shape of stall-buffet, my unconscious brain trod that down and said; “Nah, you‟re light – can‟t be stall. Must be engine…” And stuck doggedly to that mindset for several long seconds which could have been my last. Ah well. You live and learn. I bought another pint and mentally added „Weight – landing‟ to my not over-large stock of crop-spraying experience. In fact, I much enjoyed crop-spraying. Quite apart from the sheer fun of legalised low flying there is nothing – nothing short of low-level aerobatics, anyway – which produces such a satisfying union between man and machine. In crop-dusting you have to feel the aeroplane – it has to become wings on your shoulder-blades – or else. To any red-blooded young aviator I‟d say – go try crop-spraying, even if you have to go to the far side of the world to do it. (Which you certainly will, it now having

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been legislated out of existence in the UK). In a week you‟ll know if you‟re a handling pilot or a by-numbers driver. If you‟re a handling pilot you‟ll love it – and if you‟re a numbers person the experience will prompt you to creep off to the airlines while the going is good. Not, it has to be said, that crop-spraying aeroplanes are in themselves wildly exciting. You might instinctively expect aircraft which spend their working lives six feet above the ground to have sharp and precise controls – but not so. Mr Piper‟s ubiquitous Pawnee, although a kind of entry-level „duster, is not untypical. If it looks like a tractor and smells like a tractor then the chances are it‟s a tractor – and that‟s exactly what the Pawnee is. Rugged, serviceable, able to absorb eyewatering punishment – but it handles like a tractor. (And indeed, frequently smells more like a sewer, agricultural chemicals being notably raw products unsweetened by any hint of Channel Number 5). The wings are from the Cherokee family and the only thing the ailerons have going for them is that they‟re stick-operated rather than a yoke. It is heavy in pitch, and overall quite tiring to fly. Moreover it was designed with the typical crop-dusting environment in mind – long open fields in mostly hot climates. For this reason it has a solid roof over the cockpit roll-cage to give the pilot some shade. Fine for the Sudan, but for the relatively tiny, wire-infested fields of Britain quite literally a pain in the neck – during every wingover you‟re craning your neck into a sort of Z-shape in an effort to keep your ground target from disappearing over the roof. Do that 200 times a day under G and your upper spine becomes chiropractor fodder in short order. It is thus difficult to love a Pawnee – but relatively easy to get to know it. It may be a tractor but like most „dusters it is an honest tractor. If you are overdoing things it will shake and shudder and talk to you and warn you. As long as you are listening, that is. On that day, all those years ago, I learned to listen harder. It has stood me in good stead.

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IDÉE FIXE When all may not be as you think The French have an expression for it – idée fixe. Fairly obviously this translates as „fixed idea‟ – a conviction that so and so is thus and thus without question. Nurtured by stress, fatigue or complaisance, idée fixe can become a weed most firmly rooted. Probably most pilots can recall an instance of idée fixe. It‟s the time you dialled up the wrong VOR frequency, listened to the ident – and thereafter followed the needle slavishly for ten minutes before realising that all the other cues were getting seriously out of shape. Yes, you‟d listened to the ident Morse – but your brain had heard what you were expecting to hear, not what it was actually Morsing. You had a fixed idea. Certain wheels-up landings are classics. A pilot is told to go-around at the last moment. He pours on the power, clicks up the wheels, concentrates on a tight visual circuit – and then places the aeroplane neatly on the runway with the gear still up, despite the urgent bleating of a warning-horn designed specifically to apprise him of just such a mischance. Idée fixe – the poor guy knew the wheels were down because he‟d done the landing checks before starting down the ILS… Some fixed ideas result in nothing more than a chastened aviator adding a little to his store of wisdom. Others have rendered the airmen concerned extinct. Along with their passengers. More than one airliner has flown into the ground while the crew fixated on some happenstance unrelated to actually flying the aeroplane. Many more than one aircraft has gone off the end of a runway because the pilot arrived a bit hot and high but pressed the matter to its conclusion for no other reason than he had a fixed notion of landing off this approach. In the display world I have attended the dirge of church bells following several events in which I personally suspect idée fixe played a part, but whose participants have been no longer in a position to confirm or deny this. For myself, I have been victim several times. All were embarrassing, and some were… Well, let me admit to possibly the most classic example of idée fixe you are ever going to find. We took off, the RAT four-ship (RAT for Rothmans Aerobatic Team), from the huge expanse of runway 30 at Dubai International. The sortie was practise, down south over the desert.

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We crossed Dubai Creek – actually a major waterway – a few miles south of the airport, and kept going into the desert wilderness. Visibility was about three miles, sand-coloured with heat and dust. I was Number Four, in the „box‟ at the back of the formation, and was going to rehearse my solo slot. This was my Pushing Period – for some reason I‟d got it into my head that negative manoeuvres were the Coming Thing, and had therefore been working on bottoming outside loops – bunts, if you will – at about 100 feet. This is a scary process at the best of times, for the simple reason that you cannot see where you are going. Fly a normal (inside) loop, look upwards in the third quarter, and you can see the target you are flying to. Make it an outside loop, look downwards as you push round the third quarter – and all you see is your feet, which is not enlightening. Push-outs are therefore much more fraught than pull-outs, and since our arrival in the Arabian Gulf I have discovered that push-outs are even more difficult over bland desert than they are over British landscape. Therefore I am intent on doing outside loop after outside loop… “Rothmans Blue, rejoin, Go. Loose transit. Returning to Dubai”. The voice of our Leader, Marcus. Otherwise known as Father Rat. You do not question Lead. As I soar into position he says: „Blue, switch to Dubai „, and we all check in on the frequency. But I don‟t want to go home. I want to do more outside loops. Not wishing to discuss it on the radio I heave up alongside Marcus, point at my own head, wiggle my finger around in a sort of aerobatic manner, and abruptly pull up into a half-loop out of the loose battle formation. This I am confident Marcus will interpret as; „Blue Four would like to go on playing and will see you later‟. Most understandably it takes Marcus a few seconds to decode this. As I pass through the inverted he says testily; ”„Blue Four, rejoin”‟. So I keep pulling round the loop, level, and look ahead for the Team. No Team. Only a person who has done it can appreciate how very, very far a cruising formation travels in the time it takes to execute a loop. One simple loop and the other guys will be a mile-and-a-half ahead, which makes for more catching-up than you might imagine. Especially if you can‟t see them… Well, why can‟t I see them? I peer forward intently. No Team. But the visibility does seem to be getting murkier. I look down. The desert floor is far less distinct than it was even 10 minutes ago. It almost seems to be on the move…

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It is now that I remember Marcus‟s briefing. Marcus has considerable desert experience, and he‟d talked of how the wind can veer and increase, causing the surface dust of the desert to rise up quite suddenly into the atmosphere. Not a fullyfledged sandstorm – yet – but a condition capable of slashing visibility in very short order. Which is what is happening now – I guess the visibility at a mile or so and worsening. That‟s why Marcus headed for home. And that‟s why I can‟t see the Team. Damn. And blast. A worm of unease wriggles in my stomach. I am a mere ten miles south of the airport and can hardly miss that – but where is the Team….? Okay. At full power I duck down to 200 feet to skyline them. I am lower, I am going faster, therefore they must be above the horizon and must be reversing towards me… No horizon in the murk. And no Team. In my genteel way I think „F*** *t‟ and start easing back up. Marcus‟s voice. “Dubai, Rothmans Blue crossing the Creek for re-join”. “Roger, Rothmans Blue: join base leg for 12, QFE 998, cleared run and break, no known traffic”. Cleared run and break. We always run and break to land – a low pass in echelon formation ending in a rapid 1 – 3 – 2 – 4 peel-off and up to give us sufficient separation on a tight downwind leg before turning onto final landing approach. We always do it. And if Blue Four – me – is not among those present on this occasion then the least I can expect is a stern stare from Father Rat. And Father Rat, when so minded, has a stare which passes clean through a human body and vibrates in the wall behind you. For a moment I am tempted to press the button and ask the Team to orbit over the Creek. But this would be an admission of defeat – and in any case, I must catch them shortly, because we‟re all going the same way and I‟m flat out while they‟re cruising… Ahead an indistinct line which can only be Dubai Creek. In 30 seconds I am over it. It is a compulsory reporting point, so now there is no alternative but sackcloth and ashes. “Dubai, Rothmans Blue Four over the Creek for solo run and break about a mile behind the Team”. “Roger, Blue four”. Father Rat remains pointedly silent. I stare into the murk, willing the three Pitts‟s to become visible. Where are they…?

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After two minutes I can just make out the threshold of Dubai‟s runway 30. With half a mile to go Marcus speaks again. “Dubai, Rothmans Blue finals for run and break”. Damn, damn! I must be treading on their heels – yet still I cannot see them. I weave rapidly, and stare up the final approach-path lest I have somehow got ahead of them… No Team. Blast! Soddit!. But now I have no choice. I am almost over the threshold. It is a huge runway to my country-bumpkin eyes, so very long that more than half of it is lost in the sandy gloom. I peel off left into a dive towards the runway threshold numbers. “Dubai, Blue Four finals for solo run and break behind the Team”. “Roger, Blue Four”. I level at 50 feet over the runway. Speed 180 mph. Smoke on. I‟ll charge to the half-way point then pull up into a three-quarter vertical roll, push off the top, and turn tight downwind. But I wish I could see the Team, or even their smoke-trails…. Then, very suddenly, I do see the Team. Coming straight at me. I duck down to 10 feet and we cross. It is all over in seconds. Marcus chants “Break One, break Two, break Three”. I instinctively pull up on the unspoken „Break Four‟ and tag roughly onto the end of the line, burning with humiliation. We land. Taxi in. Shut down. Father Rat gets out of his aeroplane and very deliberately walks over to me through the blowing sand. „Four‟, he says, „I want a word with you…‟ I can only nod humbly. It was of course idée fixe – I was so intent on finding the Team I completely missed the perfectly clear announcement that Dubai had changed runway from 30 to the reciprocal 12 because the wind had veered. We departed on 30 so my fixed idea was landing on 30… A non-tragic example, and even gaining hilarity status because Dubai ATC thought we meant to do it and pronounced it one of the most spectacular crosses they‟d seen us do – thus unknowingly absolving Lecomber, B, from certain entirely justified official questions. Idée fixe. Watch out for it.

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HELICOPTERS AND JESUS-BOLTS Rotary-wing being a different world

I am hovering. Well… Well, the truth is that we are sort of hovering. If you imagine a man on a freezing cold day trying to stand still in a freezing cold field while he desperately wants a widdle, then we are that sort of hovering. Kind of shifting from foot to foot and never quite staying in the same place for more than a few seconds at a time. The front of my head is wearing that glazed expression which pilots commonly exhibit when both brain cells are thoroughly overloaded. My ankles and wrists are bar-tight springs dedicated to the art of over-controlling, and my brain is hanging limp between my ears, deaf and blind to all the normal tenets of airmanship. If the floor fell out of the aircraft it would take me five minutes to work out that the heater had packed up. We swing and recover, back and fill. I am, in fact, in the process of joining that ever-growing band of fixed-wing pilots who are making the interesting discovery that hovering a helicopter is by no means as easy as the aficionados make it look. Beside me, instructor David Arkell is looking far more relaxed about his calling than the present circumstances would seem to warrant. However, I am aware that this nonchalance is only skin-deep. In reality his hands are poised like a gunfighter‟s at high noon, ready to pounce in an instant when the inevitable debacle comes to pass. His vigilance is fully justified. We have now been hovering for what feels like half an hour and is probably nearer to two minutes, and with every passing second I can feel my tenuous grasp over the proceedings slipping away like a handful of sand. “Try landing it now”. David‟s voice is quite calm. I consider this to be a notable achievement, since he is perfectly well aware that I have never landed a helicopter before. Still, he is also aware that I have never hovered one before, either – indeed he would have to be three weeks dead not to have noticed this most obvious fact – so possibly he feels that landing can only improve the situation. He has, moreover, prudently picked a moment when my various oscillations appear to have cancelled themselves out for a

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few brief seconds. Stability is definitely too strong a word for it; but for just this small particle of time I do seem to have confused the machine into momentary stasis while it decides which way it will go charging off next. Clearly there is no time to be lost. I ease down on the left-hand lever – the collective, I think it‟s called – we descend through our whole three feet of operating height… And much to my surprise, the Robinson settles gently on to the grass and sits there rumbling placidly to itself. I slump in my seat as if somebody just pulled the cork and let all the air out of my body. David is wise enough to appreciate that my brain now requires a little time to get its beans back in a row. With nauseating smoothness he hover-taxies us into a parking space just about big enough for a wheelbarrow, and we shut down. I am left contemplating my performance. I did at least return the assembly to terra firma without amputating the tail boom with the main rotor – which I am told is perfectly possible – so perhaps I am not totally inept. However, remembering my hovering I most certainly do not feel especially ept. So call it a draw so far; helicopter one, Lecomber one. Chastening, but interesting. And, I have to say, enjoyable. I hadn‟t really expected that. Indeed, the reason in am here at all has, paradoxically, not a little to do with the fact that up to now I have always been rather suspicious of helicopters. I lay no claim to any great logic in this: it‟s just that I‟ve never much fancied hanging under a mechanical sword-dancer by the grace of a couple of Jesus-bolts. The fact that all flying machines have some sorts of Jesus-bolts don‟t make no never-mind. There is something about the average helicopter which suggests that all the bolts are Jesusbolts, and they‟re all just a-sittin‟ there waiting to have interesting failures in fatigue. For most of my aviation career I have had no great difficulty in pandering to this prejudice. When I was a kid people talked about every family having a helicopter in the garage instead of a car; but things didn‟t pan out that way, and in my aerial youth helicopters were expensive and highly specialised toys which I had no difficulty in avoiding. Now, however, the wheel has turned a bit further. The shiny whistling helicopters still cost an arm and a leg, of course, but these days there is also a generation of perfectly serviceable small piston helicopters which are actually cheaper to buy than many single-engined aeroplanes. One of these – and it may be the brand-leader, I wouldn‟t be knowing – is the little two-seat Robinson R22 Beta, which is the machine I am assaulting on this day. At £65,000 plus VAT (in 1989 – not so now! - BL) it may not exactly be man-in-the-

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street cheap, but it certainly isn‟t ridiculous. Robinson have sold 800 of them in the last ten years, and by all accounts right now is boom-time for sales in the UK. So much is it boom-time, in fact, that the Cabair Group, those upwardly mobile entrepreneurs of the training world, have recently added a clutch of Robinsons to their mighty fleet of fixed-wing trainers. Based at Elstree and Redhill, the little eggwhisks are doing a roaring trade, and Cabair happily report that by fixed-wing standards a huge proportion of the students end up buying a chopper of their own at the end of the course. The training cost is £160 per hour (plus VAT), and by way of an introduction the schools run a one-day course, involving three hours of flying, for £395, which is unarguably good value for money. Which is where I come in. Since a complete non-aviator would probably be rendered insensible by three hours of flying on his first day, this course is clearly aimed primarily at the fixed-wing pilot who is thinking of converting to choppers; and so, as one who was known to be fairly assiduously not thinking of converting to choppers, I was judged to be the ideal candidate for embarking on the intro day with the proper mixture of enquiry, eagerness and fear. There is, Pilot Editor James Gilbert assures me, a logic behind this, even if at this precise moment I cannot quite recall what it is. The day began with a briefing by David. This was extremely comprehensive, possible because I persisted in asking a great many silly questions. As a result I have now of course forgotten most of the answers, which is galling since I do like to understand by what means any particular flying machine is proposing to haul my unlovely body aloft. However, the truth is that helicopter aerodynamics are bloody complicated, and I defy any normal mortal to hoist in the mysteries of flapping, coning, Coriolis effect, transverse airflow and all the rest in one mental gulp. If I can just remember the most salient points, topped with the fact that all helicopters are EBU compared to fixed-wing aircraft, then that will have to do for this day. (EBU is my own expression. It stands for Extremely Bloody Unstable). The walk-round inspection of a Robsinson R22 is not a tour calculated to sooth those who have phobias about Jesus-bolts – not, indeed, about Jesus-belts, since a pair of drive-belts like overgrown fanbelts is exactly what connects the 0-320 Lycoming to the rest of the works. The engine sits low down behind the seats facing aft (the engine facing aft, not the seats) and to the end of the crankshaft is bolted this double-track pulley. The belts therefrom reach up and drive a second pulley, from which one shaft extends forwards and another backwards. The front shaft drives the main rotor gearbox just behind the pilots‟ swedes, while the rear shaft drives the tail rotor gearbox. Simple.

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Well, not quite so simple. Because if you left the drive-line connected up at all times you would find a small but important obstacle to further progress – viz., that you would be unable to start the engine, since the average starter motor is not quite designed with the static inertia of two gearboxes and a 25 foot rotor in mind. The engine, therefore, has to be de-clutchable from the rotatables; and on the Robinson this is achieved by a little electric jack which pushes the driven pulley upwards to tighten the belts after you‟ve fired up the engine. Being un untrusting soul I have to say that on first acquaintance this morning I did eye this arrangement with not a lot of enthusiasm. However since then we have certainly flown one sortie without having to resort to the old nylon-stocking-round-thebelt-pulleys trick, so I am now more or less prepared to be convinced. In fact, over a coffee David assures me that the belts are lifed to 2,000 flying hours, which is the same as the engine and the gearbox and most of the other moving parts. He makes it sound as is you fly your Robinson for 2,000 hours, then put it in a box and send it back to the Robinson Helicopter Company in Torrance, California, where they renew everything except maybe the seat cushions, and return it to you with a little note explaining that you now owe them a couple of bob. Or very many couples of bobs. With coffee finished, and myself having temporarily run out of silly questions, we go back out to sample the beast again. This time on the walk-round I am slightly less mesmerised by the vast number of Jesus-bolts, and am able to observe that as a piece of engineering the Robinson is actually most cunningly contrived, and also well put together. It is one of those deceptive assemblies which you have to look at twice before you realise how clever the simplicities are. Inside the cockpit, however, there is one little simplicity which I have come to regard as not a bit clever. This is the cyclic stick, which is the main control and therefore slightly important. In order – presumably – to save weight and complication, this cyclic actually sprouts up between the two pilots, and has a sort of T-handle with down-turned ends on the cross-bar of the T so that each pilot can have a „stick‟ of his own in the right place. This T-bar is free to rock laterally over a considerable arc, so that the operating pilot pulls his end of the bar down to a comfortable position while the other end correspondingly swings up out of the natural hand-grasp of the other pilot. Or instructor. Quite what the rationale behind this is I do not know; but the net result is a control stick which has totally redundant movement in one plane. Doubtless one gets used to it eventually, but you may take it from me that it is extremely bothersome at first. A chap‟s initial tussle with a helicopter is quite confusing enough without the bloody stick going up and down in your hand and not doing anything.

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In a chopper, for reasons I do not know, the command seat is on the right. You cop the cyclic with your right hand, and down on the left side of the seat is this other control, the collective. It is called the collective because it collectively controls engine power and the pitch of the main rotor blades. Pull it upwards and it opens the throttle and at the same time increases the pitch angle, at which point the helicopter riseth. Your hand on the collective also controls a twistgrip throttle. The practical function of this varies from chopper to chopper – in a turbine helicopter, as I understand it, you use it for start-up, shut-down, setting a base-line percentage of power, and beyond that pretty well forget it. In the Robinson, however, you also use it in flight for fine adjustment of both engine and rotor rpm. Since these adjustments seem to be called for at what I personally regard as less-than-obvious moments, and since on top of that I seem to be incapable of remembering which way to turn the blasted twistgrip when I do get round to fiddling with it, it has to be said that so far my accord with this fairly vital control has been somewhat short of ideal. David lifts us off the ground and prudently moves us to an empty part of the airfield where it will take me a little bit longer to find obstacles such as fuel bowsers to run into. He then hands over control and invites me to proceed the machine in a forwardly direction. This is easy enough. A chap simply pushes forward on the cyclic to change the angle of the rotor disc, and off we bimble. There is an incipient yaw to be contained, but this should be no problem to any tailwheel pilot. (In fact the only unfamiliar things about the rudder pedals are firstly that they have no increasing feel with rising airspeed, being as they only control the pitch-change mechanism of the tail rotor, and secondly that the instructor rebuketh you if you call them rudder pedals, they being actually known as anti-torque pedals.) As the airspeed passes about 25 knots, we go through what David describes as translation. This means that the rotor disc starts to acquire extra lift due to the forward speed, which creates a requirement to throttle back slightly. As usual I initially twist the damn throttle the wrong damn way, but at least by now I am learning to expect the error, which I suppose is something. We then go charging along at about ten feet while the speed slowly builds up. This is jolly good fun, the more so because for once the low flying is not only legit but actually mandatory to safe operations. The reason for this is that in the event of the donk quitting in a chopper you need energy in order to enter autorotation successfully. This energy can be potential in the form of height, or kinetic in the shape of speed. Clearly, if you have no speed at all and a height of five feet you ain‟t got neither; but since five feet isn‟t very far to fall it doesn‟t particularly matter. So

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when you translate to forward flight you stay low until you come towards the best autorotational (or gliding) speed, and only then do you start your climb. These matters are in fact of more than passing interest to me at this time, since on this flight I am told we are going to try out autorotations for real, or at least for simulated. This is presumably intended to convince me, the potential student, that helicopters do not fall out of the sky like a shot duck if the engine hands in its dinner pail. As we climb out I am none too sure that I, the potential student, wish to know this so early in the proceedings. There is a small feeling about the place that I the potential student might be frightened fartless by the exercise, possibly to the extent that I will bin the whole idea and poke off and buy a Porsche with the money instead. However, when it comes to it, the business turns out to be not all that dramatic after all, or at least not when David demonstrates it. On the day course the matter would normally stop at his demonstration, but it seems that I have talked myself into wanting a go or six at it myself. So this is why I am shortly cruising at 1,500 feet or so with every nerve-end sticking a foot (0.3m) out of my body. David says; “Engine failure!” I whap the collective down smartly and close the throttle. This disconnects the rotor from the engine via a freewheeling unit and at the same time reduces the rotor blade pitch by lots. David has calmly informed me that the rotor rpm quickly becomes interestingly low if you do not whap the collective down smartly. This, he says, actually makes Robinsons more difficult to fly in tetchy circumstances than their bigger, heftier, turbine brethren, since said brethren have heavier rotors which therefore retain more inertia. This news naturally produces an instant mental vision of Lecomber‟s last act being to try gliding a Robinson with the rotor completely stopped. Such a vision may be twaddle, but it is nonetheless vivid. So now I do not so much whap the collective down smartly as make a good passing imitation of trying to ram it through the floor. At this point, for reasons I will not bore you with (= I cannot remember them) the nose wishes to pitch down and yaw. The yaw is no problem, but the honk back on the cyclic to contain the pitch-down feels horrendous to a fixed-wing pilot. Imagine it; the engine quits and the first thing you do is pull back and keep pulling… And the oddities are not over yet. With the engine newly failed, guess what the first thing you have to watch out for is? Well, I‟ll tell you – it‟s over-revving; or to be precise, over-speeding of the rotor. Now I ask you, is that fair? The explanation is in fact fairly simple. There is one gliding speed (65 knots in the Robinson) at which the pattern of airflow up through the rotor disc maintains 100

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percent rpm with the blades pitched fully down. You cruise, however at about 95 knots; so when you whap the collective fully down at 95, the first thought the rotor has is to cheerfully over-speed itself until such time as the speed comes back down by thirty knots. This slow-down does not of course take long. In fact as it happens it takes rather shorter than the period my bean requires to recognise the incipient over-speed and deal with it with a little dab of collective. Still, the Robinson is fairly forgiving in these matters, so in a few seconds we are more or less settled in the glide at more or less 65 knots. The term „glide‟ is of course relative. A glider glides well. An aerobatic hot-ship glides like a bird – an oven-ready turkey. And a helicopter, I am now able to observe, glides like a concrete parachute. The rate of descent is about 1,800 fpm, and the glide angle is something like 3.5:1. This makes even a dead-stick Pitts Special seem like a sailplane, and does most severely restrict your cone of possibility after the engine has gone quiet. But… The credit side of this is that (a) it is fairly easy to judge your approach when your descent angle looks bloody nearly vertical, and (b) you only need a space the size of a judo mat to put the thing down on anyway. The theory of the autorotative landing is simple. You first flare out to kill the forward speed by pulling the stick back, as if you were landing a Tiger Moth. This brings the chopper to a stop at about ten feet, whereupon you level the fuselage and pull the collective up to cushion the landing. Said pulling up of the collective will of course increase the blade pitch and cause the rotor to start slowing down; but the idea is that you have enough inertia in the works to give you lift for a few seconds, during which time you land the blighter. This is the theory… In practise, however, my efforts are afflicted with a certain amount of Pavlovian habit. After thousands of hours in tailwheel biplanes a landing flare is to me a landing flare; it continues right on down to the ground, that being where most landings take place. What it does not do is stop at ten feet and then pitch abruptly nose-down… Accordingly, therefore, I do exhibit at this point a sad tendency to flare the chopper right on down to the deck. Only David‟s patter, which at this moment has acquired just the tiniest hint of urgency, prompts me to perform the flare… stop… push… which is what the doctor ordered. After we land David reiterates by word and gesture that the one thing you never do in a chopper is flare to the deck in forward flight, because this bashes the tailskid very hard on the ground, which causes the rotor blades to flap downwards and slice

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the tail-boom off for you. This, he says, really makes the helicopter quite noticeably difficult to control, and is therefore an eventuality which I might care to consider avoiding. A chap can only agree with this, of course, and I do accordingly bear it most painstakingly in mind during my next attempt. This goes reasonably well within the meaning of the act, but I am left with the firm impression that in all of helicopter flying it is this which would always feel the most unnatural to my poor little fixed-wing brain: you just don‟t flare a flying machine to ten feet then shove forward heartily on the pole…. On the next flight we concentrate pretty much on hovering and associated exercises. Hovering is practised at about ten feet, because between ten feet and 400 feet lies the Dead Man‟s curve of the performance envelope. Below 400 feet, if the engine quits in the hover you do not have enough room to dive to autorotative speed and thereby store energy in the rotor for a landing. What you do have room for is to work up a highly destructive downward velocity about which you can do nothing whatsoever except get as far through the Lord‟s Prayer as you can manage. So, you practice hovering at ten feet, where if the engine quits for real you‟d probably find that the Robinson has landed itself before you‟d even realised what was occurring. Swanning around at ten feet does of course mean that the instructor has to be made of fairly stern stuff, especially in the early hours of a student‟s endeavours. Helicopters generally – and, I gather, the Robinson in particular – really are EBU in the hover. The response to both cyclic and rud – sorry, sorry, antitorque pedals is incredibly twitchy, and there being no natural stability whatsoever one has not only to correct every little foible but also correct the corrections as well, if you follow me. This means, as I now proceed to demonstrate, that there is a considerable tendency for a minor wind-induced ripple to end up as a major pilot-induced excursion in the other direction, and that in no seconds flat. To add to my woes, the wind has now got up and is gusting fifteen to twenty knots. This means that with the nose pointed into wind we actually have forward airspeed and therefore a degree of translational lift. This would be fine and dandy if the wind was steady, but of course it is not. It is, naturally, gusting; and every time it gusts it not only calls for corrections to stay in (approximately) the same place, but also changes our airspeed and consequently the extent of the translational lift. This does not exactly help, especially since the resultant juggling with the collective also promotes secondary effects in pitch and yaw. David says calmly: “Try a spot turn to the left.”

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A spot turn, as the name suggests, is a 360 degree turn on the spot. At this moment, since I am already using up quite a number of spots just hovering, it is my private opinion that this could be a 360 degree turn most noticeably not on the spot. I am not wrong. The turn starts off reasonably well, and at first I even manage to cope, after a fashion, with the changing direction of the translational lift. At ninety degrees of turn effectively flying sideways… know coming round to rearwards airspeed… Jesus! Passing through the downwind heading, the tail suddenly whips round like a Pitts going into a spin. Good old weathercock action, pure and simple. We fixed-wing pilots only think about weathercock action when we‟re taxiing. Catch it in a chopper where there‟s no ground friction to calm things down and it‟s a whole new plate of spaghetti, I‟m telling you. I tramp frantically on right rudder. I mean antitorque pedal. The turn stops abruptly. Teeny touch of left. Whizz round again. Damn and blast. Dabble feet ever so gently. Bloody machine lurches round in a series of jerks… Eventually we are heading back into wind. Not, needless to say, on the spot where we started. In fact, I find that in the press of events I have forgotten where the spot we started was, but suspect it is now hull-down somewhere on the upwind horizon. I am notably not gruntled with myself. “Not bad,” says David, demonstrating a truly grandiose economy with the truth. “Try it again, now you‟ve seen what happens.” So I try it again. And again. And lo, after a while I am doing it. Turning on the spot. It‟s true to say that it‟s a kind of big spot; say about twice the size of the rotor span at times. And it‟s also true to say that when the wind gusts I do have a tendency to invent the hesitation turn. Possible it‟s because I‟m used to doing a lot of hesitation rolls. But these things are relative… And what they are relative to, as in all of flying, is that state of one‟s mind. Because in the last twenty minutes, playing around at low level doing what a helicopter is good at, I have actually had fun. And when you‟re having fun, a fifty-foot spot is not an infuriating indictment of ineptitude but merely a biggish spot which will get smaller with practice. And I suddenly find I actually like going backwards and sideways, and stopping before I land…. Oh, hell. Now I shall go away and try and find excuses for needing a chopper licence. I‟ve seen it happen before. Think of the Jesus-bolts Brian. Think of the bloody Jesus-bolts…

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THE I’s HAVE IT If all else fails, read the regulations

Have you ever noticed that pretty well all professional aerobatic aircraft in the UK have registrations that include three I‟s? As in G-IIMI, G-HIII, etc? Take a look. The I‟s definitely have it. Other aircraft owners have caught on, so that now three lll‟s registrations seem to have become a sort of fashion statement, like short tight mini-skirts or matt-black bonnets on Ford Escorts an aeon ago. This is how it came about. Now I have to preface this by saying that I have more respect than most for the Civil Aviation Authority. I have had extensive dealings with Airworthiness, Safety Regulation Group, and Flight Operations. These are front-line departments, and apart from the odd scuffle we have rubbed along well for decades. But there is always going to be a Pillock. The Chambers dictionary defines pillock as a foolish or stupid person. In the CAA Recruitment Standing Orders there is probably a paragraph which says; “We have to take on the occasional pillock,to prove we are equal-opportunity employers and not prejudiced against pillocks”. So I came up against a Pillock. I won‟t mention his department, except to say it was not one of the above, nor even Legal or Aircraft Registrations. In fact it was exactly the kind of admin backwater kept by many a big outfit for the express purpose of quietly hiding away Pillocks where they can‟t pee excessively on the public image. This Pillock wrote to me saying that the registration letters on the fin and rudder of one of my aircraft were below the regulation size, and that I should rectify this instantly. I wrote back saying, sorry, can‟t be done because if they were full-size they‟d fall off the end of the rudder. For that reason they‟re 66% full-size, and that‟s that. And he wrote back saying, well, if there isn‟t room on the empennage for them to be full-size, put it on the fuselage-side, where there is room. And I wrote back saying that I needed the side of the fuselage for the sponsor‟s name, so the reg needed to be on the fin/rudder. So please may I have an exemption from the size requirement?

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He replied no, that would not be in line with Policy. Policy stated that an aircraft should be readily identifiable by its on-side registration marks, and this was the size laid down in the regulations. This was becoming tedious. To be fair, Pillock was right about the regulations, and to be even fairer, he may indeed not have had any legal room for the application of common sense. He may also have been kind to his family and helped old ladies across the street on a regular basis. But to me he was by now indelibly branded Pillock, which just goes to show how life can be unfair. I spoke to Pillock. “Look, you have the power to grant exemptions from the registration marks rules, confirm?” “Correct”. “So can I have an exemption?” “No”. “Why not?” “Because the registration would be too small”. Take a deep breath, Brian. Just remind yourself that the penalties for strangling idiots are quite severe, and could interfere with your plans for the next few years. “I know it would be too small”, I said with huge patience. “That is why I want an exemption. Now you do give exemptions, don‟t you?” “Yes, but only to ex-military aircraft in military colour schemes and displaying military numbers”. There are moments in life when all you can do is shake your head feebly. “Military serials”, I said, “are about a tenth of the size of a civilian registration, correct?” “Correct”. “And they don‟t necessarily have any under-wing markings at all, whilst I have the full-size registration on the underside of the left wing, Correct?” “Correct”. “Moreover, military colour schemes in the nature of the beast tend to be identical and widespread. Correct?” “Correct”. “Now I personally know of at least 20 ex-RAF Chipmunks still in Training Command raspberry-ripple paint, all looking identical, and all carrying no registrations other than their tiny RAF numbers on the fuselage sides and about the size of car number-plates – certainly illegible from the ground. You have given these now-

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civilian aeroplanes exemptions from carrying any civilian registrations at all, so that for all practical purposes they are indistinguishable from each other. Correct?” A pause. “Er – yes”. “But my aeroplane will not be properly identifiable if the side markings are only 20cm high instead of 30?” “The regulations…” At this point I made a possibly inappropriate remark concerning the regulations and a particular medical procedure usually referred to as an enema. It has to be said this soured the conversation slightly. However a chap has to press on. “So to sum it up”, I said, “you are quite happy for 20 or 30 Chipmunks to be swanning around all painted the same colours, all identical, and all with no civil registrations displayed?” “We do grant…” “But you‟re not happy for me to have a slightly-small side registration on an aeroplane which is deliberately intended to be the most identifiable aircraft in the county – which is, indeed, the only aircraft on the entire planet with the word JAGUAR plastered all over it in the largest letters I can possibly manage. I mean, if you want to talk about identifiable…” He started to say; “The regulations – “ but sadly became inaudible due to minor structural damage affecting the telephone as I gently replaced the receiver. They don‟t make phones like they used to. But what to do? My sponsors at Jaguar were reasonable people, but removing their logo from the fuselage would undoubtedly have a certain cooling effect on the relationship. Assassinating the Pillock by cunning means had its attractions, but there were still the Regulations… Ah. The Regulations. Well, if all else fails, read the Regulations. Not entirely riveting, but this was an emergency. So I read the regulations. Very carefully. And I found some things. The rules governing registration letters then (not so much now because they‟ve changed a bit, possibly as a result of what ensued) were a typographical nonsense. The meanest apprentice printer would just snigger and roll his eyes upwards. The rules laid down the minimum height of the letters, stated that the minimum width should be no less than two-thirds of the height (except for the letter I, of course), and that the minimum space between letters should be half the width of the preceding letter…. Except for the I…. half the width of the preceding letter… Aaah.

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Well, of course you‟re ahead of me. Obviously if you have lots of I‟s in the registration it becomes shorter and therefore you can fit it on the fin/rudder of a Pitts or Extra at full regulation size. Obvious now – but not so obvious then, when the mindset of myself and several other display operators with the same itch was the exemption route, not the lateral-thinking route. All I can say is that I thought of it first, by about six seconds, and I can prove it. There are 104 possible permutations of G-registrations utilising three I‟s and one other letter – but within that, only one G-IIII. And I grabbed G-IIII. So there. I thought of it first. And registered it on a new Pitts Special I‟d just acquired from America. Under the rules then pertaining (not now) the gap between the letters had to be half the width of the preceding letter – and so with malice aforethought I did duly place them just so. Bearing in mind I had four I‟s, the result bore more than a passing resemblance to a section nicked out of a striped deckchair. This in fact caused a CAA Airworthiness Surveyor – a sensible man, whose technical ability I much respected – to say; “Here, wassat?” “The registration. What else?” “Whatja mean the registration? I can‟t read that. It looks like a bar-code”. “So it does”, I said sadly. “Pity about that. But here‟s your own CAA regulations about registration letters – no option, when you come read them”. He read them. A grin spread over his face. He was a serious Airworthiness man, not a Pillock. He signed off the aeroplane and left without another word. Chuckling. So… a small victory over a short-sighted regulation. Others followed the lead, so three I‟s registrations on display aircraft became universal. Fine. Job done. CAA Pillock screwed and in fact never heard from again. Complete minor triumph… Not quite complete triumph. Not quite complete because now almost all serious aerobatic display aeroplanes have registrations which include three I‟s. And where do these aeroplanes tend to converge? You‟ve got it – in the heat of arrivals just before an air show. This really is a good moment to have three or four aircraft all in the same stack and all with tripleIndia callsigns… Thanks, Pillock. Thanks, regulations. A real contribution to air safety, that.

Of course, in the real word the situation is not that bad. Display pilots as a whole are not entirely stupid, and air traffickers ditto. So in order to avoid laughable misunderstandings the use of callsigns such as ‘Honda Pitts’ or ‘Jaguar Extra’ have become universal. So I guess the final score is pretty much even – Pillock 1, common sense 1.

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HOW MUCH LUCK IS LUCK? Sometimes carefulness also needs… luck

Sometimes luck is on your side. In the earthling world you might have a financial success, avoid a road accident, get a new job. Lady Luck. Joss. You suddenly believe in religion, or whatever. In the world aloft, luck can sometimes be rather more stark. You have not been killed when you should have been. Lady Luck. Luck is not always as it might seem at first. Sometimes luck can be quite contrary. Even coy. Even hiding behind a hedge and sniggering to see if you notice… I do not yet know it, but luck is stalking me on this day. I am tasked to fly an aerobatic display on the very south-west tip of west Wales, and the day-start is an unlikely setting for Lady Luck to trip on stage. The forecast is foul, with a vigorous warm front incoming from the west – exactly the direction I want to go. I am flying my dear Stampe SV4, an aeroplane I much love for its classic aerobatic qualities, but which is not notably rapid in cruise. Nor is its open cockpit in any way warm. And nor is it exactly gainly on the ground. The wind is 25 knots straight in my teeth all the way, and I will have to land at Swansea to refuel. I can land in a 25 knot wind more or less down the runway – but what I cannot do without help is subsequently turn off the runway and taxi in cross-wind, due to the Stampe‟s dogged determination to imitate a weather-vane and swing into wind despite hefty application of down-wind brake and cross-wind cuss-words. So this involves the advanced organising of ground crew to grab the wings and walk me into the fuel bay. All capable of solution if you‟ve thought about it beforehand – but not a day when the runes are particularly cheery. Especially when you know in your heart of hearts that try as you might, there is a very good chance that there is finally going to be one thing missing – viz; that you are not in fact going to get there. All the portents suggest I will collide with the serious guts of the front somewhere between Swansea and my west-Wales target, and will have to turn back. But this is a contracted display. So you have to try.

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I do so try. I crawl slowly over the landscape from Denham (near London) to Swansea against the wind with the cloudbase lowering all the way. I land at Swansea and the ground crew duly catch my wingtips and walk me in to refuel. Frozen to the marrow, I get back in and head on west. As the cloudbase lowers still further and the rain becomes constant I pin up my flat-show aerobatic drawing on the panel. The rain runs down the back of my neck as I do it. Quick mental rehearsal; slow-roll… turnaround… climbing flick-roll… inverted pass… Suddenly, I‟m not going much, if any, further. As anticipated by the met forecast and my own not-optimistic analysis, we do indeed collide with the baleful intestines of the front, the Stampe and I. The sky ahead is solid grey. A wall of nearly deck-level cloud and heavy rain. Even now we try. We get down on our hands and knees and hug the coastline and push on into the weather at significantly low level. Scratching along in close acquaintance with the sandbars and coves and a solitary dog- walker – who watches open-mouthed as this brightly-coloured biplane emerges out of the murk, snarls past him just above the breakers, and disappears into the even deeper murk to the west – we actually get to within five miles of the show-site. At this point the curtain of crud becomes so impenetrable that only an aviator with no interest in the next 40 years of his life would persist in trying conclusions with it… Much irritated – so near and yet so far – I adopt Plan B, which is a hard 180degree turn and grind back out of it. This at least exploits the one advantage of going directly into known bad weather – viz, that the 180 degree turn-andbacktrack is a viable option because you actually know from first-hand acquaintance what it‟s like behind you. With the wind now on our tail the Stampe at last assumes some resemblance to a machine intended to cover ground at a faster rate than a milk float. My painful 60 kts groundspeed pushing towards the display becomes a dazzling 115 kts scuttling back the other way. At this dizzy speed I can eschew Swansea and get home without refuelling. The warp-factor velocity however does nothing to improve the cockpit temperature… It is a very cold and damp pilot who arrives back at Denham and climbs stiffly out. Not a good day. Four hours hard flying, some of it attention-grabbing if not actually fraught, topped off by getting within five miles of the show-site but not actually arriving. Apart from anything else a definite contender for my always swelling list of not-bright business moves – because according to our company philosophy, we are not going charge any person one sou for it. Our guarantee is

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most simple – no display, no fee. Simple, if sometimes painful. I phone the event to explain my non-appearance, which did not surprise them in the least because „We couldn‟t see the next headland, boyo. Amazed you even tried. See you next year‟. Thus capping the day I have a long cup of coffee, then refuel the Stampe and pre-flight inspect it. And find this tiny shiver in the paint. It is on a tailplane bracing wire bracket – and it is a tiny shiver; just a miniscule rippling of the surface. The bracket is half an inch wide; the paint-shiver, oh, a tenth of an inch. But it catches my eye. I am tired and cold and for a moment think f*** it. But it nags. This shouldn‟t be. So I mutter at myself for being an old woman and get a bit of wet-and-dry paper and rub through the paint. Think I might be seeing a crack in the bracket. Get my spanners out and remove it. Flex it gently with my fingers… And it breaks in two in my hand. Just… breaks in two. Maybe I am not such an old woman. I suddenly find I am shivering. Looking at the break, it is a perfectly obvious fatigue crack which had propagated 75% of the way through the bracket before I held it in my hand and snapped it. We will later work out why – because a bracing-wire had been maladjusted so that it touched the bracket and transferred vibration – but what holds my attention right now is the simple, most un-technical fact that I‟d applied a wee bit of finger pressure to that bracket and it had fallen apart. Just like that. If I‟d reached that display site – which I‟d got within five miles of – and done even flat-show aerobatics – which I certainly would have done, that being the whole point of the exercise – then the left-side of the tailplane at least would most certainly have departed. Other components may well have followed it because the whole design of such an empennage relies on the totality of the wire bracing – but by then such details would have been unimportant to me because I would either have been already deceased or very inevitably heading that way as the ground or sea rushed up at me. Very simple. But I hadn‟t got there. I‟d turned back five miles away. I look at the two halves of the bracket in my hand. I walk out of the hangar and raise my face into the drizzle of the warm front which is now catching up with my earlier retreat from it. In the grey lowering clouds just for a moment I fancy I see a benign female face with an enigmatic smile. Lady Luck, I think I see.

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So how much luck is luck? When I wrote the above I was going to sign off by remarking that however careful a body might be, Lady Luck will sometimes have the last say. But… Thinking about it again, I‟m not so sure. Yes, on that day the bracket did not break, and I lived. Yes, true, that was luck. Pure, kindly, unadulterated luck. Which definitely saved the scrawny neck of this sinner. But then, cold and tired, I did find the crack – the crack that would certainly have killed me on the next display had it been left to lie in wait. Was that, too, luck? Well, maybe. Alright, probably… Or maybe not entirely. The fact is I always knew Stampes had a history of cracking flying wire attachment brackets – the airframes were built with much lightness in mind, and a propensity for cracking metal fittings is an inevitable result of such a design philosophy. In biplanes of that vintage it is a disease akin to AIDS. You most definitely, if you wish to daddle grandchildren on your knee, watch out for it. So my eyes, my mindset, were pre-programmed to look for that tiny paint shiver. Sooner or later, somewhere in the forest of visible rigging brackets on a Stampe, there was going to be a crack in the paint. Somewhere. Sometime. It was going to happen – and possibly happen again. So I always looked for it. And this time, found it. So – maybe not completely luck. Maybe I can spinkle just a tad of airmanship onto it. Staring at the overcast I am minded yet again of my old Chief Flying Instructor, who many times said to me: “Get yourself a real nasty suspicious mind. You‟re a pilot. You‟re going to need it”. Yeah, old friend. Got that one.

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THE WRONG VIBRATION Four rules about modifying an aeroplane

At 140 mph I roll the Pitts upside-down and push forward. The nose plunges up into the grey sky. My head tightens instantly under the negative G. Minus 2G… minus 3… On cue, the vibration starts up. It is a deep and pervading vibration, this – as if the entire airframe has suddenly been plugged into a distant high-speed road drill. It has a determined and most menacing feel to it. I ease the push a trifle. The vibration ceases. I push gently on round the rest of the half outside-loop and level off. It is far from warm in the Pitts Special cockpit. But sweat prickles my face and inside me a small scared man wishes fervently to be elsewhere – anywhere but in this aeroplane on this day carrying out this entirely too-interesting test flight. Couldn‟t you go on holiday? You haven‟t had a week off in a twelvemonth. Go lie in the sun and come back and do this on another day when you‟re rested and ready… Yeah, yeah. But the display season starts in two weeks, scared man. So I have to sort this out now. So, scared man who is me, just shut the hell up and do it… I note down the last results on my kneepad. Then the sweat slides down my cheeks as I roll into a dive, pull out and stabilise at 160 this time, then roll inverted and push again. The same thing happens – that horrible, drilling vibration at around –3G… Starting at 180 mph, the same thing happens. Starting at 200 mph, the same thing happens. I have had enough. My test-flight-sheet completed in an increasingly wobbly scrawl, I head for home. An hour later my hands are still trembling. I shove them into my pockets lest Geoff the engineer should see the tremors. I lean against a bench and regard my darling Pitts with something near loathing. It is a much-modified creature, this Pitts. Last year I campaigned it on the display circuit in its standard form as a Pitts S1-S. It was a successful season; some 90

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displays flown, my new sponsors happy, and my embryo little display company perhaps destined for great things. Happiness! Success! So much happiness, indeed, that with the sponsor‟s ink barely dry on the renewed contract I did fall prey to vaulting ambition. Next season, I decided, I would fly not just a Pitts Special. I would fly the Super Pitts Special. I would use the winter to modify the S1-S so it would fly faster, roll faster, flick (snap-roll) faster, punch longer verticals… The modifications were to be extensive, but we had all winter to carry them out. We would replace the 180 hp Lycoming engine with the (significantly different) 200 hp version. We would replace the two-blade fixed-pitch prop with a magical threeblade constant-speed device from the innovative German Hoffmann-Propeller factory. We would enlarge the ailerons and fit servo-spades to increase the roll-rate. We would re-work the wing-mounts to reduce the wing incidence to zero, which would improve the flick-roll. We would increase the elevator and rudder areas, which would bring all sorts of benefits. We would even fit a spring-steel undercarriage in place of the standard bungee-sprung landing gear in order to reduce drag. Ho! This would be the Super Pitts of the World! Fame and fortune would be mine, with every airshow falling over itself to book me… Scratch the surface of hubris and ambition, and beneath it you will frequently find a fool. There are four infallible rules attendant to modifying an aeroplane. Rule One is that however much you think it will cost, double it. Rule Two is that however long you think it will take, double it. Rules Three and Four we will come to presently. It started well. I bought a zero-timed 200 hp engine, bought the new Hoffmann prop, and bought the new undercarriage (which would take a short while to deliver from the United States). My dear little Pitts was duly dismantled and its component parts arrayed in the engineering surgery, awaiting their passage one by one to the operating table for their modifications. A highly-reputed cowling-maker man was engaged to create a thing called a pressure-cowl for the new engine – a desirable asset for one thing, and essential anyway because the old cowl would not accommodate the mighty new power-plant. At first I hardly noticed things slowing up. The times on the operating table multiplied. The delivery-date of the new undercarriage kept sliding away as if a man was constantly trying to grasp a particularly slippery bar of soap. The ace cowling man went on holiday and came back with the marthambles or something, and no, he hadn‟t actually started on the

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project yet. And yes, this is over-budget because when we actually stripped it down we found… Rules one and two operated to perfection. Time stretched dreamily; the budget stretched horribly. After an interminable period the Super Pitts was assembled and ready to go but for one minor factor – to wit, that it was still sitting on trestles, still awaiting the new undercarriage. Transatlantic threats finally produced the springsteel gear and it was fitted within 24 hours. It lacked any fairings to harmonise its union with the fuselage, but I was long past caring about mere cosmetics. Nearly three months late and now scant weeks before the start of the display season – the heavily-booked display season – the future King of the Hill was finally ready for testflying. So I went and test-flew it. And discovered Rule Three. Rule Three is that if you modify an aeroplane, any aeroplane, you will have problems. Not might, will. If you thought you were cleverer than the manufacturer, you will be wrong. Not might be wrong – you will be wrong. On the first test flight the snags rained down on me in a deluge. The all-magic Hoffmann propeller utterly failed to hold a constant rpm, and during aerobatics the engine revs surged like a hippo vomiting. The engine oil pressure fluctuated in a way I had never seen before. The elevators were over-light because we‟d overdone the servo-tabs. And the modified ailerons produced a roll-rate which was slower, not faster, than the original. And when I pushed negative G, there was this horrible, grinding vibration… I will draw a veil over the hurried midnight rectifications which ensued. Time also blurs the memory of how on earth the Civil Aviation Authority approved our shenanigans. One by one we licked the more blatant snags… Except for this bloody, bloody negative G vibration. And so we arrive at this day. The cowlings are off the Pitts and Geoff is slowly working his way round 30 or 40 strips of masking tape which are adhered to various parts of the engine, its Dynafocal mounting frame, and anywhere else we could think of. The theory was simple. All piston Lycoming engines are mounted via hefty rubber bushes – so perhaps this super new powerplant might be nodding so much in its mounts under negative G that some part of it is coming into contact with a solid part of the airframe and thus suddenly passing on the raw vibration of the engine. That‟s certainly what the grinding shudder feels like…

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And so the masking tape, the idea being to tape-up all conceivable – and a great many inconceivable – points of contact, fly the aeroplane, then examine the tapes for friction-marks. There are no friction marks. The most anxious peering reveals not a touch. Nothing. Geoff and I stare at the Pitts. We have reached an impasse and we both know it. For the tapes are far from being the first thing we have tried. We have in turn ducttaped wooden dowels to every bracing wire in turn to see if some mysterious harmonic was causing one of them to shake violently under negative G – the dowels might not stop it, but would surely change the frequency and thus allow us to pin down the source. No result. We have been through everything on the airframe which could possibly vibrate. We have tried it with the aileron servo-spades off and the aileron spades on. We have tried it with the wheel spats off and the wheel spats on. We have even – grasping at the flimsiest of straws – changed the tailwheel spring lest some Gremlin might have mysteriously endowed it with the properties of a violin-string. No result. Nothing. At minus 3G just that stomach-churning vibration… “Brian, go home”. Geoff is unusually gentle. “Go get drunk. Relax. I‟m going to get the CSU (propeller Constant Speed Unit) onto a test-rig and fit the prop accumulator and make up some fairings for the top of the undercarriage. It won‟t be ready for two days. So go home”. I open my mouth. I am about to say don‟t mess about with silly little fairings when we‟ve got real problems to solve and I‟m running out of time and money – but I know Geoff will be wounded. I know the sight of the raw un-faired undercarriage offends his eye – and mine too, come to that – and anyway what do another few pennies matter in the ocean of cost in which I am already drowning? “Yes, Geoff. I‟ll go home”. I spend the 48 hours mostly in fretful contemplation of flying a whole display season in an aeroplane afflicted with some lurking ague we do not understand. I design unsatisfactory displays which contain the very minimum of negative G. I wake up in the small hours with that damn vibration passing through my body. Two days later I am back in Geoff‟s workshop. The cowlings are back on and the Pitts is ready for more test-flying. It even has little fairings like shirt-cuffs over the roots of the undercarriage. I fly it. The bloody Hoffmann prop is still cantankerous, but somewhat improved. I roll inverted and push to the vibration-point…

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And there is no vibration. Not a tremor. I do it again, pushing harder. No vibration. I land. We take the little shirt-cuffs off, and I fly again. The vibration is back. We replace the cuffs – and lo, the vibration is gone. So, clearly, the raw undercarriage produced a fit of angry turbulent airflow at certain negative angles of attack, and the fairings have now smoothed it out so it no longer happens. Oh, so simple. So simple now that we know… Which brings me to Rule Four. Rule Four is most staightforward. If you‟re planning to modify an aeroplane – don‟t do it. In all the years since the Super Pitts Special I have confined myself to major modifications such as thicker seat cushions and moving the aerobatic cardholder around the panel. Being cleverer than the aeroplane manufacturer? Forget it. Just forget it.

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ELEMENTRY, MY DEAR WATSON But not if a man has a pre-formed judgement

That rather short crankshaft on my desk? Well, yes, there is a story behind it. Almost a detective story – although, sadly, one that Sherlock Holmes would have sneered at. A display, many years back. I finish the final 8-point roll and climb away. Rock the wings farewell to the 20,000 people at the county show. I am panting hard and my mouth is sandpaper, the way it always is at display-end. The adrenalin winds down as the small stone-walled fields of the Welsh valley recede below the Pitts‟s wings. My hands move through the post-performance rituals, calming the aeroplane in the same way that my heart-rate is calming back to normal. Prop and power – back to 2,500 rpm and 25 inches manifold pressure. Mixture to cruise setting. Slacken the harness back from super-tight to merely tight. Breathe deeply… My eyes slide across to the oil pressure gauge. Reluctantly. Because I know I do not want to see this.

60 psi. Oh, damn. Bloody, bloody damn. The blossom of worry wells up in my chest again. Why the bloody hell is this engine doing this…? The oil temperature is 195 F. Hot-ish – but no hotter than any other Lycoming at the end of a hectic display. Normally 200-horse Lycomings cruise at 160 to 170 F, then crank up to just under 200 in an aerobatic sequence. This naturally affects the oil pressure, which might start out at, say, 80 psi, finish the sequence at 75, then creep back up to 80 again as the oil temp cools.

Not this engine. This engine cruises at 90 psi, right at the top of the green oil pressure safety arc, because we’ve adjusted the pressure-relief valve to make it so. Then at the end of an eight-minute display it is right down there at 60. That’s a 30 psi difference…. Why? I glare at the instrument panel, wishing my gaze might penetrate clean through it, on through the fuel tank and firewall and thence into the intestines of the engine, there by some magic to discover the reason for this waywardness. Why are you doing this,,,?

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I shift uncomfortably in the seat and drag out my dog-eared map. The last hills of Wales slide below as we head towards the next display of the afternoon, an air show at Coventry. I will not look at the oil pressure again. It is in the green safety zone – just – so I am only worrying myself for no reason. I won’t look at it for ten minutes. I dig out my pipe and chew the stem. I am not uneasy at all, and I’m not going to stare at the bloody oil pressure again… There! It’s back up to 70 psi, Yet the temperature has only dropped five degrees. Okay, it’s in the green safe limits – but I am very familiar with AEIO 360 Lycoming engines, and I have never before encountered one which behaves like this. There has to be a reason… The search for a reason has so far been long and fruitless. It appears to be an anomaly in one Lycoming out of thousands – cold comfort indeed since it happens to power the aircraft in which I earn my precarious living. So I am sentenced to sit behind this rogue and wonder why. Why…? It is in fact a situation compounded by unknowns – and these unknowns, I am most uncomfortably aware, seem to be due to decisions which were entirely my own. I‟d started out with a standard Pitts S1-S with a 180 hp engine and a fixed-pitch prop. After one season, in a fit of ambition (AKA stupidity), I elected to modify this perfectly good aeroplane by inserting a 200 hp engine with a Hoffmann three-blade constantspeed prop. This latter device is a complete nightmare, a piece of over-expensive under-developed junk which is perfectly capable of surging to a momentary 4,000 rpm when the runes happen to fall in line – which is unwholesome since the engine is nominally red-lined at 2,700 rpm. Not necessarily mechanically fatal – Lycomings being famously tough so long as you do not persist in this manner of abuse – but most far from a sound propeller system. And the engine – recently overhauled and zero-timed by a reputable northern company and thereby signed-off as being the same as new – has from the first exhibited oil pressure symptoms which I have never before experienced in any other aero engine.

Why? Why…? We decided, Geoff the engineer and I, that it could only be something to do with the installation – that fitting this engine into this airframe had awakened some kind of evil genie we knew not of. Either that or some equally arcane Gremlin to do with the wretched Hoffmann. What else can it be…?

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We‟ve tried. We‟ve changed the oil pump, shifted the somewhat critical height of the Christen inverted oil system change-valve, changed and fiddled with the pressure-relief valve, trouble-shot the pressure gauge and sender, and fitted a high pressure air-oil accumulator into the prop-governor hydraulic circuit. In desperation – and with no conviction whatsoever – we have even tried welding strange baffles into the sump in an attempt to restrict oil surge. Nothing has made the slightest difference. Yet with this as-new zero-timed engine I am convinced it can only be connected with the modifications… There! The pressure‟s up to 80 and still rising. Again I haven‟t looked of course – just happened to glimpse it out of the corner of my eye. It has to be to do with the installation. Some sort of harmonic mis-match between engine and prop? The three-blade certainly isn‟t smooth. Or perhaps we should look again at the air-cooling baffles. Or maybe add a second oil cooler… Coventry appears on the horizon and crawls towards me. My tightly-planned midshow landing slot is honoured by Air Traffic, and even more amazingly the fuel truck and fresh smoke-oil await as the Pitts‟s prop swishes to a stop. After refuelling I have 20 minutes before firing up again for my display. I spend the time with the cowlings open, poking around the engine for the hundredth time. It is spotless, nothing whatsoever out of the way. I almost find myself talking to it. What IS the matter? WHY don‟t you like being in this aeroplane or driving this propeller…? Start-up time arrives, along with a hefty volunteer to swing the prop. This requires determination because a three-blade prop on a four-cylinder engine leaves the blades in awkward positions, calling for both energy and bravery on the part of the swinger. I would have broken the habit of a lifetime and put a starter-motor on the thing – except that I couldn‟t afford the weight, this modified Pitts being already enough of a tad nose-heavy that I worry about parking it on a down-slope. This swinger attacks the Lycoming with enough vigour to cause it to burst into life almost immediately. I wave gratefully, and in due course taxi out, take-off with the standard half-roll on ground-break, execute a curving 40-second climb to 1,800 feet, and tip in to commence the display. Full power. Stare at the runway coming up… 100 feet and Velocity Never Exceed plus a smidgeon… pull hard to the vertical, full roll left, hit full-right rudder and leftforward stick for the lomcovak…. And just as the Pitts tumbles end-over-end the engine produces a most audible KER-RUNCH, ceases producing power, and vibrates like a road-drill.

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I immediately lose interest in the lomcovak, rescue the incipient inverted spin, and go for the down-vertical. The Coventry runway fills the windscreen for an instant and then black oil suddenly obliterates screen and canopy as something punches out of the crankcase. I slam the canopy open as I start pulling out. Even as I set up for the forced-landing a small voice in my head says rather quaveringly; “Just as well this didn‟t happen among those stone-walled fields in a Welsh valley” – a sentiment which, although currently rather pre-occupied, I profoundly agree with. I put the Pitts down on Coventry‟s long and hospitable runway, even rolling far enough to coast onto a taxiway. Climb out, stepping in oil which is now dripping off every low-point on the aeroplane. My hands are shaking as I back off to a safe distance and light my pipe. Yes – very much just as well that didn‟t happen on the previous display. If it had I‟d probably still be breathing, but almost certainly wouldn‟t have a whole aeroplane. But to tell the truth, deep down a little part of me is actually almost relieved. At least we now know where we are with that bloody engine… The subsequent mechanical post-mortem was not complex. The crankshaft had broken in two. Not at the front flange – which is where aerobatic Lycomings historically let go, and in the process may be so kindly as to give you a warning in the form of oil appearing on the nose cowl as they start to crack – but abaft the second crankweb, which was a kind of secretive way of producing the symptoms that had cost me sleepless nights. Metallurgical inspection revealed that poor machining on the crankshaft by this so-well-reputed northern engine shop had left a slight sharp edge known in the trade as a stress-raiser. A crack had started at this point and worked its way diagonally across the number two crankpin over a number of flying hours. Effectively the engine was bleeding to death internally through the crack – and the hotter the oil, the worse the haemorrhage. Across the break the early fracturelines were classic progressive fatigue-failure, merging into the crystalline wasteland left by the final catastrophic snap. Elementary, my dear Watson. It was nothing to do with the installation. I had been led up a blind alley with my nose gripped by a firm hand – my own. Because the aircraft-prop-airframe combination was new and unique I was looking for a new and unique explanation – and that was all I‟d looked for. It never even entered my head – which it should have done and most certainly would have done had the aircraft been standard and unmodified – that the culprit might be pure old-fashioned bad workmanship on the part of the machinist who did it and the inspector who signed it off.

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It was an expensive lesson. It taught me about forming fixed ideas – so often dangerous in the world aloft. It also taught me to personally not regard forensic investigation as a viable career-option. Fear no challenge from me, Holmes.

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BLOWING THE PRE-FLIGHT BRIEF In every endeavour there being always room for error

I have, as you may have gathered, a fetish about pre-flight briefing. Be it a formation aerobatic display at the Farnborough Air Show or a quiet toddle round the local area on a sunny afternoon, I like to have everything pre-ordained as far as possible. Leading an aerobatic team I have one rule straight out of the charm school of J. Stalin; to wit, when I bawl; “Briefing!” I expect total attendance in five seconds – six if a particular pilot‟s pre-occupation is especially curvy. Then it is briefing, and all hands listening to what you‟re bloody well told. I view pre-flight briefing as being the most important single component in all the myriad detail with which we surround ourselves in the name of air safety. The reasoning is utterly simple – if you‟ve thought about it beforehand, you go do it. If you haven‟t thought about it beforehand you‟ve got to think about it now, in the air, possibly under stress, and then do it. Safety-wise, no contest. However… However, as an inescapable factor of the human condition, sometimes it is not going to work out. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, sometimes it is going to go to hoss-shit. One such time was when I was instructing on the West Indian island of Antigua. Antigua being a whole 12 miles long in any direction, student cross-country exercises inevitably involved „international‟ flights to other islands. Barbuda was 20 nautical miles away, Montserrat about 35, and the St Kitts/Nevis couplet – two close extinctvolcanic islands – about 60 nms. That may sound ideal, but given that most Caribbean days have visibility of 100 nms – which meant that you could see your target from your bedroom window, never mind on climb-out – as a navigation exercise they did tend to be ever so slightly pointless. So I used to wait until the visibility deteriorated to a mere 20 or 30 nms and do the „cross-county‟ exercises then, on the grounds that the aspirants had to spark-up at least one brain cell to actually navigate instead of just staring at the target from take-off to landing. Now any instructor will tell you that every once in a while you get a student who is grimly determined to succeed, but… well, shall we say, not obviously genetically suited to aviation. L was one of these. He was kindly, charming, and possessed of a natural sense of rhythm which eventually, after nearly 50 hours of earnest endeavour

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on the part of sweating student and several exasperated instructors, resulted in his being able to levitate an aeroplane by himself, fly it round the circuit, and subsequently return it to its point of origin in a still-serviceable condition. He had bright, intelligent brown eyes fronting a brain with the keen cutting edge of a threeweek dead gerbil. If anyone could ever find a new way of doing something wrong with a flying machine, it was L. I approached the task of preparing L for his solo „cross-countries‟ with some circumspection. We plodded the simple straight line from Antigua to St Kitts and back several times while I watched, mouth firmly shut, for any new, unthought-of error he could manage to pluck out of the firmament. After about six goes at it in about 30 nms visibility there was no error, and I was fresh out of excuses – I had to send him there solo. “Okay L – briefing. Today you‟re going to go to St Kitts by yourself. Just do exactly what you‟ve done before. Go file your flight plan, clear Customs and Immigration, fly to St Kitts and land at Golden Rock Airport. Okay?” “Yessuh”. “At Golden Rock you relax, have a cup of coffee, file your return flight plan, clear outbound, and come back here”. “Yessuh”. “Navigation‟s to be dead-reckoning, but if you have any difficulties you can use the ADF. Should you need to do that, you tell me about it when you get back so we can sort out what the problem was”. “Yessuh”. Half an hour later I watched uneasily as the little Cessna lifted off the runway and disappeared to the north-east. Told myself to stop worrying, there was no way L could get it wrong. Thirty-five minutes outbound, an hour or so on the ground, 35 minutes back – he‟ll be back in two, two-and-a-half hours time. So stop worrying… I didn‟t stop worrying. It is a Chief Instructor‟s job to worry. Fifty minutes later the Cessna re-appeared and landed. Thoroughly puzzled, I walked over to shake L warmly by the throat and find out what had happened. “Well Suh, after 25 minutes I can‟t see Sain‟ Kitts, Suh. So I turn round an‟ come back here”. “You used the ADF?” “Oh no, Suh. I know you said you wanted it to be dead-reckoning”. I closed my eyes for a moment. “Let me get this straight. You got three-quarters of the way to St Kitts. Nevis and St Kitts are a big target, about 30 miles long. So

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instead of using the ADF, instead of pressing on at least to your ETA, you turn round and fly that same three-quarters of the way by dead reckoning back to here, back to Antigua, which is a very, very much smaller target”. “Yessuh”. Later, in a thoroughly deserved bout of self-flagellation, I realised that what he‟d done was the one thing I hadn‟t specifically told him not to do. Even taking into account the L factor, such a scenario had never even entered my head. Point at a big target, fail to see it, and then return a longer distance to a smaller target – it had never entered my head. And so it had never entered my pre-flight briefing. I was going to have to do something about my pre-flight briefings… Roll on 20 years, and we come to A. Based in Ireland, A was a larger-than-life character. He flew solo displays in a Pitts S2, was notorious for under-cutting other display pilots‟ fees, but was forgiven all because when he received his own fees he immediately took every penny to an orphanage he‟d taken under his wing. A was one of the world‟s true gentlemen. A and I had both been flying in the Dublin International Air Show – a wonderfully Irish event in that it was held not at an aerodrome but at a major horse-racing track, with the light aircraft participants taking off and landing on the home straight. The fact that a goodly percentage of the spectators were under the vast roofs of the main grandstands, and therefore much hampered in the small matter of looking upwards, seemed to bother no-one. As we prepared to leave after the show A said: “Brian, Oi‟m going to do an inverted fly-by on the way out. D‟you want to join me?” “Okay”, I said. “Let‟s brief it”. “Oh – roight, roight. You do the briefing, then”. “Okay. We‟ll start up on display frequency, and you will lead. We‟ll do a stream take-off, and after take-off you will turn 45 degrees left and then dumbbell right to run down the display line. I‟ll cut the corner and join you in line-astern”. “Roight, roight”. “When you‟re lined up, you call; „Rolling in now!” and roll slowly left to the inverted. When we‟ve passed the crowd-line you call; „Rolling out now‟, and roll slowly left to erect. I will then move out to loose battle and follow you into Dublin. Okay?” “Oh roight, roight. I call rolling in, rolling out, and roll left each time. Roight”. And so it transpired – or, well, bits of it did, anyway. After two years in the Rothmans Team I was well accustomed to rolling in tight line-astern – but was also deeply and instinctively suspicious of anything new. And following a man I‟d never

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flown with around a low-level roll-invert definitely came under the heading of something new… So I caught A halfway round the right dumbbell, tucked in with my prop six feet below his tailwheel, and tensed to react like a cat if he did anything sudden. Which he did. “Rolling in now”. The first quarter went reasonably well – and then, quite suddenly, A‟s roll speeded up and dished out. Not horrendously, but enough to be distinctly un-followable. I pushed up 20 feet, muttering, then sank back down into the inverted line-astern position when he‟d stabilised. As we snarled past the crowd I noted in my peripheral vision the interesting fact that a none-too-distant line of pylons ahead of us was moving down the winscreen, suggesting quite definitely that A was slowly losing height… “Rolling out now”. This time I was even more ready for it. As the roll speeded-up and dished out I shot out sideways, rolled level independently, and sat above and behind and to one side of A as he pulled up to clear the pylon-line. Cut to later, to a beer in the bar. A said; “How did that inverted fly-by go? Was it okay for you behind me?” “Well, A…” I teetered my hand gently… “Well, truth to tell, you did kinda dish-out the roll-in a bit…” “Oh, you‟re roight, you‟re roight. I t‟ought oi might have done”. “And then you did lose height during the fly-by….” “I t‟ought I might have done that too, so I did. Sorry about that”. “And then you dished out again in the roll-out”. I grinned. “Which makes it your round”. “You‟re roight. Sorry about the roll-out. Hope it didn‟t embarrass you”. “Well, spat me out like a pip, to be frank”. He turned from the bar. “Eh, spat you out like a pip? What d‟you mean?” “Well…” I shrugged. “If Lead suddenly speeds up the roll and slices-out there‟s no way you can follow that in line-astern so you can only break out…” “Oh shit!” A‟s jaw dropped. “Oh Bejaysus! You weren‟t in formation, were you? I t‟ought you were following half a mile back!” When later I thought about it I realised that „formation‟ was the one word I hadn‟t used in the planning session. One day I‟m going to get pre-flight briefings sussed.

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THE SECRET OF LIFE CAN BE A QUICK THOCK And salvation can be… a pork pie

The last of the Avgas sloshes into the tank. At the same time Roger clicks off the electric pump which has been replenishing the Pitts‟s smoke-tank with diesel from a plastic drum. I am fat with time. I finished the pre-flight inspection two minutes ago, and so have earned the right to flop on the grass for a short period while Roger and the refueler push the Pitts Special out of the fuel bay. Only a very short period, however, because in six minutes I must be back in the cockpit and strapping-in for the third display of the afternoon. But a respite. A small respite. Above my head the sky is blue and dotted with benign fair-weather cumulus. The wind is summer west-south-west – not a problem, but always a factor to be considered. Mentally I rehearse the effect of the wind on the forthcoming display. I dig out the large-scale map of the display site – a huge County Show – and stare at it applying that wind, despite the fact that I already know both the site and the wind by heart. If a man would fly eight displays at eight different venues during one summer weekend it behoves him to prepare most thoroughly, because the one thing for sure is that you won‟t have time to do it on the hoof. If the plans arrayed on your kneepad don‟t show the courses to fly, the times en route, the frequencies you need, the largescale map of the display-site, the fuel uplift at the next stop – then woe will befall you. As the afternoon wears on the briefing-notes are pulled out of the kneepad one by one as the displays are reeled off and the mental load lightens. At the end of the day you are left with one last notation – the briefing for your flight home or to the next destination. This is the sweetest flight of all, because it means the day has been successful. You have – hopefully – fulfilled your obligations, claimed the more-or-less gasping attention of somewhere between 50,000 and 250,000 people, and added a certain sum to the always-teetering bank balance of any display outfit. That sweet flight is a little way off this afternoon. I still have two more displays to fly. I glance at my watch. Four minutes to go. Roger re-appears, bearing a pork pie. Roger is the best display pilot of the vintage Stampe in the world. He also eats like a hippo whilst retaining the physique of a vertically inclined racing snake. Steak and

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chips vanish twenty minutes before a display and then off he goes. I can never quite understand how he does this. Likewise, he can never quite understand that my personal metabolism doesn‟t work this way – that I prefer to be lean and mean throughout the long display day, then eat in the evening once the adrenaline has drained away. At moments he becomes almost mother-ish in the matter of trying to make me eat during a display afternoon. “Pork pie, Boss. No salad cream”. Oh, very funny. Two weeks ago, on another airfield in similar circumstances, Roger produced a sausage sandwich in between displays. I smothered it in mustard and ate half of it as we walked out to the aircraft. As I climbed in, Roger looked at me quizzically. “Boss”, he said, “Do you normally have salad cream on a sausage sandwich?” Well, hell, they‟re both yellow. And I hadn‟t, of course, tasted a thing. It could have been the waitress garnished with custard and I wouldn‟t have known. Roger thought it uproariously funny and for some reason so did the rest of my tiny staff when the word got around. Now I glare at Roger. “No salad cream?” “No, Boss”. “Okay”. I shove the pie into my calf pocket and raise myself from the grass. “Let‟s go start up”. Ten minutes later the Pitts is cruising at 1800 feet. I am on course and on time. Eleven minutes to target, 14 minutes to display tip-in. I fish out the pork pie. The fact is I have to do something with it, because if it stays in my calf-pocket it will get mashed during the exertions of the forthcoming display, and this will displease Mrs Lecomber, who has to wash my flying suits. A novel solution occurs to me. Eat the bloody thing. I take a bite and chew. Not a good idea. Clearly this particular purveyor of meat pies knows more about the construction of siege glissades than he does about cooking. The thing is inedible unless you are in the habit of consuming breezeblocks for lunch. I look down. Open farmland. I slide the canopy back one notch, poke the pie out into the airflow, and let go of it. Instantly, the airframe goes thock and yaws momentarily to the right. In the calm and cool manner in which aerobatic pilots react to sudden problems I think to myself; “Oh F***!” That thock was felt rather than heard. And what it felt like was a heavy bird-strike. And the one thing you do not do after a heavy bird-strike is proceed blithely with an

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aerobatic display which you know full well will stress the airframe to, or even slightly beyond, the Operating Limits so carefully laid down in the Pilot‟s Manual. In a classic bird-strike you usually see the bird at the last second, too late to do much about it. The bird, I imagine, feels the same way. You try to evade it. It tries to evade you. With the inevitability of Sod‟s Law you both evade the same way… and so thock. Goodbye bird. Hello possibly damaged aeroplane. You may or may not know where the strike has been. You do not know the weight or velocity of the bird or the extent of the impact. The Book, and common sense, says that you do not force conclusions with the matter but land quietly and gingerly in order to examine the aircraft for crushed leading edges, ripped skin, aerials hanging off, etc. After that thock, the one thing you do not do is carry on with an aerobatic display. I now have seven minutes before display. The cautious part of my mind says; You‟ve had an impact, you must check it. The other part says; Don‟t be so bloody stupid. If you were a Spitfire pilot in 1940 would you say; „Oh, verily, a pork pie has smote the aircraft so I must immediately return to base‟. Not exactly likely. That impact was nothing but a damn meat pie, fer Chrissake. And unless it found some way of falling forwards against a 140 kt slipstream then it just smacked the tailplane on its way out and that‟s the end of it…. I slacken my shoulder-straps and crane round both sides, staring at what I can see of the tail. My neck grates as I skew round. Tailplanes present and correct both sides. Top bracing wires – which are all I can see – ditto. All serene… Damage? Oh, don‟t be ridiculous – it was just a bloody pork pie… Nonetheless, some things make you pay attention. I‟m not going into a display with the slightest doubt – not fair on the crowd. I re-tighten the straps, swallow once, then pull up hard, kick the Pitts into a vertical flick, push-over violently to the downvertical, pause for a couple of seconds, hit a max-effort down-vertical negative flick, and push out. No problem. I roll erect and turn back on course with my heart-rate slowing to normal – or as normal as it ever gets on a heavy display afternoon. If that didn‟t break the aeroplane then it ain‟t gonna break… And of course it didn‟t break. I flew the display, landed at the next stop, fuelled and smoked-up for the next performance. On the walk-round found on the right tailplane leading-edge a slight trace of what might have been a pie-strike – or might

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equally have been the smudge of one particularly corpulent insect among the trillions who fall victim to the leading edges of all low-flying aircraft in the summer. I smiled at the recall of my alarm. No event. A moment‟s paranoia on the part of one display pilot – but no event. Except… Well, cut now. Cut to two years later. Again I am flying a Pitts. A different Pitts in a different sky, but some things are the same. I am transiting in between displays, straight and level, mind on the next task, concentrating. Thock! Not a dramatic thing. Just a small… well, thock is the only word. A tiny thump and a momentary yaw to the right. Not quite normal, but nothing really enough to shiver the antenna of even the most sensitive airman. Except… Except I am disquieted. Maybe I am over-sensitive. Something about that thock disturbs me. I squirm in the cockpit. Turbulence? There is no turbulence – this balmy afternoon is especially serene. Birdstrike? I saw no bird. The wake of another aircraft? I saw no other aircraft… In my uneasiness I look up into the deep blue sky for inspiration. And in the Heavens I do indeed see a vision…. I see a pork pie. And yes! That was the thock! That was just the thock! Only this time there was no pork pie. Once again I slacken my straps and skew round to stare backwards left and right. The left tailplane is fine…. The right tailplane has no top bracing wire. I divert and land very gently. The right upper tailplane wire turns out to be broken in the middle of its length and the remains laid back by the slipstream. Later – much later – the metallurgical investigation reveals that a „salt pit‟ in the manufacture of the wire caused a stress-point which eventually resulted in a fracture. Well, super. Nice to know. One hearty push or pull – and I have something like 45 hearty pushes and pulls in my solo display, not including flick-rolls many and various – and I would have been flying an aeroplane with half a tailplane. Very briefly. Would I have noticed that thock if it hadn‟t been for the previous incident? Well, possibly. But would I have thought to screw my head off my shoulders to look at the tail? All right, possibly again. But… dunno…. Perhaps we all have a Guardian Angel. And mine just happens to be… a pork pie.

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MEETING A NEW LOVE From shyly holding hands to carnal knowledge

Outside, January in north Germany is doing its best. The snow is a horizontal gritty blast in the thirty-knot wind from Siberia and the temperature a lung-searing minus 12 degrees Celsius. Inside the small hangar-cum-factory the heaters are drumming out hot air, and all is bustle around parts of aeroplanes in various stages of construction. People are watching me and I do not see them. Walter Extra is talking to me and I do not hear him. At this moment I am meeting my new friend. She is standing in the middle of the factory, a shining island in the sea of unfinished aircraft parts and busy activity. A complete aeroplane – the only complete aeroplane in the place, gleaming under the lights in the regal green and white colours of my sponsor, Jaguar Cars. The thirteenth Extra 230 on the planet. The latest example of the currently most respected single-seat aerobatic hot-ship in the Western world. My Extra 230. It is a curious sensation, this first meeting. I am eager yet wary. My hands itch with excitement, yet at the same time the cynical eye of experience is surveying the new friend‟s physical being for signs of future flaws. That wing, for example. That thick wing with its odd-looking aerofoil should have incredible low-speed capabilities both erect and inverted. But that wing is also almost totally sealed up, so that a body can never look inside it. The death-watch beetles could be holding pop concerts in there and you‟d never know a thing about it. And that lightweight wooden-bladed Muhlbauer propeller. Sure it will reduce the gyroscopic forces – but those wooden blades will need watching for damage, vibration-shakes and erosion, never you mind what the books say about it. And that cross-over exhaust; certainly top banana for power, but will it turn out to be one of those infuriating systems which constantly raddles itself with cracks…? These contemplations occupy me as I make the first long slow inspection of my new lady. The inspection, in actuality, reveals nothing more than the fact that the Extra is very well made and superbly finished: probably better than any other production aeroplane I have ever owned. The technicalia I know by heart. A God-child of the Stephens Akro, the Extra has a welded steel-tube framed fuselage and tail feathers and an all-wooden wing with a

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one-piece laminated box mainspar of impressive proportions. The top fuselage longerons have removable slices so that the centre-section of this spar can be lowered into its nesting place across the pilot‟s knees, whence it is secured to the rest of the aircraft by a couple of bolts which look big enough to hold the wings onto a Tornado. I find this manifestation of muscle heartening. I am perfectly well aware that monoplanes have been de rigueur now for over 50 years for almost all purposes – except Unlimited aerobatics. In Unlimited aeros you are looking at G well in excess of current jet fighters, and there has been a sad record of almost all monoplane Unlimited types suffering a structural wing failure in somebody‟s hands at some time, with most unhappy results for the pilot therein. So if you are afflicted with my innate distrust of monoplanes you can use all the sights of hefty bolts which are offered to you. The wing-skin is plywood with a fibreglass resin finish, and the ailerons are symmetrical with external mass balances. In fact the whole aeroplane is pretty well symmetrical; both the wing and tailplane have zero incidence, and the aerofoil is that state-of-the-art symmetrical section which is roundly blunt at the leading edge and then dead flat aft of the mainspar. (MA 15 S at the roots tapering to MA 12 S at the tips, to prove I‟ve read the book). The assembly is powered by the familiar flat-four 200-hp Lycoming AEIO-360 (as per Pitts S1-T and S2-A), fuel-injected and served by the usual Christen inverted oil system. The aforementioned Muhlbauer propeller is in fact a McCauley constant-speed hub fitted with Muhlbauer‟s own lightweight wooden blades. Had it been the grisly Hoffman prop I would have suspected Extra‟s judgement and possibly not have bought the aeroplane. The cockpit is conventional for an aerobatic machine. The aerobatic cardholder occupies the centre of the panel with the airspeed indicator (ASI) and altimeter alongside it, with the rest of the space taken up by the G-meter, the very neat little Becker radio, and the engine gauges. There are no navigation aids apart from a raw compass, and no gyros because they‟d probably last about a week. Also conventional – for me – is the fact that the first time I clamber into the cockpit I do immediately disappear from sight, much to the amusement of Extra Flugzeugbau‟s workforce. Walter Extra is a designer of great brilliance and also German Aerobatic Champion in his own machine. He is also physically built along the general lines of King Kong – certainly compared to me – so accordingly the accommodation is roomy. Much manufacturing of cushions and shortening of rudder cables is required before Lecomber can both see out and reach the pedals.

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By the time this has been accomplished the weather has reconsidered its position to the extent of removing the horizontal snow. And so, quite abruptly, I find myself outside on the bleak airfield of Dinslaken in the Ruhr, rapidly turning into an ice cube. The engineers who pushed the aeroplane out have very sensibly bolted back into their heated hangar, so I am truly alone with my new friend for the first time. This, it seems, is the moment. Taxying turns out to require a certain amount of determination, since the elements have only removed the falling snow and not the thirty-knot wind. Running upwind or downwind is easy enough, but owing to the large keel (side) area behind the mainwheels the Extra does not especially wish to precede cross-wind, which is of course initially the direction we need to go. Only by continually standing on the downwind brake with all my might am I able to contain the tendency of the device to weathercock into wind. By the time I reach the runway my left leg is quivering with the effort and I have a throbbing brake-pedal-shaped indentation in the bottom of my foot. Any single-seat aeroplane blessed with 200 hp and a gross weight of 500 kg is obviously not exactly underpowered, so it is no surprise that this first leisurely take-off lasts all of five seconds. During the savage acceleration there is just enough time to register that the exercise is perfectly straightforward in every sense. The same long fuselage moment which caused the tussle of the taxiing joins the forces of righteousness as soon as the power goes on and the tail feathers come alive. There is no tendency towards those interesting little sideways darts which so often amuse the troops during a chap‟s first few departures in a single-seat Pitts Special‟ „Rotation‟ is an appropriate word to apply to the act of levitating an Extra 230 from terra firma. A few seconds after opening the tap you smoothly but fairly smartly rotate the nose to about forty degrees of pitch-up – and there you are, established in a 90 mph climb and snarling uphill at 2,500 feet per minute. The climb angle introduces me to one small nuisance factor attendant upon a shoulder-wing configuration: viz, that sitting in a fairly aft cockpit you cannot see a damn thing forwards in a nose-up attitude because the front half of the wings most thoroughly blot out the entire world, especially the forward horizon. In fact you can only check wings-level by general feel or glancing at both wingtips. Neither here not there in the climb of course – after all a chap can always climb upside-down if he really feels sensitive about it – but worth a mental note that it may require a bit of practice to get up-45-line flicks (snap-rolls) stopped with the wings level every time… Levelled off, the Extra accelerates rapidly to cruise at 180 mph at 2,500 rpm and 25 inches. At a more miserly 2,400 rpm and 21 inches the speed is still a most

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creditable 160 mph. Clearly this is an aeroplane in which Lecomber could become uncertain of his whereabouts (i.e.lost) quite quickly. Flat-out straight and level settles to 198 mph. Since this is a brand-new engine and I wish to lull it into a false sense of security, this flight is to be non-aerobatic. Well, more or less. So this is a time – in between trying to pick out dead-white Dinslaken in the dead-white Ruhr landscape – to feel out the handling of the Extra in the conventional sense. Holding hands on the first date, as it were. My overriding first impression is of the stolidity of the device. Not stability, you understand – too much stability you need like a hole in the head – but stolidity. If you want 45 degrees of bank you just whack it on and it stays there, bonk, four-square and solid, until such time as you wish to change it again. And the same in pitch; you want 45 degrees nose-up so you snatch it there and stop it and that‟s it. Bonk again. No oscillation, no bounce, no arguing. It‟s a very easy aircraft to handle precisely; sort of dial-an-attitude. Very Teutonic. (Mind you, this is of course me talking. Ol‟ Pitts-hands. I‟ve spent years in Pitts Specials and Pitts‟s are squirrely and bouncy and have to be flown with the nerve endings at all times to maintain accuracy. So I get into the Extra and find it stolid. If a chap stepped into it after thousands of hours in a Cessna it might feel like a bucking bronco for all I know). One feature which feels a bit strange is that my new lady seems curiously disinclined to fly along on her side. Oh, of course no aeroplane will sustain knife-edge flight indefinitely; but a short-coupled device with lots of keel area like a Pitts will at least pound along on its ear for a while before the energy decays and it sinks gracefully into the scenery. The Extra just does not wish to know; I roll to wingsvertical, honk on top rudder – and the nose sags tiredly below the horizon after only a few seconds. It is not lack of rudder power – in fact the rudder is extremely effective, if noticeably heavy on account of being big enough for a young Boeing – but a combination of the long fuselage and the almost total lack of uninterrupted keel (side fuselage) area forward of the vertical axis. It is not a criticism of the Extra – any shoulder-wing monoplane is bound to behave this way – but it still feels a bit odd. Ol‟ Pitts-hands again… A happy discovery is that the trim-changes between all flight regimes are very small. No attitude change (from climb to cruise, say, or erect to inverted) involves more than a few pounds of stick-pressure, thanks to the wing and tailplane zeroincidence all round and the fact that all the sources of thrust and drag are pretty close

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to the longitudinal axis – so not much rocking-couple between power-line and dragline. The same factors contribute to a very light stick-force per G. This means it takes a bit of nit-picking to get the Extra trimmed-out straight and level, because the trim-tab is not over-powerful. This is most definitely a Good Thing, since a hectic sequence liquidises the biceps quite quickly enough without any gratuitous weight-training contributions thrown in by heavy out-of-trim forces. The stall is utterly innocuous, the break being preceded by a small tactful shudder. There is no wing-drop. The book says that the stall happens at 45 mph, while the ASI wishes to inform me that it happens at 57. I suspect this fairly large porky pie of being pitot-head position-error at the high alpha, probably compounded by that fact that the pressure instruments – airspeed and altimeter – work off cockpit static pressure. (A feature I am most definitely not crazy about). Spinning trails will come later, since I do not wish to cycle the new engine repeatedly in the first few hours. This means I have now rather run out of things to do except perhaps freeze to death. So we return to Dinslaken. The approach is the usual slipping turn. The steepness available is restricted by the aforementioned keel-area factor, but otherwise the exercise is conventional: start at more of less any old speed, scrub the knots back with the drag, and unwind the slip as you cross the fence at about 80 mph. A bit of publicity blurb on the Extra says that; “On landing it has no tendency to break out nor does it tend to jumping”, and this gem about sums it up. The landing is somewhat reminiscent of a Chipmunk, and is certainly a great deal easier that the twitchy business of re-uniting a Pitts with Mother Earth. The only thing you do need to remember is that the Extra sits on the deck at a pretty shallow angle, which means you have to put her down at a fairish speed. Get her too slowed up and the tailwheel lands while the mains are still a couple of feet in the air, which does not make for elegance. (In fact later I will learn that she really prefers to be wheeled-on anyway, if only to save wear and tear on the tiny tailwheel tyre). I taxi in and shut down and then just sit there for a minute in the cold, sorting out my impressions. From this first holding of hands I think I am going to like my new lady. She is powerful, precise and well-mannered. But of course this is just the beginning. We have yet a long way to go and much carnal knowledge to learn about each other… It is now March. And on this sunny March morning I am covered in sweat, panting like a racehorse and, it must be admitted, feeling just a trifle icky-poo. I swing the Extra into the aircraft line, shut down, and stagger out of it on rubber legs.

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Lesson One about campaigning an Extra 230 is that its full-power median aerobatic speed is about 200 mph, which is roughly fifteen percent faster than a Pitts S1-T. This may not sound very much, but you can take it from me that it makes the edges of a 1,000 metre aerobatic box rush up at a chap significantly more quickly than of yore. And this is turn means that every pull or push-up has to be at noticeably higher G to prevent the display spreading out all over the parish. The Extra is stressed to plus and minus 10 G and is totally unperturbed. I am not stressed to plus and minus 10, and feel like a piece of chewed string. I flop down on the grass and regard the lady thoughtfully, torn between agony and ecstasy. On the ecstasy side there is no doubt that the Extra does fly beautifully. By all normal parameters it is viceless. The spinning trials, when I got round to them, produced dittos under the words „instant recovery‟ to a long series of deliberately hashed-up spin recovery techniques. (Later – much later – I will find to my abject terror that this is not entirely so. See Chapter 1. But at this time it is not given to me to know this…) The Extra will fly every manoeuvre in the normal Aresti aerobatic dictionary range (with the possible exception of rolling circles, which always make a monoplane stop and think) with almost contemptuous ease. Since I personally regard the current Aresti set-up of aerobatic competition rules as being to aerobatics what concrete rinks would be to ice-skating, this may not be the highest praise in the world coming from me. But certainly the Extra is a superb machine for formal competition. The vertical performance is quite something. A dozen years ago you paid maybe $20,000 for your Pitts S1-S and got a vertical line about 1,000 feet high for your money. Then came the S1-T, and you paid $60,000 for 1,500 feet. Now, in the current state-of-the-art as represented by the Extra, you pay $110,000 and get 2,000 feet if you pull up from the 250 mph Velocity Never Exceed. [These prices now being long, long out of date – BL] 2,000 feet is a lot of line to fill with action. Push-overs and pull-overs at zilch speed at the top are easy. The gyroscopic effect of the light-weight propeller seems to be just about cancelled out by P-factor (asymmetric blade effect) so that there is very little tendency to yaw. Stall turns I find a little more difficult, but that‟s a personal problem and they‟re coming along; it just takes a while to get the feel of that absolutely right moment to hit the rudder. Tailslides on the other hand are very easy. You throw in a vertical roll or two according to taste, close the throttle more or less when you feel like it, and a few moments later the Extra obligingly goes backwards for you. Give it a moment or two, then push or pull and it just obediently flops over, all in a nice straight line without

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rolling or yawing. Piece of cake after a Pitts, that is. Pitts‟s are not fond of tailsliding, and are apt to embarrass a chap occasionally. Also superb are the ailerons. The roll-rate is more than 300 degrees a second at cruise, but it isn‟t just a matter of that. The real plus-points are the absolute accuracy I noticed on the first flight – which means there is little of the usual tendency to overcontrol and „bounce‟ on the points during hesitation rolls – and the fact that the rollresponse remains excellent down to incredibly low speeds. Very handy in verticals, that. The ailerons become quite heavy at high speed, but in practice this is not a problem; even my Pitts-hands became acclimatised in the first half-hour without even noticing it. In fact, I was interested to discover that this heaviness is not only related to airspeed but also to alpha (angle of attack of the relative airflow to the wing). The greater the alpha the higher the aileron load: so that a roll in level flight (alpha for 1 G) is significantly heavier than a roll at the same commence-speed in the vertical (where there is no alpha at all, since the wings are only acting as guide vanes). Either this is unusual, or all symmetrical aeroplanes do it and pygmy-brain here simply never noticed it before. Anyway, it is a pleasant trait. The wing also performs as advertised, the airflow holding on with silken claws at low speed. You can loop either way (inside or out) from as slow as 110 mph, which makes figures like the vertical S very easy; in fact you can pull into a half-loop a couple of seconds after take-off, do a medium-paced slow-roll at the top to let the girl accelerate, then push round another half-loop, do another roll, then another halfloop… This low-speed capability is of course coupled with a very clean profile, so that you have an aeroplane which is going good at both ends of the speed spectrum. This means that in aerobatics it is an energy-retainer par excellence. Energy, in aerobatics terms, is the combination of potential and kinetic – kinetic being your speed at the start of a manoeuvre, and potential being your height at the top of same, which is obviously translated into kinetic on your way down. Clearly the more power and the less aerodynamic drag you‟ve got, then the more combined energy you have. The 230 has a lot of energy. You can, for example, from a start speed of 190 mph pull up to the climbing 45line, roll left twice, flick right once, pull up again to the vertical, stall turn, hit a down vertical 1½ flick and then push out – and finish at the same height you started but going 15 mph faster! This is almost an embarrassment of energy. In competition a chap would simply throttle back and take his time; but in display any such solution

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would feel like those childhood memories of being told to eat up your greens because the kiddies in Africa are starving. (Whatever the relevance of that was supposed to be). But over the years I‟ve flown so many aeroplanes which were gasping for power as soon as they‟d left the ground that it now feels terribly sinful to come back on the grunt and waste perfectly good aerobatic energy for any reason at all, except perhaps landing. The solution of course is to build in complication to the aerobatic sequence until you have absorbed all this wonderful new energy. Think of all the multiple-flicking possibilities: double up-verticals, down-45 lines with four or even five rotations, triple avalanches, half-reverse Cubans with 4½ flicks decorating the top of the arc… Sitting on the grass with my rubbery legs outstretched I do so think of such things. And I do find myself rubbing the back of my aching neck and staring at my new friend most thoughtfully. For here, in fact, is where just a bijou element of agony seems to be creeping in, Because it does appear at this time that it is just these super-rotating figures which are somehow escaping my hands. Take the half-reverse Cuban with a four-point roll on the up-45 line and then 4 ½ flicks over the top to the down-vertical. (Which I have dubbed the Cascade). In this figure the flicks will decay if you give them half a chance; you have to break out and then instantly unload and thereafter retain just enough asymmetric drag to keep the rotations going. This unloading of the elevator is super-critical and you cannot measure it: you just have to feel it, even to the extent of rocking the stick back and forth over a tiny arc, adjusting to keep the alpha constant as the wings whiz round through erect, inverted, erect. And this feel I have not yet acquired. My best efforts so far have been lamentable, and I will draw a veil of whatsit over them. And it is the same story with the lomcovak, the slovak, the multiple down-45 flicks, and various other desirable items. I glare at my new lady, nostalgic for the simple hit-it-whap-whap-whap-whap procedure of multiple-flicking a Pitts Special. My sourness is not alleviated by telling myself that this is not the new lady‟s fault. Okay, she seems to flick-roll a tad slower than a Pitts, but that is not the problem. The problem is that after 2,500 hours in Pitts‟s my hands and feet and instincts do not so much multiple-flick an aeroplane, they multiple-flick a Pitts. This new lady clearly demands some subtly different technique, but so far the details of what this might be are eluding me. I tell myself this, and know it to be so. But also inside me there is this tiny voice of doubt saying; „Are you sure it isn‟t the aeroplane? Are you sure it isn‟t just a little

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too perfect, too well-mannered, too lacking in gyroscopic reaction for serious display manoeuvres? Are you sure it isn‟t just a competition toy after all…?‟ I stand up, stretch my shoulders, and go off for a coffee and a contemplate. Of course I‟m sure it‟s not the aeroplane. Of course I am. I think… Now it is June. And on this day is the twentieth live display of the season. The Extra and I pull hard to the vertical, roll fast left, and after one turn hit the lomcovak. And I mean hit it. Grab a fuselage tube with the left hand to brace against and SLAM in full forward left stick and STAND on full right rudder. And as the tumbling winds up keep standing on the rudder and keep that stick dug in: push against the air-pressure on the tail feathers… We whip round a more or less neat lomcovak, finishing with a tail-over-nose forward tumble on the spot. Pull out, snatch a deep breath, then haul to plus eight G going into the next figure. The secret – or possibly more to the point, that part of the secret which I have discovered so far – lies in muscle-power, and particularly in the leg muscles. For the multi-rotational stuff you need a kick like Bruce Lee in a temper; you need the relevant rudder pedal hard on the stop and then stand on it to keep it there. Just as well we spent all that time on the seating position way back when – if it wasn‟t dead right I simply wouldn‟t have the leverage to keep the rudder dug in. All the flicks are like it. For the half-reverse Cuban with 4½ flicks over the top it‟s STAND on the rudder again and unload, unload, unload on the stick the instant she breaks out into the stall. If the rotation looks like slowing down thereafter, I can rescue the situation by snatching back momentarily each time we pass through the inverted. This is an unsubtle solution, and again demonstrates that I still have not yet acquired that delicate feel for what really pleases the new lady. But at least it‟s a system which works. We are getting there… Come the end of the season I‟m going to need some service-exchange leg muscles, of course – but we are getting there… It is now October. We have – the Extra and I – just flown the 70th and last display of the season. We happened to hit the only sunny day in October. The performance went well, and we are going home. As the Devon landscape unrolls beneath the wings I find myself pondering on what all the fuss was about, earlier on. These last few displays the Extra sequence has started to feel, if anything, a bit too easy. Not hard work at all – or at least, not

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apart from the G, and that‟s just something a chap has to live with if he‟s going to campaign a faster aeroplane. It‟s that matter of feel, of course; that hands-feet-and-ass communion with the airflow that only comes with time. I do not have the remotest idea what – if anything – I am doing differently, but most of the problems seem to have sort of evaporated. Nowadays when I hit the multiple flick it just goes whap-whap-whap-whap and that‟s about it. The subtle messages are reaching my senses without the tedious distraction of having to pass through my tiny brain en route, which is how it should be. Oh, there are still some bits and pieces, naturally. Vertical flick-rolls still tramp half a wing-span sideways, multiple outside flicks on an accelerating line seem to require the weight of several elephants on the rudder after about the second rotation – and of all things, I am having trouble with the humble half-roll on take-off. This last is nothing to do with the aeroplane, but is a sad reflection on my personal quantum or cowardice. After years of rolling Pitts‟s on take-off I was really looking forward to the luxury of not having a top wing plumb spang in my line of sight at low level upsidedown. And sure enough, in the Extra you can see everything. The only thing is, now I can see everything I find the sight of everything slightly alarming, with the result that I am still doing exactly what I‟ve always done – shying upwards during the roll so that I‟m upside-down at thirty or forty feet instead of the twenty I had in mind. Oh, well… Apart from that, all is hunky-dory at this season-end. My new lady has been tender and reliable, and we have progressed from holding hands to shy lovers. Next season, I hope and trust, we will progress to even more fiery ardour. There are those fly-away tailslides to perfect, flat-spin entries from outside vertical flicks, a way of tumbling end-over-end at the top of an up-45 line… This time next year our carnal knowledge will be deeper. This article was written in 1988 – 25 years ago. I‟ve had to throw my pen out of the window to prevent myself from up-dating it because things have changed so much, and I have learned so very much more. But this was how it was in ‟88. The Extra 230 was in fact just about the last to wear the Mosquito mantle of „wooden wonder‟ – the last wooden-wing top class aerobatic machine before the universal arrival of composite carbon-fibre for construction. I flew the 230 for eight years, towards the end with ever-increasing brutality. Rivals who were better than I at finding big-time sponsors were pitching up in Extra 300‟s and Sukhois and providing formidable opposition. My only option if I wanted to

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keep eating was to wring every last ounce of performance out of the dear 230 while the others learned their new toys. I have never, before or since, flown an aeroplane so very, very savagely. The 230 had snags – of course it had snags – but nothing insuperable. For a long time now I‟ve flown more powerful aeroplanes, more capable aeroplanes… But the sweet Extra 230 remains the aeroplane I fly in my dreams. My best girl.

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WE ARE OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER For want of attention a pilot dies

I had a hand in the death of a man called Peter. He was a great guy. Peter was a display pilot He flew a certain semi-military trainer renowned for a rollrate better measured by calendar than stopwatch, and for elevator response under negative G best described as SAW – Shove And Wait. Peter was the acknowledged maestro of this not-flawless machine. His opening manoeuvre was a vertical roll progressing into a tumbling lomcovak-type figure which he translated into a spin before recovering and then pushing out. Until one day he got it wrong. He may have been a bit lower at the top than usual… he may have spun a turn too many… but he pushed out anyway. And then hung there in his straps with the stick rammed on the forward-stop while the terrain came up to meet him… I didn‟t see the accident. But over the years I had sort of half-watched his starting manoeuvre a dozen times, sadly always with half-attention while I was preparing for my own display. If I had just watched it once properly…. If I had watched it properly I would have said to Peter; “Look, your gyration at the top isn‟t completely predictable, so you‟re entering your spin without a defined startpoint and therefore without knowing exactly how many turns you need to stop it on target – and after that you‟re then pushing out in this thing which is noted for running out of push. D‟you think you might be piling uncertainty onto uncertainty here…?” And Peter, who was no man‟s idiot, would have said: “Aye, you‟re right” and changed it, at least to the extent of pulling out instead of pushing. (Or at least, I trust he would...) But I never watched it properly. So I never said it. And Peter died. Peter is not, of course, alone in my personal hall of ghosts. It is fair to say – surreptitiously touching wood – that in the last couple of years the safety record of UK display flying has been very good. But it was not always thus. [This was written in 2005. Since then there have been good years and bad years – BL] In pre-history of three decades back you needed only two things to fly a display – a pilot and an aeroplane. There were no display ratings. New display pilots killed themselves not weekly, but with rather monotonous regularity.

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Two august bodies, the British Aerobatic Association and the Historic Aircraft Association, addressed the matter with things called „Approved Display Pilot Certificates‟ – and then the UK Civil Aviation Authority stepped in, appropriated the idea, and created the Display Authorisation system. With uncharacteristic aplomb they recruited the most oft-crashed display pilot in the universe – one Barry Tempest, whose record of walking or swimming away from spectacular display accidents is unsurpassed to this day – to become poacher-turned-gamekeeper and appoint a number of Orwellian-sounding Display Evaluators whose task it was – and is – to sign off pilots as capable for public display. Every aspiring display pilot thenceforth had to be tested by an alleged expert in his field in order to be issued with an official Display Authorisation. Tempest had the skin of a rhinoceros and also the tact thereof – but he did know display flying inside-out, and the system did, despite the usual intercine warring which always accompanies such endeavours, work. At a stroke casual displays were effectively abolished. The local Chief Flying Instructor who was asked to do a loop and roll over a village fete – a scenario which had produced a running sore of accidents over the years – suddenly had to do it seriously or not at all. The millionaire who‟d bought a Mustang had to prove his actual ability to fly the thing, not just pay for it. In the first years the display accident rate was reduced by 50%. Great stuff, yeah? Well, yeah. Then. However, the world moved on…. What happened was that the accident rate among new display pilots fell dramatically and has largely stayed that way. But over time a new pattern emerged. Over the past decade or so it has not just been the occasional newcomer who has fallen – it has been the old-timers. Vastly-experienced display airmen, some of them Display Evaluators themselves. Why should this be? Also why should it be that after such accidents there are always a few fellow pilots who suck their teeth and say; “Well, I could see that coming” – a remark which is most singularly useless after the event. Part of the answer is perhaps human nature. In all aviation ratings, the Lord is reluctant to giveth in the first place, but thereafter equally reluctant to taketh away when it comes to renewal. Your initial instrument rating test is a teeth-gritted nightmare – but subsequently your renewals are to an extent a pre-ordained success unless you go out of your way to wear a tutu and pee in the examiner‟s ear.

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So it is with Display Authorisations. The CAA themselves have jerked a few DA‟s over the years, but not many. More importantly, to my knowledge – and I stand to be corrected – no Display Evaluator has ever revoked or down-graded a pilot‟s existing DA as a result of a renewal test. Easy to say the Evaluators are not doing their job, but human nature is human nature – and in any event, one cannot castigate what one may not see. If I watch a guy display on 21 September I can only comment on his thinking and performance on 21 September: I cannot get into his head and foresee that on a sunny day in July next year he will have screwed his brains out the night before, fail to check his topheight as he loops the Spitfire he‟s entrusted with, and cremate himself in the wreckage as the laws of physics prove their immutability. I can try my best to get into his head – but I cannot anticipate that… At big air shows the final back-stop is the Flying Control Committee (FCC), a group of supposedly sage individuals whose task it is to watch every move every pilot makes and react to anything which vibrates their antenna. In theory they pick up on the hoof anything the Evaluators might have missed. They can command a pilot to break off and land (sometimes a fairly theoretical power since the communications between the FCC and Air Traffic Control are woefully inadequate at certain venues) or they can have a quiet word in the bar afterwards about a warning signal noted in the tenor of an aviator‟s flying. On an FCC you are a vet watching a parade of animals. 99% are perfectly healthy. Blink and you will miss the instant in which one stumbles and recovers – but may stumble again and not be so lucky next time. A good FCC does a great deal of good, mostly by noticing those small warning signals and having the quiet words afterwards. You cannot measure this – how do you calculate the value of an old guy saying to a young guy; “Look, you dished out of that roll – solve it before it kills you”. I‟ll tell you how. If the young guy looks thoughtful, he‟ll solve it. If he looks resentful, he‟ll die of it. Most simple. In the end, of course, it all comes down to the make-up of that most strange animal, the display pilot. In the first place he must be a show-off or he wouldn‟t be there – but in the second he must also be aware of the dangers or he most certainly shouldn‟t be there. To balance the equation there must be a leavening of … well, fear. I used to call it „concentration„ or „alert-state‟ – but at this end of my display life, and not giving a shrivelled pretzel for what anybody else thinks, I can drag the black dog out of its kennel and call it by its name – fear

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All display pilots are nervous when they begin. The question is, what happens to the fear-quotient as time goes on? He may get less nervous, stay about the same, or become more nervous. In fact, military psychologists tell us that the mythical average display pilot becomes less nervous over the course of his first 100 or so displays and then starts to become more nervous again. This is as it should be, for if the graphs draw apart – if nervousness progressively reduces while experience increases – then a man is heading towards the abyss of over-confidence. Which has been the precursor of more than a few smoking holes in the ground. So if I am looking for a display pilot I will pick the man whose hands tremble very slightly. Who is distant and unapproachable for an hour before his display because he is mentally mulling today‟s conditions, today‟s density-altitude, today‟s on-crowd wind… He‟s the guy you see near his aircraft walking around in small circles waving his arms about like a demented tic-tac man. It‟s called ‟hand-flying‟ your sequence, the better to stamp the forthcoming activity into your brain. The man who does it is the pilot who‟s flown his display 10 times in his head before he ever gets into the aeroplane. That‟s the man I want. The man who knows fear. In an ideal world I‟d then like him to be watched by his peers not just once a year but whenever their paths cross – but watched carefully, not just casually. If I‟d watched Peter carefully he‟d probably still be around. My regret is huge, because in matters aeronautical – not just display flying – we should all indeed be our brother‟s keeper.

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NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS Where a flying man might learn ancient truths By the time I navigate to my hotel room after the New Year‟s Eve party the new year is three hours old. For some reason I seemed to be slightly fatigued, and have developed a hiccup. Certainly I am not expecting the man who is sitting in the chair by the window. He says politely; “Good evening, Sir”. American accent. Well dressed in a strange sort of way – maybe some new kind of fashion. Black suit with narrow lapels and lots of buttons. Bowler hat on the table beside him. Rigid shirt collar high enough to prop up a steeple. Perhaps it is propping up his head because he looks gaunt, as if his flesh is having trouble stretching over his bony face. I say: “And you are…?” “I am Ullam”. I sit down on the bed, very suddenly. Sober-up, very suddenly. After a brief square search I re-locate the power of speech. “Why… why are you here?” “Well Sir, it has come to our attention that our activities of a while back result in persons dying unnecessarily on a fairly regular basis. We would like to address this issue, and would be grateful for your help”. I blink. Think about pinching myself, but somehow it seems rude to do it in front of him. I say: “My help? In what way?” “Sir, you write for an aviation audience and you are a very experienced pilot…” “Not as experienced as you”. His pale, serious face produces a very small smile. “On the contrary, Sir. I very much doubt if I have more than 300 hours of flight time”. I blink again. The idea seems ridiculous – but no, come to think of it, logically that would have to be about right. He leans forward slightly. “Sir, what we have in mind is this. January 1st is when people make New Year Resolutions. We hold to this belief. So we would like to propose a few such resolutions for aviators which would help keep them from harm”. I think about saying that January 2nd is when people start breaking those fine resolutions. But keep my mouth shut.

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He goes on; “We are given to understand, Sir, that a high proportion of fatal accidents are caused by pilots simply losing control of their aircraft”. I nod. “You‟re right there. It‟s getting on for a third of all light aircraft fatalities. Most often it‟s a stall-spin scenario”. “And yet…” he looks at me steadily; “…and yet these are fine, modern airplanes which do not spin easily. How can this be so?” If you want to see Lecomber clambering onto a hobby-horse, just ask exactly that question. Especially at 0300 after a New Year‟s Eve party. “It‟s partly because modern aircraft don‟t spin easily”, I say. “Hell, spinning isn‟t even allowed in the majority of modern machines. I happen to regard that as almost criminally negligent, just the same as removing full spin training from most of the world‟s basic pilot training. People don‟t take on board that „not allowed‟ is not the same as „won‟t do it‟. There‟s no such thing as „won‟t do it‟ – any aeroplane‟ll stallspin if the conditions are right. A typical scenario is someone getting an engine problem on departure and trying to turn back to the runway. They haven‟t got the height, they see they‟re not going to make it, so they try to tighten the turn by pushing on a bit more pro-turn rudder to yaw the thing round. Whap – the aeroplane stalls. And because almost everything almost always flicks (snaps) in the direction of rudder it flicks under the turn and points straight down. Do that at 300 feet and it doesn‟t matter whether it carries on spinning or not – you‟re going to be part of the scenery anyway. And that‟s a stall-spin accident, pure and simple. The investigators might not call it that – I‟ve seen that happen – but that‟s what it is. Stall-spin”. Like I said, hobby-horse. Ullam gives a small nod. I dry up, feeling somewhat foolish. I am telling him about stall-spin…? For a moment he seems to be looking far away. Then he says; “I stalled one time getting off. Did some minor damage…” I say: “On December the 14th. Three days before…?” “That is correct, Sir”. He seems to shake himself and come back. “So, Sir, you would agree that more stalling and spinning experience for every aviator would reduce this death toll?” “Of course it would. Oh, it won‟t stop it entirely, because no-one can predict how a pilot might react in a panic situation. But at the moment we have the ridiculous situation that all aircraft will spin, yet spin-training is almost non-existent. For instance nobody normally teaches spin-entry from turns – yet when people die from stall-spin, 99 per cent do it off a turn. So yes, better training can only improve that”. Ullam nods. He says; “That is our feeling also. So we would like to propose that all pilots give themselves a New Year present of two hours of advanced stall-spin

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training with a good instructor. We feel that should be New Year Resolution number one”. I shrug wearily. “Propose it by all means. And of course you‟re right, it would be the best New Year Resolution any pilot could make. But they won‟t do it”. He blinks. “They won‟t, Sir? Why not?” I nearly say; „Because it‟s cheaper to die than to practise‟, but think better of it. “People don‟t think they need it. People think their habits will protect them. Ninetyfive percent of pilots never explore all the possible ways of entering a spin in their whole flying lives. They think it can‟t happen to them”. Ullam shakes his head slowly. “I am sorry to hear you say that, Sir. Real sorry. I only hope you are wrong”. “Believe me, I‟d love to be wrong. But I don‟t think I am. And it may well get worse”. “Worse, Sir? Why” “The new generation of light aircraft springing up all over the world are almost all prohibited from spinning. So it‟s getting harder to find something to get the training on, even if you want it”. He frowns. “That is not good to hear, Sir”. “I agree entirely”. For a moment he looks into the distance again. Then he says; “Well, to move on, Sir. We also understand that the second greatest cause of fatal accidents is people flying perfectly serviceable airplanes into the ground. Comfit, is it called?” “CFIT. Controlled Flight Into Terrain. Usually caused by flying in cloud which turns out to have rocks in it. Sometimes the result of sheer bull-headed over-confidence, slightly more often by a low-time pilot pushing into weather he can‟t handle. The instrument workload overtakes him and the basic principle of Minimum Safety Altitude goes out of the window”. “Just so, Sir. So we have two further proposals for New Year Resolutions. The first is that every pilot should seek to avoid the problem in the first place by resolving to always, always check destination and en-route weather directly before every flight, no matter how good the weather seems to be. And the second is to resolve always, always to note the height of the highest terrain en route before you set off. Those would be our Resolutions Two and Three”. I shrug and say: “I could add a fourth. Here in the UK we have possibly the best Distress and Diversion service in the world. Resolution Four would be to call for help when you start getting worried – not ten minutes later when you‟re panicked and overwhelmed”.

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The dark eyes brood on me. He says: “Yes, that too, Sir. But yet… you don‟t sound very convinced”. I spread my hands. “”These Resolutions are all good. If every pilot made your four New Year Resolutions and stuck to them it would certainly cut fatal accidents down by half or more. But the right pilots won‟t make those resolutions”. “Sir…?” “I‟ll re-phrase that. Good airmen and women might read your Resolutions and act on them. But the not-so-good airmen – the over-confident, the over-casual – they‟re simply not going to read them in the first place”. “You are cynical, Sir”. “I am realistic, I‟m afraid”. He nodds sadly. “I fear that may be so. But you will pass on our Resolutions nonetheless? They may at least help some already good pilots become better pilots”. “I will pass them on. Coming from you. And just personally may I thank you for… everything. Everything in my own life”. He finds his small smile again, then stands up and reaches for the bowler hat. I hold up a hand to stay him a moment. “Ullam”, I said quietly. “That stall you mentioned. On December 14th. You and your brother repaired the aircraft in three days and then he made a flight…” The dark eyes look at me. “You are correct, Sir. But back around 1903 the fact is that no one flight was ever that important. It was the whole learning process that mattered. It just happened to be Bubs who made… what they called the first flight”. “Ullam and Bubs… they were your family nicknames, weren‟t they?” “That‟s right, Sir. I was Ullam, and Orville was Bubs. I wish you a good night, Sir”. I say; “And a good night to you, Wilbur”.

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ABOARD THE RED ARROWS A formation pilot the guest of another formation

Settling into the seat, my first impression is of the unaccustomed luxury of these new surroundings. To me formation aerobatics means the draughty open cockpit of a Pitts Special, collar zipped tight against the slipstream, the engine cowling obscuring all forward visibility on the ground. Here, in Her Majesty‟s Hawk of the Red Arrows, things are very different. I feel like a clod-hopping tractor driver being introduced to a Rolls Royce. The cockpit is roomy, comfortable and well laid out. In front of me is a full panel of instruments – an unheard-of luxury so far as I am concerned, since in my world civilian-quality gyros and heavy aerobatics just do not mix. And as if all that were not enough, in this cockpit – wonder of wonders – one can actually see out. The Hawk has its tandem living accommodation stepped up and back like the seats of an auditorium; so even here in the rear seat the view ahead is panoramic, barely interrupted by the back of the front ejector seat and the top of the boss‟s bone-dome. I am vastly impressed by all of this, and similarly impressed by the number and quality of the accoutrements which bedeck my person in preparation for this interesting ride. Not satisfied with my well-worn flying suit and thin-soled aerobatic shoes, the Arrows‟ quartermaster has dressed me from head to foot for the occasion. In the manner of a high-class tailor who is not going to be thrown by a homo sapiens of smaller than standard dimensions, he has attired me in a small-sized RAF flying suit, medium-sized RAF boots, and a large RAF bone-dome with more systems in it than a Pitts has in the entire aircraft. He has also zipped and laced me into an anti-G suit, a dungaree-like garment which I have openly sneered at but which secretly pleases me immensely, since I have for no reason at all long harboured a desire to try one out. A ground crewman helps me to strap in, and then plugs me into the seat. I watch carefully, because I am rather in awe of this seat. I received a briefing on it before we walked out to the aircraft, and it quite clearly weighs more, costs more and does more than most of the aeroplanes I have flown in my career. Its connections will supply me with oxygen and communications, and will also inflate and deflate the gsuit as required. And of course there is that menacing yellow and black striped

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handle between my thighs, the one you pull if some unhappy situation should deteriorate to the point where you wish to divest yourself of the aeroplane. I have been told that should this embarrassment arise, the commander of the aircraft will say clearly; “Eject, eject, eject!” – and if I have not gone by the third „eject‟ (it was added cheerfully) I will almost certainly be logging solo time in the Hawk, although not for very long. The luxury of it all is staggering, I have never worn even a humble steam-age manually-operated parachute on display before. With the canopy closed and the ejector seat safety-pins removed, Sqn Ldr Brian Hoskins fires up the Adour engine. It spools up quickly and settles to a muted rushing noise somewhere aft of my rump. Within what seems to be seconds all nine Reds have checked in and we are taxiing straight out on to the Kemble runway to line up in three vics of three. The speed of this operation is amazing, and I am prompted to compare this rapid push-and-go process with the engine run-ups and general incockpit faffing which invariably attend my own departures in a vastly simpler aeroplane. The reflection is embarrassing, even though I am well aware that the Arrows are all ex-front line fighter pilots and have therefore been schooled since their aerial births to roll „em out with the utmost despatch. A few quiet words on the radio, and the murmur of the jet winds up to a more urgent note. Then the brakes come off and we begin to roll. To me, accustomed to the bellow of a piston engine and the business of getting the tail up and peering myopically round the nose, this take-off has an almost dreamlike quality. There is no kick in the back – just a steady, quiet acceleration which keeps on coming. This, coupled with the superb view through the long curve of the canopy, puts me more in mind of a towed departure in a glider than anything else – although this is an observation which I decide to keep t myself, since I suspect it may be querulously received. We rotate at 120 knots and enter a shallow climb as the wheels come up. A glance from side to side reveals Reds Two and Three locked firmly on to our right and left wings. They sit there four-square and solid as we rattle through some turbulence. I reflect that it is nice to have weight and inertia as well as God on your side; that rough air would have ruffled a Pitts formation, but the Hawks charged through it with no more than a slight feeling of having driven over a manhole cover. High Command has this year decreed that all passengers with the Arrows shall fly in the lead ship or not at all. I suppose this is sensible, but for my part it does mean that the little observation I have just made has about shot my bolt as far as learning anything is concerned. Sitting in stately splendour at the sharp end of the

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formation is very lordly and pleasant, but it does not tell you the full story: for that you need to be down in the back or out on a wing, where all the whipping and cursing goes on. Brian Hoskins says; “Arrow, go”, in a voice charged with all the excitement of a man buying a bag of boiled sweets. By screwing my head round I can see Four and Five sliding into place in echelon right and left, and a few seconds later some invisible voice calls; “All aboard”. We are now (I presume, since I cannot skew my head round enough to see the last four Hawks, two on each side) assembled in the basic Nine Arrow (big vic) formation. A long right turn and we are lined up with the centre of the aerodrome, easing into a shallow dive for the initial run-in from behind the crowd. As this is a practise day the crowd actually consists of Sqn Ldr Ray Thilthorpe driving the team‟s video camera; but I am a confirmed Walter Mitty, so do my best to imagine the backs of fifty thousand heads. This run-in over the punters is the classical Arrows‟ opening gambit, and very effective it is too: slamming in low over the people in a solid blast of sound can hardly fail to secure you the attention of even the dullest spectator. You might have deafened him and caused him to have an unspeakable accident with his toffee apple in the process, of course – but he will be watching. (In fact, the rest of us on the display circuit are very envious of this behind-thecrowd approach: if we so much as stick a wingtip over the paying public the Heavens immediately open and a large law book drops on our swede). As we cross the runway Brian says calmly; “Pulling up”. Immediately the G comes on and the earth slides down and away in giant slow motion. At the same moment a boa constrictor grabs me round the lower body and attempts to squeeze my legs out through my ears. This is the G-suit I was so interested in, performing as advertised. By the time we are passing the vertical I am beginning to wonder if I actually need my solar plexus sticking out of my backbone in order to combat a mere 4G pull-up, especially since I regularly pull a great deal more than that with no G-suit and very few ill effects. But of course it isn‟t just the number of G you pull that is the only factor – it‟s the length of time you are pulling it for. And starting a loop at 350 kts means that you are going to be hauling for a great deal longer than you ever would in a light aircraft with an aerobatic speed of half that or less. In fact the Arrows take more than forty seconds to execute a loop – which to me, used to going round in about half that time, endows the manoeuvre with a whole new majesty and grace. The pull goes on and on, our nose rakes slowly across the clouds, and I have ample time to gawp from side to side to see how the wingmen are

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getting on. They are hanging in there like Boeing engine pods, and I am duly impressed: when I was first involved in a winter formation work-up I wasn‟t even in the same county by this stage of the game. Near the top of the loop Brian quietly announces; “Diamond”, and there is a brief flurry of acknowledgement before the formation change is made. I nearly screw my head off my shoulders trying to watch, but of course I cannot see behind; I can only imagine the little dabs of airbrake and the delicate jockeying as the Hawks back and fill into the new pattern. A formation change in mid-manoeuvre is not only one of the most demanding tasks a pilot can undertake, but it is also universally voted as the one most likely to leave you sucking a lemon if you get it even the tiniest but wrong. The idea is that all the unsightly re-shuffling should take place at the top of the loop where the crowd can‟t see it – but you only have to flick out a tad too much airbrake or take off a whisker too much power and you will find yourself reversing majestically out of the gaggle, with belatedly applied full chat apparently making not a jot of difference. This leaves you scrambling back into place during the down-stroke of the loop – a proceeding which is not only undignified but also highly visible to the punters. As you finally slot in your ears are burning, and you can practically hear a thousand sticky-faced kids saying; “‟Ere Mum, that one couldn‟t keep up!” Later, watching the video at the de-brief, I will see that this formation change went off faultlessly. In the last quarter of the loop the G comes back moderately hard and we are impressively low as we bottom out. Brian immediately cranks the formation into a very steep turn and the load winds up again. We appear to be so low that I actually wince, momentarily convinced that the lower wingman must be about to go coal mining. But no. A glance at the altimeter reveals that we are actually at 300 feet, which amazes me. I thought we were much lower. It is long seconds before it dawns on me that what is really at fault is my own perception. I am so used to judging height with the great snout of a Pitts nose blotting out half the world that this grandstand view from the Hawk cockpit has fuddled my senses – my poor little brain has missed the briefing and insists that if I can see all that much scenery we must be terribly low. Brian quietly says; “Apollo,” and once again an invisible formation change takes place behind us. Then it‟s; “Rolling”, and we arc up into a slow beautiful barrel roll, perfectly in balance and starting and finishing at exactly 300 feet. Then it‟s a big wingover and back for the Diamond-to-Delta Loop… then the Diamond Bend… then the Concorde flypast… then the… then the… I am hugely impressed by the continuity and positioning, particularly in this first half of the display before the synchro pair split off from the main formation. Nine

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aeroplanes are a lot to wheel around the sky, and at a base speed of about 350 kts you leave the crowd behind mighty fast. This can easily create „Blue Holes‟ in the performance: those embarrassing periods when you are out of sight re-climbing or re-forming or trying to re-locate the airfield or something, leaving the crowd staring at a blue hole in the sky (or more likely wandering off to the beer-tent). The Arrows‟ show has fewer such gaps that any other jet team I have ever seen. They solve the problem with first-class choreography spiced with lavish helpings of G: there always seems to be a formation change taking place, and all of them seem to happen either in manoeuvres or during great racking turns and wingovers. The figures I am particularly waiting for are the line-abreast manoeuvres. The two factors which most compound the difficultly of any formation flying are (1) the degree to which you have to turn your head, and (2) the number of aircraft between yourself and the Leader. Clearly then, a long line abreast is not a comfortable formation. The idea is that the outer wingmen should more or less ignore the inner wingmen and formate directly on Lead. But for any normal human being it is not actually possible to ignore six tons of aeroplane with its wingtip six feet away from your own. So you sort of watch both the inner wingman and the Boss – and if the aforesaid inner wingman should bob and weave a little, the movement will inevitably be magnified in your own responses. This is called „whip‟, and is the bane of any formation pilot‟s life. If an inner wingman is having an off-day you will sit outside him projecting waves of hatred at the back of his bone-dome. He may be your bosom buddy and your wives belong to the same baby-sitting circle – but as you hang in there bucking and jerking, power coming back and slamming on again, you could very cheerfully kill him. It is, after all, his fault. He couldn‟t fly a paper dart down a stairwell – and the worst of it is that it‟s you who are going to look out of position, because of the whip factor. When you get back on the ground you are going to stick one on him, stalk off in a huff, slip a knife into his ribs when he‟s not looking… It is as well that these bursts of fury last for seconds only, and are as instantly forgotten: otherwise the casualty roll of every formation team in the world would read like a telephone book or a Police report on gang warfare. So line abreast being the most difficult formation, the Arrows naturally make a point of using it quite a lot. And not only using it, but actually barrel-rolling a five-ship line-abreast as the front line of the Wineglass Roll. This to me is their piece de resistance, the manoeuvre which is blatant showing-off to every other formation pilot in the world.

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Brian says; “Wineglass, go” – again with all the drama of a man selecting a particular stick of nougat – and I hang my chin on my left shoulder, now able to see the wingmen and watching like a music critic waiting to pounce on a bum note. Brian says; “Rolling”, and we roll. Up and around, long and sweeping and quiet apart from the distant whirr of the jet. It is a remarkable performance. Throughout the roll the wingmen I am seeing suffer next to no whip, no mis-matched bank, and nothing but the tiniest fore-and-aft movements. Which is a very considerable achievement, especially for mid-February – and even especiallier when you bear in mind that the Adour is a twin-spool engine which has less-than-instantaneous throttle response. I can imagine Red Five‟s thumb dancing on the airbrake rocker switch on top of the throttle… The display continues. The Caterpillar… the Rollback… the remarkable Join-uploop… the Spaghetti… and lastly the Rocket, a vertical-climbing finale from all nine line-astern which punches up from base height to 12,000 feet in a matter of seconds. (The Arrows seem to have a peculiar affectation for the Rocket, which surprises me since it is a comparatively simple manoeuvre. I suspect it is largely due to the fact that it commences with a low run at 500 knots – which if I am right only goes to show there is an element of the ton-up boy in us all…) Finally we screech down the runway in Big Vic, and the wingmen chant their numbers as they break right and left to land. We are the last to peel off, and we do not land, for Brian is being kind enough to take us away from the circuit for a few minutes so that I can try out the Hawk for myself. This will be my first clutch at a military jet – hell, come to think of it, it will be my first clutch at any jet – and I am like a five-year-old who has been allowed on the footplate of the Starship Enterprise. At 6,000 feet I take control and wheel around a few steep turns, the g-suit puffing and blowing its accompaniment. To my hands the Hawk feels conventional in pitch, heavy in yaw, and kinda weird in roll. The aileron response is instantaneous and the roll rate excellent, not dissimilar to a Pitts S1. But this is my first encounter with powered controls and it is not quite love at first touch; I find that I miss having my right hand connected directly to the airflow. There is a sort of disconnected „dial-aroll‟ feel to the Hawk‟s control column, and my slow and hesitation rolls are wavery affairs as I attempt to come to terms with the super-light ailerons and heavy rudder. In looping manoeuvres I enjoy the novel experience of looking at the accelerometer and pulling to a predetermined level of G. One doesn‟t do this in light aircraft (or at least, I never have), but with the slow, slow pitch rate of a jet at least it gives you something to do until such time as the horizon turns up again. Should one

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be so crass as to pull too hard the stall buffet is an obvious and gentlemanly shudder of warning. After a few Cubans and barrel rolls I am beginning to feel a little more at home – a feeling which is belied, I have to admit, by the embarrassing fact that during my machinations I have somehow contrived to gain no less than four thousand feet without noticing it. Still, never mind; so pleasant and responsive is the Hawk beginning to feel that it requires a conscious effort for me to remember that this is a serious military aircraft and not a light aerobatic toy. My hands are itching to flick and stall-turn it and do negative G manoeuvres in it – all of which are either impossible or very strictly forbidden, or both. Eventually prudence – in the shape of Brian Hoskins in the front seat, who is enduring my ham-fisted assault on his aeroplane in stoical silence – suggests a return to earth before I blot my logbook by absent-mindedly attempting a lomcovac or something, which would probably involve a terminal autorotation. In the circuit the Hawk is solid and stable, and the landing would be easy had I remembered that you do not flare a swept-wing jet in the same way you do a Pitts or a Stampe. As it is I do signally fail to recall this important fact of life, and so am cheerfully trying to sit the Hawk into a three-point attitude before Brian intervenes and places the aeroplane on the runway for me. The actual landing again reminds me irresistibly of an arrival in a sort of big fast glider. As the Adour spools down, sounding like some enormous fading gyro, I have a moment to sit and reflect on what has been one of the most fascinating flights of my life. I find that my abiding memory will be of the utter precision and sureness of the Arrows‟ teamwork and pilotage. If these guys are more or less ordinary squadron „shags‟ – which is how both High Command and they themselves see their identity – then the impoverished RAF is still studded with gems at least so far as its manpower is concerned. For they are quite simply the best. From our small country, the finest jet formation team in the world. The Red Arrows.

This was written over 30 years ago. Many of the manoeuvres have since changed and the aircraft have aged along the lines of all having had three new heads and four new handles. The pilots have also changed, many times, because a normal Arrows tour is just three years. But the spirit of the Reds has not changed. Still the best jet formation team in the world.

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THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER One man’s saviour can be another man’s doom Believe it or not, this is a tale in support of the common sense of the British Civil Aviation Authority. This may not be immediately obvious – and nor, sadly can I guarantee that it will be infinitely repeatable in times to come. But it does speak of common sense and more… It has to do with a simple fire extinguisher. And the hassle it can cause. As a Private Pilot, the CAA has a light grip on your life. It may not feel that way, but if you wish to move on then you will most certainly find that the grip on your scrotum tightens. If you go Commercial, it tightens. If you instruct, it tightens more. If you achieve an Airline Transport Pilot‟s License (ATPL) you may easily acquire a high-pitched voice if you let it get to you. The fact is that in this day and age if you wish to embrace the freedom of flight you increasingly take on the role of automaton. If you are so unfortunate as to join an airline the grip makes your eyes bulge. This is because every airline has to achieve an Air Operator Certificate (AOC) in order to carry out public transport. And this document, once in place, rules every crevice of the life of every person involved in the endeavour, from the newest hostie to the most grizzled Chief Training Captain. The latter might have the leeway to snarl back at it every now and then, but even he is most of the time just pacing up and down in his cage. A typical airline Operations Manual alone – which is about one-fifth of the total AOC paperwork – will take up shelf-space which might otherwise house 50 complete works of Shakespeare, and be equally incomprehensible to any normal human being. Airlines like BA and Virgin employ not inconsiderable staff just to keep the AOC updated and to ensure the most pertinent points are wafted into the consciousness of those who are supposed to know but might otherwise miss the latest dotted i‟s and crossed t‟s of the interminable updates. These people are called the pilots. As a final measure of the power of the AOC Ops Manual, a notable percentage of airline pilots actually do read the updates. It‟s that serious. The AOC system is, of course, aimed at operators flying 400 passengers from Heathrow to Hong Kong in an Airbus or 747. It deals with IFR day and night minima, flight time limitations, weather alternates, pilots‟ currency in actually landing the aircraft (a significant problem on long-haul), security, carriage of dangerous goods, runway length limits – you name it. Simple it ain‟t.

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Imagine my deep joy, therefore, when the CAA pronounced that I would have to acquire an AOC in order to take 500 or so of my sponsor‟s corporate guests each year for aerobatic joy-rides. No point in dwelling on it, but I have to say I half-regretted having been carefully rude to the then-Chairman of the CAA whilst being the guest speaker at a function a few weeks before. On mature reflection I think I may have offended both his brain cells. He certainly stalked out looking huffed. Anyway, suddenly we had to acquire an AOC instead of operating under an Exemption From The Requirement, which we had had for the past ten years as being a sensible solution to our oddball operation. The new edict bore all the logic of an F1 racing driver suddenly being required to qualify to run a railroad. Exercising my skills of leadership (nothing to do with passing the buck, of course) I delegated the task to our then Number Three pilot, Nick Wakefield. He laboured most mightily against an Operations Inspector I first considered murdering as the easiest option, but later (quite a lot later) came to like. The barriers were formidable. We didn‟t understand international airline operations – which was what the AOC system was designed for – and the CAA Operations Division certainly didn‟t understand our small but aggressive aerobatic air force. The Ops Inspector assigned to our case had a mindset geared to four-engined jets only because there were no five-engined jets around. Our singleengine piston powered aeroplanes which were going to transport one passenger at a time from his point of origin back to his point of origin and turn him upside down in the process produced – shall we say – a slight credibility gap. To give that Ops Inspector his due, once he realised we were not going to go away, he helped. As did the rest of the CAA departments involved. As our AOC application proceeded, so did our Exemptions. Requirement to have an Outside Air Temperature Gauge – Exempt. Requirement to have gyro instruments – Exempt. Requirement for this… requirement for that… exempt, exempt… All practical, if frequently not simple. Our CAA are actually not fools, and are in fact capable of adapting to an oddball operation when it comes in from left-field. But there‟ll always be a hitch. Which brings us to the fire extinguisher. All Public Transport aircraft MUST carry a fire extinguisher. Period. I said ; “WHY?” Our Ops Inspector said: “In case you have a fire. That‟s the law. There isn‟t any why”. I said; “I‟m flying an aeroplane with fuel tanks in the fuselage and the front D-sections of a carbon-fibre wing. If there‟s a serious fire, reaching for an extinguisher will merely keep me amused while the wings explode”. Ops Inspector said; “But you must carry a fire extinguisher! The rules state…”

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“F*** the rules! Look, the one thing I am NOT going to carry in an aerobatic aeroplane, under any circumstances whatsoever, is a bloody fire extinguisher. It might be a fire extinguisher to you, mate, but it‟s a missile to me”. A bristly pause. Then; “What on earth do you mean?” “Look, I‟m currently being consulted as an expert witness in a legal case where a fire extinguisher came out of its cradle during aerobatics, collected half the pilot‟s face en route out of the cockpit, came down through the roof of a pub, and exploded in the bar. Fortunately the pub was closed and nobody there was killed. Not so fortunately the aircraft crashed and two people died. There have been many similar incidents. What might be a fire extinguisher to you is a potentially lethal loose article to me, and I won‟t carry one. Period”. “But you must have a fire extinguisher. The regulations….” “All right, I‟ll carry one. But only if it‟s so bolted and wire-locked to the airframe that there is no chance of it ever coming free if someone knocks an over-centre clip or any other quick-release”. “But then you can‟t get at it quickly….” “And then it can‟t take my f****** head off followed by going through the canopy and probably into Number Two when we‟re pushing out of a mirror loop at 200 feet…” The word for this is impasse. The Ops Inspector and I sat glaring at each other over a conference table in the oh-so-civilised environs of the CAA HQ at Gatwick. This apparently small detail looked set to scupper our AOC. I was – shall we say – very, very adamant. There is always the possibility that my finishing school burnt down before I‟d been finished. Two days later the Ops Inspector rang up. He said; “What‟s the rate of roll of your aircraft?” “400 degrees a second”. “All right. If a Public Transport aircraft is capable of rolling at more than 200 degrees a second, it is deemed acceptable that it should be exempt from the requirement to carry a fire extinguisher”. I blinked while I unravelled that. Then I said slowly; “Thank you, Sir. That is very welcome, and very sensible”. At that moment, I could think of little else to say. Our AOC was on again. That phone call has lived with me. This was a British CAA Operations Inspector – and a known prickly one – accepting a safety point and taking considerable pains to slot it into the system. Gawd knows where he got the „roll-rate more than 200 deg/sec no fire extinguisher‟ edict from. When I got that particular Exemption through I most carefully didn‟t read it. I don‟t know how he did it. But he, this unimaginative stickler, seemed to

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have magiced-up a regulation and popped it through by means unknown to the rest of mankind. Now that was good thinking. (And J, I expect you will read this sooner or later, and I salute you). That was good, sound, practical airmanship. So now, European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), how flexible are you? As good as the British CAA, are you? Or would you insist on my carrying a missile in the cockpit…? As an incidental, during the AOC certification process we were asked what our „airline‟ security procedures were for checking the contents of passengers‟ pockets before they boarded the aircraft. “Simple”, we said. “They don‟t carry anything. Period”. Authority, thinking in terms of airline passengers, smiled in that superior way only Authority can smile. “Oh, yes? And what do you do? Frisk each one?” “Yes, of course”. Authority blinked. “Be serious. You mean you search them?” “Of course we do. These are aerobatic aeroplanes. If we wish to survive long enough to have pension problems we seriously do not want a coin or a mobile phone rattling around the control runs. We make everybody empty their pockets before they get into the aircraft, and watch them while they do it. Obvious, innit?” Authority swallowed hard. “You search them?” “Damn right we do”. When it came to the final Flight Operations Inspection – a sort of super-duper flight test – before getting into the aeroplane, Authority did most ostentatiously divest himself of all coins, keys, mobile phones, pens, and peppermint cough sweets adorning his person. We frisked him nonetheless, to make sure. Exactly the same as you do when you‟re going to do aerobatics. Of course you do.

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I HAVE LEFT IT TOO LATE A bold pilot becomes a very small frightened man

I have left it too late. Quite a lot too late. I am host to the hot and hollow prickle of fear and my mouth is suddenly bone dry. The cliffs of Northumberland stream past my right wingtip at 150 knots. If I could slow them to 50 knots I would. But an Extra 300 is not a helicopter, and if I slow by even a paltry 40 knots the nose must rise several degrees and even further obliterate the forward visibility. Since the forward visibility is already to all intents zero this may be largely academic – but if I am going to slam into a cliff it is also entirely academic whether I do it at 150 or 100 kt. And so in my fear I prefer the illusion of better visibility. The cliffs on the right are shrouded in cloud. Not just at their mountainous tops – no such luxury – but from just above their ankles up to infinity. I am below their ankles at 100 feet, and tendrils of vapour are whipping over the wings. Below me is sea. Whitecaps are just discernable in the murk. To my left – nothing. A wall of grey starts at the sea surface and just carries on being grey all around and above. I am flying in a small tunnel which shows horrible indications of getting even smaller. Or non-existent. And I cannot turn around. There isn‟t room in the tunnel. The horrible truth is that I have pushed weather much too hard. And left it too late. Rain rams the canopy, audible above the rumble of the 300 hp Lycoming flat-six and further destroying forward visibility by turning the windscreen into a passable imitation of frosted glass. Within the space of two minutes I have descended from bold aviator to a very little man who has much exceeded his privileges against the power of nature. I am flying hard, cranking right and left to follow the coves. The granite cliffs are terrifyingly close. Turning right, into a bay, is easy, because I can see the cliffs. When they bend left it is not so easy because then the right wing obscures the cliff I am trying not to become a part of. This grabs my attention a lot. Inside me lives a small, very nervous man. Now he says in my head; “How the hell did you get into this?” Usual reason, you bloody idiot. Got a display 50 miles up the coast. TAF (Terminal Approach Forecast) and METAR (Actual Weather) at destination not too

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bad, so just a question of pushing through a bit of incoming warm front to get there. So I planned to sneak along the coast at low level – uncomfortable for a few minutes while you plough through the worst, but… “But now look at you…” Nervous man pushes the goad home. “Now you‟re in a tunnel and you‟ve left it too late…” I know damn well I‟m in a tunnel. Now shut the f*** up, nervous man, and let me concentrate on getting out of it. If it can be got out of… For this cringing man has spoken truth. And I most certainly should have known better. Metrological TAFs and Actuals, normally pretty accurate, have a mysterious way of acquiring a sheen of optimism when they emanate from the Met station on an aerodrome which is staging their big airshow today. I have encountered this human truth over many years – and yet I have still fallen for it. Idiot. My fault. No-one else‟s. And so I have indeed flown myself into a tunnel. It is the tiny tunnel which exists for a while when a serious incoming westerly Atlantic front meets the high ground of the Pennines. The sodden airmass reaches the hills and vomits out still more rain as it is uplifted – but it takes a wee while for the cloud and murk to fill up every last cranny of the coast, and during this wee while it can create an ever-closing tunnel of not-quite-impossible conditions on the windward side of the hills. Those who know the phenomenon call this a sucker-tunnel. And I have suckered myself. My eyes flicker and dart, seeking escape. The rain dirges on the canopy as the Extra drones one, driving me second-by-second further into the trap. Normal emergency procedure – Plan A – is pull up into the grey on instruments, climb out of it, and talk to Air Traffic with tail between legs. Embarrassing, but not terminal. For me, not an option. Because this Extra is an aerobatic Grand Prix car. It has no blind flying instruments whatsoever. No gyro instruments, not even a turn-and-slip indicator. Nothing. In extremis and on certain headings I might use the magnetic compass as a very highly primitive artificial horizon for a short time. I have done this once or twice before for extremely brief let-downs through small cloud layers when I‟ve had signed verification from God that there was room underneath. That scenario was backed by the knowledge that if I lost the plot I could always flick-roll, shut the power, let it decay into a spin, wait until the grey turned to whirling green in front, and then most rapidly recover the known spin. British Airways might frown upon it as an approach technique – and in truth I do see it might not go over big with 300 passengers – but it will work with an Extra or a Pitts Special. Mostly… This, however, is not a small layer. If I go up into this I will be climbing into crud maybe 20,000 feet thick. Attempt that on a compass and with no oxygen and I am

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certainly going to lose it at some point. And if I then spin down the chances do not exist that it will be back into this ever-narrowing tunnel – it will be into a cloudshrouded peak or the iron-grey sea. My world will end with a tenth of a second glimpse of revolving rock or ocean. Up, then, is not on. I crank into another cove. The G drags sweat down my face. So Plan B – stand the Extra on its ear and circle hard left, out to sea. Keep turning until the cliffs re-appear, then crank right again and keep them on my left wingtip until I have retraced my steps back out of trouble. There is an important if to Plan B. Looking at the grey wall of cloud to the left, it is obvious that I have a good chance of flying into the sea without seeing it coming in the course of any such experiment. And if I do avoid a watery collision there is no guarantee I will not then pull the left turn too tight and never see the cliffs again. This is a real possibility, because once I start the turn the magnetic compass will gyrate uselessly and all my attention will be on the wave-tops – whatever I can see of them. If I pull too hard I may well unknowingly turn 360 degrees instead of 180, ending up far enough offshore that the cliffs are lost forever in the murk. In effect I will have flown out of the side of the tunnel to circle into oblivion. A pilot sitting in a comfy fireside chair might say I should do a timed rate-one turn and then the problem would not arise. I can only reply that in grey smashing rain with no gyros and only close but vaguely-seen whitecaps for company you do not fiddle around with rate one – which you have no way of judging anyway in the absence of any horizon. Instead you crank over, pull hard, and cling to the crumb of comfort that at least you‟re not going to pull the wings off an Extra 300. Plan B is not attractive. Plan C is to do it the other way round. Turn 45 degrees or so away from the cliffs, count calmly to five, and then turn hard right, back into them. This has the benefit that having controlled the duration of my „outbound leg‟ I can hardly miss the cliffs on turning back in. The downside is the obvious possibility of doing exactly that – not missing the cliffs. If I turn back in too early it is far from impossible that my visual acquaintance with the granite will be swiftly followed by physical union with it. Nevertheless, I prefer Plan C. I have great faith the Extra‟s ability to tighten a turn beyond the apparent laws of physics. Especially when assisted by stark fear. The tunnel narrows. Ahead – so close ahead – the next headland is already shrouded in heavier grey than ever, becoming…. well, if not quite black, most ominously near it, promising complete impenetrability in the very, very near future.

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Suddenly there is no more choice. I slam the Extra to the left, roll out, and stare at the waves. Within an instant they disappear. I am 100 feet above the sea, but the mist reaches the deck and the ocean just dissolves in the enveloping grey. Now fear percusses. Percussion sparks panic. I crank the Extra to the right with every sinew of my body. One of the great assets of the Extra is that it rolls at 400 deg / sec. At this moment this is the last thing I need because who is the genius who can tell if he has rolled a quarter of a second, half a second, one second… I stop rolling – I think – and pull. I pull hard for perhaps five seconds, then stop pulling and abruptly roll to level – or what I think might be level. The mechanics are now simple because I am utterly blind. If I have over-rolled past 90 degrees the sea will have me because I must be flying downwards and will simply fly into it. If I‟m gaining height the options are several but all end in ignominy which I will not know. I cannot check the altimeter because it is most vital that I stare forwards… Cliffs suddenly appear in the streaming windscreen out of the grey, dead ahead and desperately close. I want to kiss them. But first I must miss them… They have birds-nests in them, I notice fleetingly. I crank right and pull, slamming on full power. The cliffs keep rushing at me even as they scroll down the windscreen. I cannot see their end and so pull harder…. Suddenly there is grey over the nose instead of solid rock. I abruptly unravel the turn and stare left. The cliffs stream past the left wing-tip now. I have reversed my course, and survived the experience. So far… I will cut the narrative here. The end result was that the tunnel had not closed behind me – quite – and that 14 minutes later I did land back at my point of origin, a much frightened and wiser pilot. As I climbed out of the Extra I glanced at the Gmeter. The recording needle stood at plus 8.5G. I expect to get that in a display, but avoiding a cliff…? The exposure to over-confidence and terror was enough for one day. Others have been there and not been so lucky – every year there are new streaks of aluminium on hills which testify to boldness or complacence. My hands shake as I tie the aeroplane down. I have a date with a solid hotel on solid ground, and several beers. And a period of soul-searching.

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FLYING UNDER THE INFLUENCE Anoxia being an insidious malaise

Hey, thish is FUN! This is akshully bloody good fun! It never occurred to me that skywriting might be fun! But here I am at 16,000 feet, very early on thish gorgeous blue summer morning, with the lovely north Norfolk coast spread out more than three miles below in gorgeous Technicolor. Here I am throwing the Pitts around and flicking a switch to leave... er, well, gorgeous white smoke-lines like cotton-wool which are hopefully creating nice clear letters. This ish gorgeous! This is fun! I am akshully giggling at the fun of it… This was some years back. Skywriting, in those days, was illegal in our Sceptred Isle. For some reason now lost in obscurity, our Britain, our bastion of the free world, for decades forbade the towing of banners or the writing of words in smoke by aeroplanes. This puritanical idiocy was enshrined in a thing called the Aerial Advertising Act which had somehow been wormed-in by some diseased hamster in the House of Commons. That Act is now either emasculated or gone altogether – I forget which – but back then it had power. So when a Japanese film company offered good money for writing the word FUSHIGI (meaning „mystery‟ in Japanese) in the sky my first reaction was; „Shame that‟s illegal‟. This view prevailed for about 1.5 seconds, to be replaced with the much more cogent question of where could I do it where the Aerial Advertising Police might sort of not notice? Someplace where writing a word two miles long in the sky could be reasonably clandestine… The answer was a little private strip in the wilds of north Norfolk run by a rebellious old mate called Henry. This place had its pros and cons. The big pro was that the Thought Police probably wouldn‟t find it in a month of Sundays – a factor which far outweighed the minor con that the „runway‟ was a short strip of former WWII bomber field perimeter track with a major forest six inches from one edge. The next question was how to do it. There was no advice available in Britain because no-one in Britain had done skywriting for many decades due to the aforementioned Aerial Advertising Act. So I ended up on the phone to various American operators and learned that (a) I would need to pump at least twice the

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volume of smoke-oil into the exhaust than a normal Pitts smoke system puts out; (b) that diesel – which I normally used for smoke-oil – wasn‟t up to the job because the smoke was neither thick enough nor long-lasting enough; (c) that I should use instead a particular esoteric mineral oil I‟d never heard of; and (d) that you carried out serious skywriting real high – at least 15,000 feet – where the smoke hangs around for a reasonable time in the cold air. We solved (a) by doubling the smoke-tankage and pumping capacity by means which made CAA Airworthiness wince sharply, but which they finally accepted for a one-off job. (Or at least they accepted the bits we told them about. We somehow forgot to mention what we wanted it for, and the words Aerial Advertising Act never passed our lips). Item (b), the oil, was more difficult because it turned out there wasn‟t a British equivalent to the American specification. A long conversation with a very puzzled oil company executive revealed that the nearest thing to it was, of all things, a lubricant for refrigeration machinery. The executive was astounded when I promptly ordered 100 gallons of the stuff – probably enough to lubricate about a million fridges for a decade. It never occurred to me to ask if the stuff could be toxic when burned or evaporated at high temperature. The result was smoke which would have done credit to a fleet destroyer, the only slight drawback being that it tended to fill the fuselage as well as the sky, rendering the cockpit atmosphere – never a Pitts Special strong-point – even more redolent of the inside of a gasometer than usual. So now all I had to do was to do was learn how to fly the job. Skywriting may sound easy when you say it quickly. But when you think about it, easy it ain‟t. For a start, when you wingover-up between strokes you look down on the word, which means you are seeing it in mirror-writing – which behoves you to print it large in mirror-writing on a card in the middle of the instrument panel lest you make the laughable error of rendering it readable only to the occupants of the MIR space-station. You then further realise that straight-line letters are easy enough because you can see what you‟ve already done – for example F-I-L is easy because you fly alongside your previous strokes, reach where they end, and switch the smoke off there. Conversely F-I-S is not easy because the S has curving lines and therefore you are at some stage going to be unsighted on the previous letter and may well thereby write F-I-S without knowing a thing about it until you pull up and look down on the resultant mess.

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So I took my mirror-word and applied aerobatic thinking to it. Drew aerobatic Aresti-like lines indicating the order of strokes and the manner in which to move from one letter to the next. Rule One soon became obvious: that whenever possible you started a curving letter so that you turned towards the previous letter rather than away from it. This meant writing some letters backwards (as well as in mirror-writing), which looked cack-handed at first glance but was the way to do it. Rule Two was – rather obviously – to pull up into a wide wing-over between strokes so you could look down on your handiwork and line up accurately for the next stroke. Rule Three – well, Rule Three never even entered my head… So here I am at 16,000 ft on this gorgeous morning and the prorcedur…. proceecher… the way of doing it seems to be working. This is practish an‟ I haven‟t got the first two letters quite right yet, so I‟m doing them over and over again and letting „em drift off downwind. But Hell, this is so much fun! Okay, the Pitts is kinda sluggish up here – but there‟s Kings Lynn on the left wing as I pull up and Norwich perfectly visiible off the right – Jeez, miles an‟ miles away. How beautiful is this in the clear early morn? Thish is gorgeous… At which point, in mid-wing-over, I went gently to sleep. Thus, although currently unaware of it, discovering Rule Three. Waking up in an aeroplane you are theoretically piloting is an odd experience. First of all you become aware of engine noise, which seems puzzling. Then your eyes open and you come round with a shock, thinking; „Jesus! I‟m flying! How did I get here?‟ The brain takes several confused seconds to sort that one out and click the world back into place. My world turned out to be the Pitts cockpit in a gentle spiral dive, passing down through 5,000 feet. 5,000 feet! Christ! I was at 16,000 a moment ago! Or perhaps it wasn‟t a moment ago, perhaps it was longer… I shook my head – a mistake, because the movement fired up a pounding headache. I had a mouth like sandpaper and my brain seemed to be staggering around in an ancient library trying to pick up coherent thoughts and stack them in a row. I felt as if I was drunk… Which of course, to all intents and purposes, I was. Pissed as a parrot. Without thinking about it I‟d been pratting around energetically at 16,000 feet for more than half an hour in an aircraft not only conspicuously un-equipped with oxygen, but at the same time blessed with a most effective system of delivering

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noxious, even toxic, fumes into the cockpit. No wonder I‟d been giggling. I couldn‟t have been more rat-arsed after a two-day binge on Dublin‟s best poteen. Henry‟s evil little runway suddenly became very difficult to spot in the patchwork of fields below. And when I did spot it and circled down, I noticed a regrettable tendency for there to be five of it, all at slightly different levels. Screwing up my eyes reduced the five to something like three, but less would have been nice. Warily I slipped down to the tiny ribbon of peri-track, very conscious of the highly solid forest hard up against it. The landing was a series of diminishing collisions with the ground which I mainly remember for the blurred sight of all those bloody great trees zipping past the left wing-tip. I taxied back, shut down, climbed out on legs of rubber, tottered a few steps, then sat down suddenly on the tarmac. Rule Three is thus very fundamental – never underestimate the effects of oxygen starvation. Anoxia. If you must go up to 16,000 without oxygen do it quickly, then poke off down again immediately. This most especially if you also have noxious fumes in the cockpit. Do not stay up there admiring the morning and thinking everything ish gorgeous… Henry, somewhat less than gorgeous, came and stood over me. “Hey, d‟you want the good news or the bad news?” I clutched my aching head. “Give me the good news”. “Well, the system works real well. The smoke lasts forever. I can still see what you wrote half an hour ago”. “Good. And the bad news…?” “Well, I thought this was going to be a secret operation…” I opened my gritty eyes and stared up into the blue morning sky. There indeed was evidence of my experiments with the first two letters, streaming repeatedly down the prevailing 25 knot wind in an arrow-straight line. Straight towards Norwich, now awakening from its slumbers and setting off to work. Henry had a point. If you wish to maintain discretion in the matter of a skywriting endeavour it is perhaps tactless to float letters over a major city. Especially these letters. The beginning of the word Fushigi. I bleared at the otherwise pristine sky and saw what I had written. FU…. FU…. FU… .FU… .FU… Some days you are just not going to get it right. I rolled over on the tarmac and went to sleep.

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For the record, I did in fact complete the job. Oddly enough I ended up writing the word in Japanese script. This meant nothing to me but had the primary advantage of being mostly straight lines and the secondary asset of being more or less unprovable. I awaited almost with glee the arrival of the Aerial Advertising Police so that I could look them in the eye and say; “Skywriting? Writing what, precisely?” They never turned up. I flew the for-real sorties a bit lower and a lot more quickly. The Japanese crew were very polite, paid up on the spot, and I was only about 25% rat-arsed instead of the 100% when I first landed. I was younger then. And I needed the money.

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FLYING FOR THE FLICKS All film units are trying to kill you The Great Film Director eyes me as if he‟s selecting the choicest carcase for a pig-roast. He sticks out his hand. “Pleased to meetcha, Brian. An‟ I wancha to know that if at any time I ask ya to do something ya ain‟t happy about, ya only gotta say”. I nearly say; “Yeah, yeah, and my Godmother was Marilyn Monroe”, but keep my mouth shut and my face straight. As I sometimes do when hearing bullshit. I have worked with film people before. The first thing to remember is that many folk in the film industry have egos the size of a Saturn rocket. Especially if they are a Famous Director. Or think they are. The second is that they are naturally forceful people, because you don‟t get to be a Famous Director unless you have a vision of exactly what you want and the personality to stamp on the hands or genitilia of anyone who disagrees with it. And the third thing is that almost always these folk know nothing, zilch, zero about aviation including what it takes to get the shot. (This is not universally true – and my apologies to John Travolta and the memories of James Stewart, Steve McQueen, and Christopher Reeve – but it will certainly do as a rule of thumb). The fourth thing is that, without deliberately meaning to, they will try to kill you. But right now I am suffering the fifth factor. The hanging about. Oh Gawd, the hanging about. You can be left sitting in an idling aeroplane while a Director bawls something like: “Get a scrim on that brute – now!” I have not the faintest idea what a scrim is – possibly something an all-female rugby team does – but what I do know from experience is that the „scrim‟ (whatever it is) will inevitably be at the bottom of some lorry‟s equipment pile. And that „Now‟ means at least a half-hour wait. I shut down the engine. This provokes the Mighty Director to despatch a minion to the cockpit to shout at me. “Why have you stopped the engine?” “Because it‟s going to overheat if I keep it running much longer on the ground”. “Overheat?” He looks at the engine cowling. As there is no molten aluminium actually pouring out of it, he delivers a verdict based on his vast aeronautical experience. “It‟s not overheating! Mr (XXXX, the Great Director) wants the engine running!”

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I can be tactful at times. I say gently: “I am not going to over-temp this engine. Please tell Mr XXXX to go take a long walk off a short pier”. For some reason this does not go down too well. The Mighty Director himself storms over to the cockpit and delivers himself of a truly impressive salvo of swearwords, some of which are quite novel. I try to make mental notes of the new words, then explain soothingly that (a) I am not prepared to overheat a perfectly sound engine, (b) that nothing is happening anyway, and (c) that both he and I know perfectly well that nothing will happen until the lads have found the scrim (whatever that is) and affixed it to the brute (whatever that is). Which will take at least half an hour. Then I‟ll start up again. To my surprise the Mighty Director suddenly grins and says; “Oh, you‟ve learned about filming, then!” And stalks off to shout at somebody else. Eventually we get in the air, only four hours behind schedule. The script calls for me to formate underneath a helicopter. (Not as daft as it may sound – once a chopper has translated into level flight at a reasonable airspeed the rotor-wash streams out rearwards like fixed-wing wake-turbulence). And whilst I do this a stuntman will climb down a rope ladder from the chopper and make as if he‟s going to drop into my front cockpit. He is not actually going to so drop – that will be faked on the ground – but in the helicopter is also a cameraman with an out-rigged camera to film the climb-down towards me underneath. The stuntman is wearing a well-fitting dinner suit, and conspicuously no parachute. This matters not because what he is wearing is a harness under the natty gear with thin steel cables running out of shirt cuffs and elsewhere and most firmly attached to the helicopter. If he falls off the ladder it won‟t matter – he isn‟t going anywhere. It says here. I carefully inspect the wires and harness, having no wish to collect a falling stuntman in the centre-section of my biplane. His harness looks fine. I turn to the cameraman. He is cheerfully (more or less) intending to sit on the edge of the cockpit floor, feet on the skid, secured by just a slackened-off seat belt. I have seen this before – the stuntman completely secured while the cameraman leans out over the abyss wearing one loose lap-belt. Since I have no wish to collect a descending cameraman either, the guy gets a hastily cobbled-up extra harness which he didn‟t want. So finally we get airborne. I edge up to the bottom of the rope-ladder, which seems to have two empty film canisters attached to the bottom rung, presumably for filmic visibility. The stuntman begins climbing down. My earphones say: “Brian, come up a bit”. I edge up.

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“A bit more…” Jeez… I edge up a bit more. The film canisters are now just in front of the prop, bobbing around. “Now forward a bit…” I descend a few feet, slide slightly forwards until the canisters are just over the centre-section, and e-a-s-e up again. This is formation most intricately demanding. I might be going to tap one of those film canisters with my top wing centre-section, but that‟s not the end of the world. The stuntman climbs down, nearly reaching me… “Okay Brian, we have the shot. Break off and RTB”. Back on the ground I go look at the rope ladder. Pick up one of the canisters… And find that inside the canister is a cast iron weight-lifting barbell of maybe 20 kg – more than the weight of a 25 ltr drum of fuel. And there are two of them, obviously to make the ladder hang down more vertically… Obvious now – but I hadn‟t thought of it. And nobody told me. I get ready to kill someone – but in fact it is mea culpa. Nothing else. My fault. I should have bloody well checked… Without meaning to, film crews are trying to kill you. Some come closer than others. A different day, a different film. This time I‟m working for what is nowadays called Bollywood – an Indian film company over from Bombay to get their stunt-work done in the UK. The brief is to fly two dissimilar aircraft in tied-together line-abreast formation and pass a Grandmother from one aircraft to the other at the same time as a briefcase is passed the other way. Sort of thing a guy does every day, of course. Why? I have not the remotest idea. The story-lines (if any) of Bollywood blockbusters do not for some reason loom large in my life. But the flying task does… The Grandma is a wicker dummy all dressed in black. I take one look and decide we are probably going to drop this object at least once during trials. The UK Civil Aviation Authority seem to feel the same way about it, but are slightly mollified when I state that we are planning to do this over the wide open fields of Norfolk. Then they ask – what about weak links? Good question. In all, there will be four lines between the two aircraft – one for Grandma, one for the briefcase, and then two to pull Granny one way and the case the other. We certainly have to have weak links for all sorts of obvious reasons, not least to break apart and land. Strands of wool, I say. CAA says; “How many strands?” “We‟ll start with four in each line”, I say. “But we may need more…” We ended up with the weakest link being 26 strands of wool. And we lost the dummy three times. Imprinted on my brain is the first time. Norfolk may be sparsely

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populated, but there are hamlets – and the bloody dummy broke the bloody weak link right over the top of one of them. When you drop a bomb it visually carries forward. Not dissimilar when you drop a Grandma. I broke from the formation and watched the bloody thing falling apparently straight towards a village. Then it tracked and fell into a field 100 metres beyond… Two days later I found one of the Bollywood crew loading heavy stones into the (now very battered) legs of the Grandma. “Oh, she streamin‟ out too flat”, an interpreter told me. “We wan‟ her to hang down more…” I admit I chinned the guy. We eventually got the take. Some filmists are exceptions. I once worked with actor Stacy Keach on a film called Princess Daisy. I flew an aerobatic sequence, simulated an engine failure, and then back on the ground somehow seemed to end up directing the cast on how to react to same. These people were organised, had a sensible director, and Keach himself was a gentleman. Their pile of wreckage to represent a crashed aeroplane was accurate even to the colours of my Stampe, and I had to get the Tower to tell incoming aircraft that I hadn‟t crashed, it was just a film job. It was a good, fast wrap. Except maybe too fast, maybe too good. The local Chief Flying Instructor later told me that he‟d overheard the film crew leaving. Someone said to the Great Director: “That went well”. “Yeah”, came the answer. “And it didn‟t cost much, neither…” Blast! Damn! Idiot…! This led me to lay down certain personal rules for film flying: Charge a daily rate of at least thrice what you think you and the aircraft are worth just sitting on the ground. Whatever you‟re charging won‟t be within a zillion miles of what the film unit costs anyway, and Great Directors get a warm and fuzzy feeling if they‟re paying out good money. Also it might – probably won‟t, but might – reduce the hanging about. Charge separately on top of that for every time you fly a stunt. If you don‟t, they‟ll have you flying the same thing time and time again, just because they can. Watch the ground crew – they‟re the ones who are going to kill you without the slightest bad intention. Continuity – it may sound a small thing, but it isn‟t. Remember to wear exactly the same clothes as you wore the day before, unless told otherwise. You can easily screw up an otherwise perfect take by having a different shirt on. Discuss it with the CAA and your insurance company. Otherwise it could cost you a fortune… Film flying. Fun. Hopefully profitable. But testing…

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A DAY IN GREMLIN COUNTRY Fate can stack up against a flying man’s efforts Some days in flying – especially display flying – you are quite simply not going to win. You are going to have a Gremlin Day. You don‟t hear that word much nowadays, but it was common „way back. You had a big magneto-drop on run-up – you had a Gremlin in the left mag. You wanted to fly over a 2,000 foot ridge and the cloudbase was 1,000 feet – the Gremlins had pulled the curtain down. An aircraft radio was an especially snug nest where baby Gremlins cut their teeth before moving on to more serious endeavours. I come from back then. So I believe in Gremlins. And there are days when Gremlins gang up on you… Here and now, sitting in this idling Extra, I have a distinct feeling this might be one of those whens. In fact the Gremlins are already going good, and have been since yesterday. Yesterday we arrived at the German aerodrome of Ballenstedt, near Leipzig, to perform at their two-day air show. We were closely pursued by an extremely bellicose weather front which promptly moved in and rained on Ballenstedt like a celestial car-wash. Black 200-foot cloudbase and lightning from a Frankenstein film. I scrubbed our display. A carbon-fibre Extra 300L is supposed to be lightningproof, but I and even my imperturbable Number Two in our formation aerobatic duo, John Taylor, simultaneously decided that my little company did not pay either of us enough to attempt to prove it in the midst of this firework display. And in any case the vast majority of the crowd had already most sensibly departed before suffering death by drowning. So we tied the aeroplanes firmly to the ground and headed for the bar. That was yesterday. Now, in the rumbling Extra, I am much tempted to do the same today. Today the front is as malevolent as ever, and according to the Actual weather reports from aerodromes is busily savaging most of central Germany. The air show at Ballenstedt has thrown up its hands and cancelled the whole thing. The only items moving on the aerodrome are John and I taxiing out to depart. This has Gremlin Day stamped all over it. But… But we have a second display scheduled for this afternoon – the Sanicole Air Show in Belgium, about 250 miles away. The plan was that we flew our slot here, re-

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fuelled and re-smoked, and left about an hour ago. An hour ago we were under a cumulonimbus bent on going for the car-wash record, so leaving wasn‟t an option. Now is temporarily between cu-nims and departure is technically possible. And the Actuals say that Sanicole is wide open. So conscience says we have to try for it… I look across at John‟s cockpit. He nods. Ready to go. I can press the button and say; “Returning to parking‟, and we can be in the bar in 20 minutes. But beyond the rain is the Sanicole Air Show….. I say: “Firebird Team, ready depart”. “Firebird, clear take-off. Also – good luck”. “Yeah, thanks…” I open the throttle and we snarl up into the grey. The weather is not nice. To the west are the Harz Mountains, which are covered in cloud and reputedly rather solid. We need to cross the Harz Mountains in order to get to Belgium – and they stretch for over 100 miles of our route. I had hoped to find a way through the valleys, but this most obviously ain‟t gonna happen. The valleys are in cloud, never mind the peaks. “Firebird, climbing”. “Rog”. We climb between the monsters. Within three minutes we are passing 8,000 feet and the main cloud layer has become solid below us. Below that are the mountains, and sprouting up from the layer are towering cumuli on all sides and stretching ahead into infinity. We are going to have to weave between them. “Okay with this, Two?” “Go, Boss”. I really hate this kind of flying. Dodging around cu-nims over a solid layer, flyinjg through valleys between the most towering clouds, keeping track by GPS alone, explaining to foreign ATC that you‟re going to route this way whether they like it or not – without adding that you have no f***ing gyros and therefore no f***ing choice in the matter. Tempered with the fact that if the engine stops you‟re going to glide down into the grey until a mountain steps out in front of you… I know, I know – some single-engine pilots go Visual Flight Rules over the top of cloud as a regular thing without giving it a thought. Well, they‟re welcome. Me, I have a dry mouth and sweaty palms as we pick our way through the celestial obstacle course. We are over the weather for more than an hour, until it finally breaks up around the Belgium border. Fifteen minutes later we are letting down to the giant Belgium Air Force base of Kleine Brogel, five miles away from the display site.

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Kleine Brogel says: “Firebird Team, we are glad to see you. We thought you might have trouble with the weather”. Yeah, well, we did. I refrain from saying so. Once on the ground everything is rush because we left Ballenstedt at the last possible minute. Get kit and front-seat cushions out of the aeroplanes, lash down the front harnesses, stow maps and flight guides, hurried display briefing, then back into the cockpits. My nerves are still zinging from the transit, but now is business. Now we are in Display Mode. And the Gremlin part of the day is over. Is it, hell. Eleven minutes later we tip in to display. Dive to VNE (Velocity Never Exceed) running in on the B axis towards the crowd, pull up into a vertical S, down and away for the line-abreast stall turn… I call the formation commands loudly. “Check… roll… pull… rudder NOW…” The next figure is the Percussion Break. Running towards the crowd in lineabreast, we very suddenly turn towards each other and pull like hell. The idea is that the crowd goes “S….” but the cross has happened in an instant before they even get to the “….hit!”. Obviously, we are cheating. If you get the approach dive-angle just right then Two can ease back a couple of fuselage-lengths and still look as if he‟s in line-abreast. On the break he crosses behind me without sawing off my tail. Thus runneth the theory. In practice it actually works fine, but you do need to be slightly sure you‟re both in the same place on the hymn-sheet. So the commands and response must be absolutely clear. I press the button. “Run BACK!” John makes the first of only three transmissions he will make during the display – this one to confirm he‟s backed-off and clear. “Cle….” “Break, break, GO!” Even as I pull 8G round the turn my short-hairs are tingling. There was something odd about that one-word transmission. He didn‟t say “Clear”; he said “Cle….” I thumb the button again. “Pull NOW… Roll NOW” – and then as I whirl round the vertical roll, add; “TWO, RADIO CHECK – ACKNOWLEDGE!” No reply. John has a dead radio. Certainly he‟s lost transmit, but maybe he can still receive. There is no way I can know. We have briefed this possibility. We‟ve flown together for years, we both know the display sequence backwards, so we can carry on non-radio if we have to. I keep

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calling the commands because he might be able to hear. As we head at each other at a closing speed of 400 mph for the rolling crossover I have two seconds to reflect that this is still being a Gremlin Day. We carry on. Some things are sloppy because they require precision commands for timing, but we‟re hanging in there. We come to the Mirror Loop. For this I do an outside loop – a bunt –and John formates in mirror ten feet from my canopy. I normally push about -4 G. As I push this time my helmet starts to slide up past my ears. The chinstrap has un-Velcro‟d itself. I clamp my left hand on top of my head. John – who is of course looking straight up into my cockpit – sees me do this and later tells me he is quite amused for a few seconds. Not many seconds, though, because as we reach the top of the loop I normally throttle back from 25 inches manifold pressure to 19, to give him power to spare on the down-stroke. This time I glance wistfully at the throttle but do not have a spare hand to reach it. As we plunge down the second half of the loop his engine snarl recedes as he drops back. In mid next-manoeuvre I somehow manage to re-fasten the chinstrap. We finish the formation display raggedly, and I go on to the solo element. Also raggedly. We taxi into the Kleine Brogel parking pan. After the props swish to a stop I climb out and sit down on the grass. John joins me. “Boss, I had a radio failure….” “Yeah, I know. We‟ll de-brief it later”. “Well, we ought to fuel up and get moving. We‟re supposed to be back in the UK tonight…” I subside slowly back onto my elbows. And make my first sensible decision of the day. “Two, we ain‟t going nowhere. We‟ll go in the morning. It‟s been a Gremlin Day. We‟ve had enough. We‟re staying”. John looks out over the aircraft line for a long moment. Then he says softly; “Good call, Boss”.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was a good call. Sometimes I wonder how many accidents have happened because someone had a Gremlin Day but pressed on anyway, tense, tired and depleted. Not you of course, but…

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THE WORST AIR SHOW On the creation of bad-tempered pilots

Roll up! Roll up! Welcome to the award of my personal Worst Air Show Trophy in Europe (WASTE). Discover which was the most infuriating event it has ever been my dubious pleasure to fly at. Before revealing the lucky winner I have some words to say about the judging criteria – so no cheating there, no peeking at the answer. See if you can guess. Let me first say that most air shows are models of organisation and planning, topped with calm decisions in the always-tense atmosphere on The Day. So the likes of Biggin Hill, Southend, Waddington and 50 others – sorry guys, you are not in line for the prestigious WASTE escutcheon. But not all are well run. And there are various steps an organiser can take to be in the running for the WASTE award, many of which are concerned with annoying, discomforting, disconcerting, hampering and hassling their participant pilots – with, inevitably, a knock-on effect on the potential safety of same. For guidance then, here are the five top ways to wind up a display pilot… One: Insist that your fliers perform to a higher base height than they normally use. The bigger the difference, the better. This is a much more effective ploy than it may sound. All display pilots, both civil and military, have had to prove their competence to some higher authority, and most especially had to convince said authority they are safe and proper persons to operate aeroplanes at high speed down to 30, 100, 200 feet or whatever their particular base height is. They practise to that, are used to that, and all their top-height and energy checks are geared to that. So you change it. If a pilot‟s authorised clearance is 50 feet – why, you the organiser simply insist on a base height of 500 feet. At a stroke this destroys the pilot‟s normal visual cues, destabilises his entry speeds, disarranges his top-height safety checks, and for the last drop of piquancy adds the stress-factor that in the heat of the moment he might actually forget this is a silly-high day and head down to his normal parameters. This is very easily done. You point downhill, see the right picture forming – and then suddenly remember this is a stupid-height display and pull about a zillion G so as not to bust whatever the silly-high limit was.

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This is most definitely a negative contribution to safety. In fairness it may be imposed upon the display organiser from elsewhere, but it clearly indicates the presence somewhere in the food-chain of a rule-maker with the brains of an earthworm. Two: Conduct the air show briefing as if the fliers seated before you are a bunch of dim-witted five-year-olds bent on wilful self-destruction unless thoroughly intimidated beforehand. Dwell heavily on the super-efficient height-tracking radar which will infallibly record the slightest peccadillo. Cap it by publicly naming any pilots who offended on the previous day, adding dire threats as to their fate should they stick a toe under the line again. This Genghis Khan school of briefing speaks for itself. Nothing more than a minor irritant, really – display pilots as a race being easily bored by cant and rhetoric – but why make your pilots start the day irritated when they don‟t have to be? Three: At each morning briefing hand out copies of the flying programme for the day, complete with highly detailed timings. Do this with solemn formality despite the fact that both you and the participants know perfectly well this pristine schedule will go to complete rat-shit within the first hour. This is a really good one. And of course it has endless potential for expansion. Let me give you an actual example… Our slot time is x. So at x minus one hour the psych-up begins for John and me – the detailed briefing, the display walk-through which so amuses the crowd as we dance around the aeroplanes with added tic-tac impressions. The balling-up of tension, the heightened colours and sounds. At x minus 12 minutes we get into the Extras. Start up. Check in with Firebird Two, then call on Ground frequency. No reply. We know our radios are fine because we‟ve just checked in with each other. And I can hear Ground talking to other people so it isn‟t that they‟ve gone speechless. They‟re just not speaking to the Firebird Team. After the sixth try an official appears at my wingtip, advances into the snarling slipstream, and shouts through the storm window. “Your slot-time has changed. You shut down”. “What‟s our new time?” He shrugs. “I don‟t know”. We shut down the engines and get out. The adrenalin is not so easily shut down. We walk to Control and through gritted teeth enquire as to what new time they may deign to require our services. Are given a new time of y.

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At 12 minutes to y we duly fire up again – and exactly the same thing happens. Slot-time changed. It then happens again, until finally we get airborne at the fourth attempt. By this time we are of course hot, edgy and thoroughly angry. Unsurprisingly we fly a less-than-brilliant display. As an organiser there are even little additional sweetmeats to be drawn from this particular wind-up. When the pilot comes in to complain, you explain loudly that since the airport is running its usual quota of airline traffic at the same time as the air show, the programme will always be subject to change. And when the pilot says the next time this happens he will consider his Team stood-down for the day, you shout at him that he is contracted to display every day, and he will fly when he is damn well told to fly. Period. This sours the relationship nicely, and earns a lot of WASTE points. My further comment – that if you the organiser have that much trouble with traffic volume then you‟re holding the show in the wrong bloody place anyway – seems for some reason to deepen the rift. Four: Fail to keep the display frequency quiet. Every large air show has several frequencies. Ground and Approach, of course – and most importantly, the Display frequency. The latter is only used by aircraft actually on display, and it is vital that this frequency should be quiet. This goes in spades for formation teams, because if an extraneous transmission happens to step on an important formation command it can obviously have a most deleterious effect on the Team‟s day. There is wonderful potential for WASTE points here. The best I have experienced is some air-taxi twerp calling for taxi on the display frequency – and Air Traffic not only replying, but actually reading out a clearance to him! Try inserting your slightly vital: “Break, break, GO!” into that while you‟re rushing at the crowd at 200 knots… Five: Curtail a display for anything other than safety reasons. Not dangerous per se, but a super wind-up. Incredibly, I have actually received a “Firebird, land immediately” call whilst in the process of going down vertically backwards in a tailslide. Resisting the temptation to enquire whether they expected me to reverse onto the runway, I duly broke our team off and landed. Embarrassed and baffled – it is, after all, like being told to report to the headmaster‟s study – I stamped off to Display Control to find out what we‟d done wrong. Turned out we hadn‟t done anything wrong. “We were behind schedule”, they said, “So we needed to shorten your slot”. Oh, that‟s all right, then. Fine. Give me what amounts to an emergency-land command at a sensitive point in mid-manoeuvre just because you‟ve cocked-up your

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timing. I politely enquired whether the man had any grease handy to smear over his marker pen. “Grease? On the marker pen? Why?” “Because it won‟t hurt so much when I insert it into your anatomy”. He merely looked baffled. Huzzah to the winner! A number of shows have garnered points under one of the above headings. A few have kicked in with two or even three. But in my three decades of display flying, only ONE has ever achieved a clean sweep. Only one has managed the whole bloody lot all in one event. So who was it? Some tin-pot show in the sticks organised by the hamburger-stall concession? No. Some ambitious event run at the behest of British cabinet ministers by the crack team who gave you the disastrous Millennium Dome? No. No folks, you‟d be guessing all week. In fact the winner of my Worst Air Show Trophy in Europe is the ILA Berlin Air Show 2002. (In fairness I must stress 2002 because I haven‟t been back since – and have not the slightest intention of so doing – and so don‟t know what if anything might have changed). But that‟s the one – so give them a big hand. All the above wind-ups were there present and correct, and indeed most of the quoted anecdotes come directly from there. ILA might have a decent safety record, but in my humble opinion this will be due very much to the quality of the aviators and in spite of the organisation rather than because of it. As a general hoss-sense rule a tense and pissed-off pilot is less safe than a not-tense and not-pissed-off pilot. And ILA 2002 specialised big-time in tense and pissed-off pilots. Huzzah! Huzzah to the winner!

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THE DREAM AIRSHOW And how the dream has been smashed

I have just been flying at the perfect air show. And to round off a perfect day this curvaceous little blonde cheerleader has just cornered me in the Pilots Tent and suggested we… Well, I don‟t know what she suggested, to be honest. Because at this point, exhibiting quite lamentable timing, I woke up. Ah well – the perfect air show has always been only a dream, anyway. I‟ll tell you about my dream air show. First thing of course is the weather. So at this air show the sky is blue and the temperature just right in warm sunshine. Not all air shows are like this, but this is my dream show. So I get to dream up the weather, okay? In this perfect air show the briefing has been just that – brief. No last-minute changes to the published programme. (Unless of course I happen to want one, which is naturally a different matter). The briefist ends up saying; „You will all fly to your display authorised minima. Have a good day‟. Not like some in real life. I have been told – many times, and sometimes with threats – that we cannot use our Civil Aviation Authority display-authorised aerobatic base height of 30 feet because this show knows better and wishes us to operate to a higher base. Which is particularly infuriating because this show does not know bloody better, and is simply ba***ing up all our top-height and speed cues, thus reducing the safety quotient of the performance. But this is my dream air show. This briefist is sensible. All will fly to their individual legal minima. All else too is perfect. The aircraft parking has been so arranged that the military jets – and above all the big helicopters – have no realistic chance of either barbecuing the crowd or blasting the lighter aircraft into an embarrassing heap somewhere behind the crowd line, having briefly passed inverted over East Cheam en route. It is a two-day show, and I have no other bookings this weekend. Business-wise this should worry me – but in my dream air show I don‟t have to worry about anything. We can just fly our slot and then maybe go watch the cheerleader girls.

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And this perfect air show has no „silly slots‟. Well, actually it has – all air shows have „em, and I mustn‟t call them „silly slots‟ because they are in fact very far indeed from silly – but slots which can fairly easily over-run their stated time-span, and thus leave temporal confusion in their wake. Favourites are parachute teams and civilian airliners. My perfect air show has dealt with this by dialling-in short „ice cream intervals‟ (AKA quick visit to the beer tent) after each such slot in order to take up the slack. So my perfect show runs on time. Er – well, no. Even my dream is not in that much of a dream-world. Mostly the best air shows do run on time. But air shows use machines made and operated by Man in weather made and operated by – I was about to say the Good Lord, but sometimes it seems more like some evil Genie intent on urinating on the best efforts of mere mortals. So even my dream air show can have glitches. But this show is run by a very, very experienced team, who over the years have acquired an almost supernatural ability to make a couple of apparently very minor tweaks – and Lo, the juggernaut is suddenly back on time again. Even I don‟t know how they do that. Oh, and there are many other wonders in my perfect air show. Fuel and smoke-oil arrives bang on time, exactly when you‟ve asked for it. Which is nothing short of miraculous. The pilots‟ tent is on the front of the crowd-line on display centre-point, signifying that the pilots are actually accorded slightly more importance than the corporate hospitality marquees to the left and right. This is a mark of respect and a significant safety factor. Pilots flood out of pilots‟ tents for two reasons. One; to watch a display they expect to be really outstanding. Or two; with a horrible fascination to witness something they think in their heart of hearts is going to be bloody dangerous. A great indicator, is the pilots‟ tent. And what else in my dream show? Well, the content, naturally. Which should ideally be a pleasing confluence of the old, the new, the known, the novel and the spectacular – with the whole, if possible, seasoned by a dash of something from somewhere else in the world, cunningly enticed by the organisers to make their debut in the UK at this show. Ha! Well, my perfect air show certainly doesn‟t lack for content. There are present all the usual suspects – the Red Arrows, the Spitfires and Hurricanes and Mustangs and the rest of the gamut of fighter and bomber warbirds. Jets from Hawk to Hunter to Typhoon; and quite amazing helicopter displays topped off by the almost unbelievable performance of the RAF Chinook, like an elephant dancing rock „n roll. There are the high-performance civilian formation aerobatic slots including the

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Blades, the Rothmans Team, and others. There are solo slots by Neil Williams, Xavier de Lapparent, Ray Hanna – and others. And for especial foreign spice there are the superb Russian Knights team of Sukhoi SU27 Flanker jet fighters, a pair of USAF F111‟s (who actually manage to find the place) and at the other end of the scale a wonderful Swede, Mikael Carlson, flying his original rotary-powered Bleriot X1 and later, with astonishing gusto, the also rotary-powered WWI Tummelisa biplane. You, dear reader, will have spotted that some of the teams and some of the individuals are now sadly no longer functional and could never possibly have performed at the same show. Perfectly correct. But this, remember, is my dream air show. So I can dream what the hell I like. And I can also dream of a certain very special spirit. Nothing you can actually put your finger on. But the pilots‟ tent of this show is an annual meeting of many old mates plus some intriguing and very amiable newcomers who settle into the atmosphere instantaneously. And then there‟s the crowd. No performer at my ideal air show ever ignores the crowd. This particular crowd, a lot of it from East London, has come back year after year after year to watch this air show. They are friends. 100,000 of them over two days. Never ignore the friends. If you walk down the flight-line to your aeroplane, get recognised, and draw the odd spontaneous clap it is to me a more valuable accolade than all the trophies I seem to have accidentally accumulated. So is there any such thing as my dream air show? Well, yes there is – or was. Or something very near it. I have flown at some wonderful shows. Farnborough before it caught some dread Health and Safety disease. Waddington. Finningley. Leuchars. Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Durban, Sanicole, Southport, Southsea, Southend, Paris, Bordeaux, Lisbon – the list goes on. All lovely events. But my real dream air show, along with just about every other display pilot I know… Was the annual Biggin Hill International Air Fair. You‟ll note I said „was‟. I‟ll come to that. Why was Biggin special? On the face of it, no real reason. On the face of it, just another air show. It certainly didn‟t always fulfil the weather side of the dream. Being „Biggin on the Bump‟ – on a hill 500 feet above amsl – Biggin gets low cloud and high winds by first-class delivery. So not weather.

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Fuel? The guys certainly did their best, but no, the fuel delivery was never dream show material. But no fuel ever is or ever can be. Height limitations? Never a problem to me, because all I had to think about was base heights. Big problem however to the jet jockeys, because over the years LATCC (London Air Traffic Control Centre) became ever more grumpy about allowing temporary upward excursions into their precious London Approach Area, which has its base at 2,500 feet. Even the Reds suffered from this mailaise. So Biggin was never theoretically ideal. But it was loved by the pilots and loved by the crowds. When you first flew at Biggin you felt you were on probation to join a very special club. I first flew there more than 30 years ago and since flew 28 displays at Biggin shows over the years. This doesn‟t make me clever – nothing short of a highly experimental frontal lobotomy could do that – but it does give me a right to an opinion from the inside. So, okay. My opinion is – tradition. Biggin Hill became an aerodrome in 1917, launching Bristol Fighters at night to tackle Zeppelins and Gothas attacking London. In WWII it was host to squadrons of Spitfires, Hurricanes and many others who saved our nation. Throughout WWII it is recorded that Biggin-based fighters brought down 1,400 German aircraft, losing 453 of their own aircrew in the process. The first Biggin Hill Air Show was in 1963, run by ex-Squadron Leader Jock Maitland DFC. More than 40 years later Jock was still running Biggin every year, although gradually handing over to Colin Hitchins, who became CEO of the company Jock had started, Air Displays International. In 2008, at the age of 84, Jock was most deservedly awarded the MBE. Biggin ran annually for 47 years – the longest run I believe of any one-location air show in the world. (Farnborough and Paris have been in place longer, but their shows are of course biennial). In 47 years you build up a huge hill of experience, a huge amount of expertise – and a huge, huge amount of both national and international goodwill and camaraderie. Your show becomes an icon in the air display world… And now the Biggin Hill International Air Fair has been executed. The ownership of Biggin Hill aerodrome has seen chameleon-like changes over the years. A few days after the 2010 show, the present Biggin Hill Airport Ltd abruptly terminated their contract with Air Displays International, which contract had been due to run up to 2013. I will not comment on the reasons and justifications put forward by Biggin Hill Airport Ltd – although I most certainly will if they wish to make something of it. They

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have stated that they will run a one-day „Open House Air Day‟ in September 2011 which will „enhance the fellowship of companies working at the airport and provide an opportunity to project to the public‟. Well, whacko. For this they have shot down possibly the best air show in the world at what is one of the most important historical sites in recent British history. I somehow doubt that the many ghosts at Biggin Hill would entirely approve. You might as well tear down St Paul‟s Cathedral and replace it with a bloody great McDonald‟s joint.

This was written in January 2011. More recently, there are talks about reviving the Biggin Hill Air Show in its full former glory. May my dream airshow arise from the ashes…

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THE DISPLAY WE SHOULDN’T HAVE FLOWN The most important word in aviation sometimes being No

Let me tell you about the Ponte de 25 Abril.. It is one of the largest suspension bridges in the world, and it spans the estuary of the River Tagus in Lisbon. It has a total length of 2,278 metres – nearly a mile and a half – is made of a very great deal of steel, and carries a six-lane road and a double railway track. The two pairs of vast stanchions supporting the suspension cables at each end of the bridge tower 640 ft above the water. And the whole is painted a cheerful red. Why am I so interested? Well, I‟m interested because at this moment I am upside-down at 100 feet and heading straight for one of these towers at 170 knots. Beneath me I can hear the snarl of the second Extra‟s engine as Al Wade jockeys into Mirror formation ten feet below me. And right now I am not even concentrating on the bridge but taking halfsideways looks at the bloody Royal Yacht Britannia, which is dictating our positioning. NOW… I call; “Pushing NOW!”, and so push to -4G. This is always a tense, iron-wristed push, partly because the Extra has no natural stability in a negative push-up, but mainly because the G-onset has to be s-m-o-o-t-h so that Al can stay glued to my canopy with no unseemly jerks or wavers. And without giving me a 300hp haircut with a very high-tech propeller. Right now the iron-wristedness is further reinforced by my determination not to push harder than usual so as not to unsettle Al. This determination is most hard to maintain as the nose clubs upwards. Positioning – done. As planned. I have either got the planning right, or… Now – at this point of committal – I snap my head round to look fully forwards. At which stage the bridge really does become most interesting. Normally, once you start to push up into an outside loop or half-Cuban, the world vanishes upwards very quickly. This time, it does not. This time, the windscreen is filled with this huge red stanchion, which for a massive and very static structure appears to have wondrously acquired the power to throw itself at me. For a period which feels like a week I fancy I can see every bolt

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and rivet on this sunlit scarlet tower as it slowly, slowly, scrolls up the canopy while negative G fills my head… In perhaps four seconds it is gone. We have passed up above it, our smoke-trails no doubt now wafting over it. I didn‟t see the rivets. I didn‟t see the bolts. We weren‟t that close. But right now I have no time to think about it. We push round to the down-45 line, and I call; “Two, roll NOW...” The display goes on. And eventually concludes. And after we‟ve landed at the lovely aerodrome of Cascais five flying minutes west of Lisbon, pre-flight checked the aeroplanes, fuelled-up and smoked-up and secured them – why, my hands have even stopped quivering. Well, mostly. We normally de-brief directly after a display as a matter of high importance – but by some unspoken harmony both of us are mute until we are in the hire-car heading for our hotel. Eventually I say; “Interesting display, that”. “Aye. Waren‟t it…” There are moments when Al‟s Yorkshire accent is somehow singularly apt. These moments are succinct. We do not need to be de-briefing this display. Because we will never fly anything like it ever again. And in any case the facts of it are imprinted on our memories for ever. Later, sitting on the balcony of my luxurious hotel room with a glass of rum in my hand, I turn over these facts. Not happily. For I have not been a wise pelican this day. And I know it. When it was first mooted two months ago this trip sounded like the ideal conclusion to a successful display season. A steady amble down Europe to Portugal; a single well-current display for the Royal Yacht Britannia at an easy site in Lisbon Harbour, and then an equally pleasant amble home. All for our happy sponsors the Rover Car Co, who are part of some trade mission aboard the Britannia and wish to put on dog. (“Oh, we‟ve brought our aerobatic team down just to show the company spirit, don‟t y‟know”). That was then… Okay, so the Portuguese authorities were a bit difficult. Unfailingly polite and charming, certainly, but starting from the position of; “You want to do what inside Lisbon International‟s Control Zone?” Eventually a combination of our own office‟s persistence and a spot of discreet diplomatic pressure won the day and we received a most impressive document in immaculate English giving clearance for our display. So far, so good. Until yesterday. The day before the display.

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We had arrived 48 hours early at the aerodrome of Cascais, as planned. So yesterday was a day of rest. Myself, Al, and our commentator Tim, brains in neutral, hopped onto the cute little coastal railway train that commutes between Cascais and Lisbon. Drops of rain started to fall. This cute little railway ends at its cute little terminus more or less under the northern threshold of the vast Ponte de 25 Abril. The wharf we were to display to ran away to the east of us, at right angles to the bridge. There were plenty of directions we could walk, and being culture-lovers of cathedrals etc, we stood under the bridge wondering which street might soonest yield up a friendly bistro wherein we could shelter from what had now become a purposeful drizzle. Then Al said; “That‟s a fine-looking boat, over there. About 250 metres from the bridge”. And Tim, the commentator, said; “That‟s the Britannia”. And I said; “Oh, F***!” With every atom of my being. Suddenly the day off was off. I swung round. “You two go talk yourselves on board. I‟m going to walk down the quay”. I walked down the quay. A distance of nearly a mile. A mile during which the drizzle upped its act to pelting rain. At the end of the quay I stood in the place where we‟d been told the Britannia would be moored. Our display centre-point. It is our pride to fly a very tight and compact two-aircraft display – in fact we fly the whole thing inside a „box‟ of sky 1,000 metres long, with the centre-point, obviously, in the middle of the display-line. From here the bridge is a feature in the sodden murk off to the right – a major feature, yes, but not significant, being well beyond the boundary of our box. Except that this is not going to be our display centre-point. Not going to be the middle of our display box. This is an ugly wasteland of cranes, blank-eyed industrial buildings, and vast heaps of produce waiting to be loaded into rusty workboats alongside. Distinctly not somewhere you moor a Royal Yacht. Someone had blundered. In our office, in Rover‟s office, in the Foreign Office – someone had blundered. I have rarely been so angry. In what was now a fully paid-up downpour I stalked back to the Britannia, squelched up the gangplank, pushed through the honour guard, and demanded in no uncertain terms to speak to the Captain now. I have no particular recollection of this, but Al later assured me that I stood there like a drowned rat, running water onto the

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holy white deck and quivering in every ganglion, and loudly spake to the Captain of the Royal Yacht Britannia with my customary tact and diplomacy. “You‟ve parked this f***ing boat in the wrong f***ing place!” They most politely led me away and poured a couple of pink gins into me while my clothes soaked the chair I was sitting on and dripped onto the red carpet. We borrowed some most detailed harbour charts from Britannia, returned to Cascais, and I then sat in my posh hotel room and re-drew the aerobatic sequence for Lisbon. About 50 times. Not easy. No. Not easy. I‟d started off with our straight, normal display, with centre-point in the middle. Now I had to re-design it for the centre-point being at the bottom corner of an Lshape, bounded by the Britannia, the quay, and the bloody bridge. Okay, we had several display plans in hand for different display sites – but nothing quite like this. The easiest – and much the safest – thing would in fact have been to fly under the bridge, the bottom span being more than 200 ft above the water. But after the hassle of getting clearance from the Portuguese Instituto Nacional de Aviacao Civil in the first place – however charmng they had been – I could just imagine the reaction if I rang them up on the day and said; “Oh, and by the way, we‟re going to fly under the bridge…” Diplomatically not a starter, that. So I re-designed the sequence. Not, not a wise thing to do since the display was next morning, so we had no chance of practising it beforehand. It had to be workable first time… I finished that design at about 3 am, exhausted and surrounded by a sea of crumpled paper. We most carefully briefed, then flew it unpractised. It did, in fact, work. But now, after it, with the rum in my hand, I face the fact that I allowed the odds to mount up against us. I hold up the rum and know I have been a very poor airman this day. It is not a comfortable knowledge. In my defence I can say that in 2,000 displays I have very rarely been an idiot that I know of – maybe two or three times – but this has been one of them. I did it because our sponsors had paid out a great deal of money to get us down to Portugal, and would not have been best-pleased if I‟d folded my arms and said; “No, Sir”. Under that pressure I risked my life and more importantly Number Two‟s life to fly the display. I wasn‟t going to hit the bloody bridge because I was looking at it. But Number Two cannot look at it – he can only look at Lead. And there are times in a formation display when Lead calls; “Break, break, GO!” and Number Two is suddenly

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pulling like hell and at the same time trying to orientate himself. If I‟d got some angles or timings a bit wrong I could have spat Al out straight into the bridge. Which probably would never have noticed the impact apart from a rather muted clang above the traffic-noise. Well, I didn‟t get it wrong. But it was a pressurised decision, and the rum is sour on my tongue. I know I have been a bad pilot this day. Okay, this is all long ago, and maybe esoteric. It is more than possible that in your entire aviation career you will never be required to fly upside-down at the north-east stanchion of the Ponte de 25 Abril at 100 feet. But there is a considerable chance that you may at some time be subjected to parallel pressures. The weather is closing, you need to go, you‟ve promised to get home, there‟s that big business meeting first thing tomorrow… The pressures may look different, but in fact they are exactly the same as when I led our formation into one of the most dangerous displays of our lives. On this pleasant evening, after this display, I already know it will always haunt me. And it always has. I should have said – No. Just that.

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WHY IS THE LEFT HAND RIGHT? Why fly with the ‘wrong’ hand? Long experience has taught me that if a pilot appears to know everything – then suspect that pilot. So I shall begin by saying I do not know the answer to this. In fact, I‟m hoping someone can enlighten me. On the face of it a simple question, but one which has niggled my flying brain for 45 years. Why does the Captain of a side-by-side aircraft sit on the left? At a glance, sitting on the left is perverse to the point of ridiculousness. Almost as if one of our much-revered politicians might have thought it up. Some 80 to 90 per cent of the world‟s population are right-handed. When Samuel Colt invented his epic revolvers he knew a thing or two. He produced nine-tenths of them with chambers breaking left, for a right-handed shooter to reload with his left hand, and one-tenth breaking right for left-handers. Yet in fixed-wing aviation the Captain sits on the left, and therefore some 90 per cent of pilots fly the machine with their „unnatural‟ hand and waste their „best‟ hand on throttle(s) and switches on the central console. Why…? Okay, many side-by-side light aircraft cockpits – particularly actual or intended military trainers with proper sticks rather than yokes – are ambidextrous to the extent of having basic engine controls on the left cockpit wall as well as in the centre, so the left-seater can fly with his right hand. And most – but not all – helicopters are t‟other way round anyway – Captain on the right. But the fact remains. In all normal fixed-wing operations the Skipper sits on the left. The unnatural side, „cos it means he actually controls the aeroplane with his left hand. I have personally been lucky. I‟m right-handed, and more than three-quarters of my flying has been in aerobatic single or tandem seaters which are all also righthanded. (Stick in the right hand, throttle on the left). And most of the other quarter was instructing, where I was sitting on the right and the throttle was on the left anyway. So I‟ve done very little flying with my left hand. And on the odd occasions when, purely out of interest, I‟ve tried aerobating a Pitts or an Extra with my left hand,

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the results have proved woefully lacking in accuracy. Normal operation, no problem. But precision flying? No – I‟m right-handed. The mirror-image of this is, of course, a left-handed pilot in a right-handed cockpit. If the global average holds good this must mean about one in ten, and I‟ve personally known two or three very good aerobatic pilots who were naturally lefties. One of them said he parked the throttle at full grunt and then flew with both hands on the stick. The others said that so many things in life were cack-handed for a leftie that one more didn‟t make a whole lot of difference. I regard these folk with the sort of awe I normally reserve for people who can fluently speak two languages. But none of that removes the basic question. Why does the captain sit on the left so that nine-tenths of pilots fly with the „wrong‟ hand? For Gawd‟s sake, why? The normal explanations look exceeding specious. I‟ll get to them, but first let‟s consider habit. The point about habit is that once it‟s established it‟s just that – established. The Skipper sits on the left. He therefore taxies in and parks with the loading bays – both animate and inanimate – on his left. So most transport aircraft load passengers on the left. At one time, maybe, the Captain could stick his head out of the window and look back and spot some shifty geezer in a black cape embarking with a black ball with BOMB written on it. Not relevant now. Half a century ago – and sometimes even now – the Captain would have a few more instruments and controls on his side than the co-pilot had. Those controls were for the left seat, so that was where the Captain sat. Okay. But in fact these things are results, not causes. Once a tradition is set, why of course it makes absolute sense that everyone worldwide follow it so that standardisation comes into being. So that nobody parks disembarking stairs on the starboard side of the aircraft while passengers are getting off on the port side and plopping like Lemmings onto the concrete. Once the practice is established, it‟s just that – established. Not up for debate. But still – why? Why does the Skipper sit on the left? Why are nine-tenths of the fixed-wing pilots in the world – including you in your Cherokee or Cessna – called upon to fly with their „wrong‟ hand? Well, you might say, it derives from the law that if you‟re following a line feature you keep it on your left so you don‟t bump head-on into some dreamy soul doing the same thing coming the other way with said feature on his right. And you might indeed

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quote several other of the Rules of the Air, all designed to give the left-seater the best vision of what‟s going on. Yeah, well of course you‟re correct. But the same argument still applies – that this is a result, not a cause. No legislator ever woke up one morning and said: “Ah – I know! We‟ll so frame the law as to make all these cocky pilot people sit on the left and fly with their wrong hand! That‟ll take the wind out of their moustaches…” No, no. Captains were sitting on the left some time before there were any Air Laws. Heavy bombers in World War One – the Handley Page 0/400, the Vickers Vimy – seated the Skipper on the left. As did, most interestingly, the German bombers, the Gotha and the Zeppelin Staaken (a huge four and sometimes five engine biplane – nothing to do with the airships). So the question remains. Why? Why the apparent illogic? Which means we must look back further. Some theories are fascinating, but mostly contradictory. One states that it goes back to the days of four-horse coaches, when the coachman sat on the left with the reins in his left hand and the whip stowed in the centre ready for his right hand so that the whip-crack came between the horses. (Hence „the whip hand‟). Well, I dunno… A contrary theory comes from America. There it seems the good „ole farm boys and the stage-coaches normally sat the driver in the middle and he simply swapped hands as required, the right hand being dominant. This (it says here) led to the brake lever being mounted on the left, so that it became natural (it says here) for wagoners passing in opposite directions to stop left-to-left when they wished to chew the fat and swap whiskey bottles and generally pass the time of day. Which led (again, it says here) to America adopting right-side-of-the-road driving… A lot of „it says here‟ about this. Pretty theories, yes, but – well, you tell me. Myself, I prefer to look at the actualities connected with aviation. Except that they are equally contrarian. So these are personal guesses – nothing more. If you know better – I‟d love to hear it. The first is the legend that an oncoming bird will break up and right, and so the Boss sat on the left so he could see it better. This is complete twaddle. I can personally tell you that oncoming birds can break every which way often including exactly the wrong one. And that early aircraft were so slow in roll that there wasn‟t much point in trying to do anything evasive anyway. Bin that legend. But bring on the fact that if you, an instructor, suddenly yell: “Break!” or “Roll!” 90 per cent of students will turn or roll to the left.

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My theory is that because 90 per cent of students are right-handed they find it more natural to push the stick sideways to the left rather than pull it to the right. But I don‟t claim I‟m right. Research confirms that the break-left syndrome is almost universal – but I‟m only guessing why. Other research confirms that most formation pilots prefer flying on the right of Lead – the Number Two position, and so looking left – rather than Number Three on the left of Lead looking right. This again is fact, but nobody seems able to explain it. Me included. So let‟s look back some more. In WWI a lot of Allied aeroplanes were powered by rotary engines, almost all of which were right-hand tractors. (Prop turning to the right when viewed from the cockpit). Because of that those aeroplanes turned better to the left than to the right due to the gyroscopic effect of the whirling engine. (If you can‟t see why that is you have my sympathy. Historians tend to take it as a „given‟, but in fact the physics are really quite complex. For the present just take it from me that it was perfectly true). And so, with about 6,000 Sopwith Camels, Pups, Nieuports, and other rotarypowered aircraft in service, all of which turned better left, the left-hand circuit on joining an airfield became the norm. And that meant that by the time side-by-side cockpits in bombers came along, left-hand circuits were already established. And so Captains sat on the left, where they were better able to see what was going on. So conundrum solved, yes…? Er, well, ye-es. Or sort of yes-ish… The fly in this theory is the Germans. Because they made very little use of rotary engines. Rotary‟s powered the Fokker Eindekker, which was pensioned-off in 1916, and then later the Fokker Dr1 Triplane, which although famous as the Red Baron‟s last mount was in fact only produced in very small numbers. The rest of Germany‟s aerial armada – more than 95 per cent of it – were powered by in-line engines. Which by and large are not fussy about which way you turn the aeroplane… And yet the German bombers also put the Captain in the left-hand seat.

Why? Why, fer chrissake…? I don’t know…

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THE DANGEROUS KIND Some aeroplanes are just better walked away from

Generally speaking I will fly pretty well anything offered to me so long as I can work out how to close the canopy. In the 21st century this is a fairly safe statement. There are aeroplanes good, aeroplanes mediocre, and some whose major threat to life is sheer boredom. Some are wonderfully agile, some even mildly quirky. But there are practically no aeroplanes which you take one look at and suddenly remember an urgent appointment in Botswana even as someone tries to hand you the keys. It was not always thus. Aviation spans just a tad over a centaury, making it by far-and-away the fastestmoving endeavour in the entire history of mankind. And in the course of this there have inevitably been some aircraft, accepted in their own times, which in fact were – shall we say, ill-conceived. Meaning utterly bloody dangerous. Passing over such obviously undesirable types as the Ohka – a specialised Japanese Kamikaze dive-bomber, and therefore entirely unsuited to flying-hoursbuilding – I often wonder which aircraft in history I might have wished to walk away from… FE2b... It is the year of Our Lord 1916. And pilots of the Royal Flying Corps are being issued with a new fighter – the FE2b. „FE‟ means „Farman Expirimental‟, which is the sobriquet applied by the Royal Aircraft Factory to any machine with an engine which pushes rather than pulls. The FE2b has a short stubby two-seat nacelle with the gunner in the front cockpit, the pilot behind him, and the engine at the back with the propeller just behind the wings. This obviously renders a rear fuselage impossible, so the tail feathers are mounted on four flimsy-looking booms braced with a cats-cradle of struts and wires. The more experienced RFC pilots – some as old as 20 and with as much as 200 flying hours – regard the „Fee‟ with suspicion, because in these modern times it is well known that pushers have more wind-resistance than tractors, which have the propeller at the front. However, the Fee does have two undeniable assets. One is that the engine is a 17 litre liquid-cooled straight-six Beardmore reputed to produce an unheard-of 160

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hp. And the other is that the FE positively bristles with machine guns. Well, bristles with two machine guns, anyway. One of which fires forwards. The other, mounted on the top wing, fires backwards, which is fine and dandy except that the gunner, in the front cockpit, has to unbuckle, stand up and turn around in order to operate same. Which process does not promote a great enthusiasm for aerial gunnery careers. However the main point is that the invention of air combat has rapidly shown that the ability to fire forwards is vital – providing, of course, that you don‟t shoot your own propeller off. The Germans have a fairly horrible mechanical interrupter gear designed by Anthony Fokker which allows a machine gun to fire through the propeller. While the Allies, as yet, do not. So if you want to fire forwards the only solution is to put the gun at the front and the engine at the back… So now you have a fighter. For a short while, even a moderately successful fighter. But as aircraft design progresses with war-time urgency the Fee‟s 300 fpm climb and 75 mph cruise become hopelessly outclassed, there being little point in having a front-firing gun if you can never get anything in front of it. The FE is demoted to other roles and in 1917 withdrawn altogether from daylight operations over France. There have been some 2,000 FE‟s produced, a large number of which are now extinct. So what do you do with the rest? Well, you turn them into night-bombers and low-level trench-strafers with armour-plate under the crews‟ bums… Hmmm… If you have a night engine failure over war-torn France – or if you simply run out of petrol trying to find your home airfield – it is going to be awfully black down there, and your re-union with the ground destined to be nasty unless you have a most zealous Guardian Angel. And if you run into even a mild obstruction in an FE2b you stand a good chance of collecting your observer in the face – which isn‟t going to improve him a lot either – shortly followed by 690 lbs of Beardmore engine plus radiator arriving in the small of your back.

The mythical Lt Lecomber would like to walk away. Except that he has to fly what he’s bloody well told to fly… Dornier Do X… The year is 1929. On a lake half in Germany and half in Switzerland, an enormous shape emerges from an enormous factory, said factory being German but in Swiss territory so as to be beyond the reach of the Versailles Treaty.

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The towering shape, now floating placidly on the lake, is the largest flying boat ever built. It is called the Dornier Do X. Visitors are awestruck. The behemoth has a wingspan of 157 feet, (not much removed from some modern marks of the Boeing 737) a design gross-weight of 55 tons, and is powered by no less than 12 – count them, twelve – Siemens Jupiter radial engines housed in six push-pull nacelles arrayed across the top of the thick monoplane wing. The visitors are similarly impressed by the engine room, which considerably resembles that of a none-too-futuristic U-boat. As the Do X embarks on test flying, informed observers note that while, yes, it does fly, it doesn‟t actually seem to fly all that well. Teutonically incensed, Claudius Dornier orders 160 Dornier employees to file on board for the 70th test flight. For reasons certainly known only to themselves, nine stowaways sneak on with them. The test pilot takes a deep breath and rings down for full power… The Do X flies for about 45 minutes with this record passenger load. History is remarkably reticent about how much fuel it had on board – fuel of course meaning weight – but the smart money is on about an hour‟s worth. But fly it does. It leaves the lake and soars up like an oven-ready turkey to its service ceiling… Of 650 feet. Aah… problem. In a more realistic weight configuration the ceiling improves – to a whole 1,400 feet. The Do X is re-engined with more powerful American in-line engines – much to the irritation of the German political hierarchy – and things improve. Now the service ceiling becomes 1,650 feet… Which is deemed enough to despatch the Do X on a world sales tour. The good part of this lunacy is that the Do X is a sort of flying photo-opportunity, and so gains a lot of publicity. The bad part is that it keeps going wrong, has „minor‟ accidents of varying severity, runs out of funds at times, and ends up taking 18 months over what was planned as a brisk world tour. Oh… and nobody wants to buy it. Because quite simply this symbol of Teutonic extravaganza is a crap aeroplane. Despite its 12 engines it is woefully underpowered for its weight. And the very presence of those engines with all their struts and supports interrupts the airflow just exactly over the most important part of the wing. The Do X is in fact a perfect example of how not to do it…. Herr Capitan Lecomber would have walked away from the Do X. Me 163… The year is 1944. The Third Reich may be crumbling, but they have remarkable engineers. They have designed the V1 and V2 missiles – the

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forerunners of future Inter-Continental Ballistic (ICBM) warfare. And now, faced with incoming bomber streams of quite appalling numbers, they have come up with a completely revolutionary fighter. It is called the Messerschmitt 163, or „Komet‟. It is the first rocket-powered fighter in the world. The Komet is invincible. It can power itself up to 40,000 feet in three minutes and wind up to nearly 700 mph in level flight. It therefore whacks up through the bomber-stream, taking a quick pot-shot as it goes, then descends on it at nearly three times their speed. The fighter escorts can do nothing about it. What can go wrong? Well, actually, a number of things, starting with the fact that passing through the bomber-stream at that velocity doesn‟t give you enough opportunity to properly aim your cannon, so most of the time your just simply miss. And having done so, you now have certain problems all your own. Such as that the 163 carries only seven minutes fuel, and thereafter becomes a rather attention-grabbing high-speed glider. This gives you another chance to attack on the way down, but the same problem applies as on the way up… This the elite Luftwaffe pilots assigned to Komets can cope with to a degree. But what really drives them to the Schnapps of an evening is the 163‟s unique propensity for blowing up. The Komet‟s Walter engine is a liquid-fuelled rocket, which means you have fuel (C-stoff) in one tank, oxidiser (T-stoff) in another, and when the two come together in the combustion chamber they instantly combust, producing your thrust. But these fuels are highly corrosive. And highly toxic. And not as you might say stable. Let even a tiny amount of T-stoff and C-stoff come together outside the engine and they also combust… A notable number of Me 163‟s have already blown up during re-fuelling – causing a certain sullenness among the surviving fuel crews – and you the pilot are careful to watch the fuelling process from afar. However when you scramble into the cockpit you are aware that the fuel pipes are notoriously prone to cracking and that you are sitting right between the T-stoff and C-stoff tanks – not that that‟ll make any difference if the thing blows up on take-off, which is not unknown. They will also blow up on landing if the few remaining dregs of fuel are jiggled about too much. Which is particularly disheartening because the Komet takes off on a wheeled dolly which you drop after leaving the ground, and subsequently lands on a skid under the fuselage – a crudity which undeniably tends to promote jiggling. As, of course, does getting the glide approach slightly wrong and whacking the thing through a hedge.

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Apart from these small matters it is true, oddly enough, that the Me 163 is actually quite a nice-handling aeroplane to fly. But in 1944 it is the prospect of detonation which is causing the shake in Oberleutnant Lecomber‟s hand around the Schnapps glass…

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THE BUDDY SYSTEM Simple, profoundly obvious, beneficial genius

On this night, in this town, in this hotel, sleep eludes me. For I have vowed to myself that on the morrow I am going to confront a personal demon. I am going to do a ROTO. And I am discovering that a man who has thus committed himself becomes strangely thoughtful in the limbo period between vow and execution. In fact nobody else knows of the vow, so I still have time to quietly forget it and no person will ever be one whit the wiser. Except, of course, me. I will know. Oh, I have practised as much as ever one can. Slowed to near stalling speed at low level, hit full power, counted… One…Two… and hit it. Near as you can get…. But not the same as doing it for real. And in the morning – which for some reason is now approaching with unseemly haste – I am going to do it for real. I have been through it over and over in my mind. So why do my hands shiver like this? Morning has arrived. Now, my gloved hands are not shivering except to the normal slight vibration of an idling Pitts Special. Air Traffic Control clears me for take-off. I take a very deep breath. Run up to full power on the brakes. Lift the tail as we accelerate, the Pitts and I. Hold it on the runway unnaturally long until a glance shows 100 mph. Snatch it off the ground… And instantly roll upside-down. Sounds simple. Actually, for some obscure reason it is kind of alarming when you do it for the first time. Don‟t think – just hit it. It‟ll work. You know you can do it – just hit it… Runway streaming past over the top wing… I can see rubber marks on the concrete. Jesus, this is low. And there is no horizon because the bloody top wing is in the bloody way… And then the ground sinking away above as I climb out inverted. The straps squeeze their tourniquet-tight pressure on my thighs and shoulders like a cuddle to celebrate survival. I‟ve done it! I‟ve done the ROTO!. The Roll On Take Off. Begone, night devils – I‟ve done it!

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Now please do not think I am actually commending a ROTO as part of any pilot‟s curriculum. British Airways definitely regard it as undesirable, and even the most liberal of flying schools purse their lips. But if you make your living in the display world – why, then, it can be a bit of an earner. One of those earners where you gamble that both your skill and the engine hold up during the crucial bit. There are a handful of such manoeuvres – low speed and near the ground – which are like this. You may pay lip service by having a Master Plan for if the engine coughs – but in your heart of hearts you know it probably ain‟t gonna work. Which means that if anything important ceases functioning in those critical few seconds there is going to be a nasty scraping noise. These few manoeuvres confound display examiners. On the one hand you, the examiner, exist firstly to protect the crowd from any foolhardiness or lack of skill on the part of a display pilot; and secondly to protect the pilot himself from exactly the same thing. Thus, in theory at least, you the examiner spot any flaws in the execution of manoeuvres, mis-management of energy – 101 things. But where you hit a conundrum is when a competent pilot elects, with calculated aforethought, to execute perhaps one manoeuvre which he knows full-well will probably kill him if anything goes wrong. Kill him – but at the same time present no possible danger to the crowd because by no conceivable scenario could any of the wreckage reach them. Do you rule that out? To my mind, if there is no fault in the execution, you do not. That pilot is a consenting adult. There is no danger to anyone else, and frankly I‟d sooner stop people flying singles across the English Channel without wearing a life-jacket. They‟re relying on the engine for a lot longer, and it costs a fortune to search for them. In any event, on this morning three decades ago any such personage as a Display Examiner (or Evaluator in the modern parlance) simply does not exist, the entire concept of formal display ratings being far in the future. I am paid for being a display pilot. If I want to ROTO it is a matter for me and me alone. The era might be primeval, but some things do not change – one of them being that if a pilot intends to use a manoeuvre on live display it behoves him to practise it. Thus in the following weeks I do practise ROTOs quite assiduously. I even fly short sessions of circuits for the express purpose of rolling on each takeoff. This tends to bring people out of the clubhouse, but they get used to it. As do I. I know I am getting better… Ho! Am I?

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I nurse this illusion until one evening in the airfield bar, when the local club Chief Flying Instructor oh-so-casually sits down beside me. “Your rolls on takeoff are getting spectacular, Brian”, he says quietly. “Well, thanks Pete. I‟ve been working on it”. “Yeah, you have. How much did your wingtip miss the ground by on your last one?” “I was aiming for about 10 feet. Was it much higher than that?” “Brian… look… it was about two feet”. I feel the blood draining out of my face. Around me are maybe 30 flyers laughing and chattering – most of whom were probably watching me this afternoon. And who all – all but one – must have assumed I meant to do that… Two feet. All of a sudden my stomach has become mysteriously liquid. Over subsequent years I saw the same syndrome many times. Pilots watching other pilots and wincing – but who was going to take it upon themselves to have a quiet word? A quiet word with the likes of Neil Williams, Bullock, White, Proudfoot, Bilal, Clark, LeRoy – oh, many more. You? Criticise the Gods? But if someone had said something at the right moment, then maybe those Gods would still be around instead of sitting on a cloud trying to figure out how a harp works. Among the living you can take the likes of Lecomber, Lamb, Meeson, Bonhomme, Offer, Curtis, Jones, and ask them if a quiet word has ever saved their lives. The fact is I haven‟t even bothered to ask them – except myself – because I know it will have done. But… But where do you get that word? In Unlimited aerobatics it is commonplace for one pilot at a display to say to another; “Watch me and give me a crit” – but this is because Unlimited pilots have almost always come up through the aerobatic competition route, where critiquing each other is as normal as breathing. Beyond that, who does watch closely? In the main, to the display pilot busy with his own cares and woes, the rest of the show sort of goes on in the background – you glance at it often, but it does not have your full attention. It is supposed to have the full attention of the Flying Control Committee (FCC), but this is not infallible. Firstly the Committee will be extremely lucky if it has expertise in everything from Eurofighter to Eurocopter to Extra, and secondly even it blinks

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sometimes and has to go for a pee occasionally. The FCC system does work – but it is not infallible. So where does the quiet word come from? Enter one Bud Granley, of the US of A. One very experienced display pilot and organiser. Not – he would laugh at the suggestion – a genius in the Einstein sense. But a man who has come up with a stroke of genius – this being defined as an idea so bloody simple, so bloody obvious, that the rest of us smite our brows and cry elegantly; “Why the f*** didn‟t I think of that?” What Bud says is that every display pilot, at every show, should pick another pilot in the same discipline and say; “Let‟s be buddies today. I‟ll watch your display with great attention, and you watch mine. Then we‟ll swap notes and see if either of us is about to do somethin‟ stoopid”. And that‟s it. It is as simple as that. It‟s called the Buddy System. No pilot can watch the whole show thoroughly – but if you have a Buddy you make a point of watching his slot, and he yours. Not formal, not official, most certainly nothing written down – just a de-brief between the two of you, with safety as the priority. Bud has introduced the Buddy System at shows he runs as „Air Boss‟, as a sort of gentle suggestion at the main briefing. No compulsion – okay, maybe along the lines of; “It‟s just a suggestion, but let‟s remember where the suggestion‟s coming from” – but nonetheless just a suggestion. I gather it has caught on well in the US. I hope it will catch on here, and not just in display flying. The Buddy System. A stroke of simple, profoundly obvious, beneficial genius.

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THE SIDEWAYS KNIFE-EDGE TAILSLIDE Not having an engine is… interesting

I am red-faced. I started flying aerobatics in an antediluvian age when the words „aerobatic instruction‟ were largely meaningless. There were maybe two flying schools in the UK where you could get comprehensive aerobatic training – neither of which I could remotely afford. And perhaps a total of 20 or 30 light aerobatic aircraft in the whole country blessed with inverted fuel and oil systems. So I did what most aspirants did back then – taught myself. Holding the immortal Neil Williams‟ book in one hand and the controls of startled and oil-perspiring Tiger Moths and Chipmunks in the other. This method has its pro‟s and rather more con‟s. But that‟s the way it was. But… it does mean that you learn to practise like hell. Especially if you then take the economically suicidal step of becoming a professional display pilot. In my aerobatic career I must have carried out well over 150,000 rolls in aircraft various – up, down, level, you name it. And fer Chrissake after 150,000 rolls you‟d think I‟d have damn well learned something… But not anything that suits this aeroplane, it seems. In this aeroplane, when I roll to the left the thing determinedly skates off to the right as I pass through the inverted. In the tandem seat behind me, one Guy Westgate is kind enough not to chuckle. If he did I would have heard him, for this is an extremely quiet aeroplane – so quiet that we are not even bothering with headsets to mute the thunder of the engine. There being no engine. This being an aerobatic glider called a Fox. Which is a rare and interesting breed of flying machine. Not, I am beginning to feel, a device I am likely to fall entirely in love with. But rare and interesting, yes… Before I introduce you to the aeroplane, I should probably introduce you to the attitudes surrounding it. Most gliders can be looped and spun without dismemberment unless you get it most horribly wrong. Most will not slow-roll in the accepted sense, will certainly not flick-roll, and will likely come asunder should a pilot venture upon an outside loop or a tailslide. They are certainly not stressed to plus 9 G and minus 6 G, as is this Fox.

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No – the vast majority of gliders are designed for soaring. Ultra high aspect-ratio wings eye-wateringly bendy for minimum weight, these gliders are the swans of the sky. Parked in a line of them, the Fox looks like a small street thug who‟s gatecrashed a debutante ball. A serious cross-country glider nowadays will have a wingspan of up to 28 metres. This aerobatic thug has half that, a nearly symmetrical aerofoil section, and no dihedral. It‟s almost as if an Extra 300 snuck into a glider hangar one night, ravished the beauty queen, and this is the punchy progeny, slightly spurned by both parents but in the line-up nonetheless and looking very macho about it By today‟s soaring standards it has a faint hint of concrete parachute. A true soaring glider has a glide-ratio of 50:1 or better – meaning that in 50 feet along in still air it will come down just one foot in altitude. Your aerobatic glider, with half the wingspan, has a glide-ratio similarly halved to about 28:1. So real glider pilots – those who wear funny sun-hats and launch off for six hours with a goat-cheese sandwich and a pee-tube for company – can sometimes be a tad sniffy about aerobatic gliders. Aerobatic gliders are simply not good gliders….. Which is true. Nor, I am discovering, are they at first acquaintance all that particularly wonderful at aerobatics. So not much going for them, then… Well, wait… I am flying one of the best of these bastard children, the Polish-built MDM-1 Fox – the only one in the UK – with glider aerobatic display doyen and eight times British Unlimited Glider Aerobatic Champion Guy Westgate. Earlier I flew with Mike Newman, racing driver, protege of Guy, and now twice-anointed British Champion himself in a fine example of the student arm-wrestling the teacher. Under the aegis of the Swift Aerobatic Team both display the Fox and the even more agile – and even rarer – Swift S1 single-seater, from the same Polish stable. I hope Mike will not cavil if I describe Guy as the glider display pilot in Britain. I‟ve watched Guy over the years and his performance is an attention-grabbing mixture of grace and the unexpected – beginning with rolling on aero-tow and finessing with a final roll right off the deck. So you can produce a silent, utterly gripping flying display with a glider… But for a normal human being, are glider aerobatics worth messing about with? And, if you must mess with them, is it sensible to learn aerobatics in a glider from scratch, or learn in a powered aircraft and then apply said learning to a glider? This is a question much debated, and one I have set out to answer here on this freezing day at Bicester gliding site near Oxford.

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So let us come back to the Fox cockpit. In which I have not exactly excelled myself so far. Before today I have flown a glider exactly once, about 30 years ago (and that by mistake – but that‟s another story), so am glad to find there‟s nothing in here likely to sprain my brain. Stick, rudder, rudimentary elevator spring-trim, aerotow-release toggle, instruments sparse and conventional, and the airbrake lever on the left. Pull this back and the brakes pop up out of the wings like solid fences – an action deliberately designed to be akin to closing the throttle on a powered aircraft. The aero-tow is behind the Swift Aerobatic Team‟s Piper Pawnee – probably the smartest Pawnee in Christendom, having been lovingly restored after its primary career as a crop-duster. As we grind up to 4,000 feet Guy demonstrates one of his party-pieces – a complete roll on tow. Following him on stick and rudder it is immediately obvious that this is far more difficult than it looks, and I decline Guy‟s kind offer to try it myself on the grounds that I‟d probably yank the tail off the tug or the nose off the glider. Well – I wouldn‟t of course because the tow-rope would break first unless I‟d managed to wrap it round the glider‟s wing – not an impossibility – but… So we release from the tow, dive to 110 kts, and I try again to slow roll the Fox. Guy has explained to me that my major sin has been to totally underestimate the aileron drag. The Fox might be a bit stumpy by glider standards, but it still has a 14 m wingspan – about twice what I‟m used to – so aileron drag has a lotta leverage. So much so that in a roll to (say) the left, the thing needs no top rudder to keep the nose up in the first quarter, because the aileron drag does it for you. Then as you pass through inverted the aileron drag abruptly becomes a whole lot worse, because these are Frise ailerons and under negative G the Frise is working exactly the wrong way. So you don‟t need right rudder in the first quarter – which is when I‟d expect to use it – but you do, quite suddenly, need a huge bootful of right rudder going round the inverted bit – just when I‟d expect to be taking it off. So it‟s not just a matter of learning a new technique – it‟s a question of un-learning the habit of a lifetime at the same time. After a few more rolls I‟m getting it somewhere near right – well, if you think charitable thoughts, anyway – and it becomes time to move on. In fact, in glider aerobatics it is always time to move on. For the good reason that you‟re always coming down. So. A loop. Dive to 110 kts, level for a moment – and loop. The elevator is very light and the pitch-rate looks fast to me, but that‟s because of our low speed. My power-hands try to float out the top a bit too much in an instinctive effort to grasp any spare energy which might be lying around the joint, but the Fox is amiable about it, merely shuddering a bit in discreet warning.

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So now a half-Cuban – five-eighths of a loop, stop on the inverted down-45 line, half roll, and pull out. This goes fine, the roll even coming out straight. So to a reverse half-Cuban – pull up to the climbing 45 line, half roll, then pull round the rest of a loop. This also goes fine, again with the roll staying straight. Perhaps I have learned something in spite of myself. In any event I‟ve certainly learned long ago to quit while you‟re ahead rather than cock up a second attempt. We yo-yo back up again, exchanging speed for height, and from 50 kts I push the nose down to 45 degrees and hit a positive flick-roll as the speed passes 65 kts. This actually goes round reasonably well although I‟ve undoubtedly „buried‟ it a bit – kept in too much pro-flick controls after the initial break-out. I try again, with Guy‟s advice ringing in my ears to unload the stick a bit more after the rotation starts. I dutifully unload – and the Fox promptly un-flicks, leaving me rolling it round in a highly untidy slightly-stalled barrel roll. No matter. It always takes time to find that „sweet spot‟ when you‟re flicking a new type. With persistence it will come. And again we must move on, time and height being what they are. We will now essay stall-turns. Quite obviously in a stall turn (hammerhead) you hit the up-vertical and wait until you stop or very nearly stop, then kick on full rudder to pivot round to the downvertical. The reason the rudder is able to create this result at little or no airspeed is that it‟s spang in the middle of the propeller slipstream. You will have put your finger on the snag. Glider. No propeller. No slipstream. Well, obviously you are going to have to kick a bit earlier. And, equally obviously, it would help to have as much rudder sweep available as possible. Say, twice as much as normal might be nice. So the glider aerobatic boys have a little cheat. If they are stall-turning (say) left, they will build in an eensy-teensy bit of left bank during the pull-up – so little that those on the ground hopefully do not notice it – which means they arrive at the vertical with the thing wanting to be ever-so-slightly left wing down. To counteract this you need a tad of right rudder. A tad which naturally increases as the speed decays, until – if you are an accomplished cheat – at the top you appear to be vertical, but actually now have full right rudder on to correct your man-made error. Then you kick left rudder for the turn – and lo, you have twice the rudder sweep and the thing pivots neatly. It says here. In practice I find two small difficulties. Which again redden my face.

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The first is that after decades of aspiring to pull up to the perfect vertical all the time, every time, I have to think hard about deliberately building in an error – and of course am thus still thinking while the moment passes. The second is the sheer brevity of the up-vertical line. I am used to an Extra snarling upwards for anything up to 30 seconds. Having reached the vertical the Fox goes up for maybe 5 seconds. So by the time I‟ve looked out both sides to check the vertical, the device has gone very quiet indeed. So quiet that I can actually hear the slight clunk as I belatedly kick on full left rudder. And invent a new manoeuvre called the sideways knife-edge tailslide… The Fox is actually very forbearing about it, in that it merely shrugs and does not offer to bite in any way. By the third attempt we are not sliding backwards so far – well, maybe, anyway – but I still haven‟t got my head round the cheating bit… And now it will have to be for another time. For now, after about a dozen manoeuvres, we are running out of room in spite of our 4,000 feet start-height. We arrive at the beginning of the downwind leg of the landing circuit at 700 feet – which looks kinda low to me for a flying machine without an engine, but then what do I know? In fact it is perfectly adequate and to spare. The Fox may not be exalted for its soaring qualities, but after Pitts‟es and Extras with a glide ratio of maybe 3:1 it seems to me to sail on forever. The airbrakes are highly effective for adjusting the final approach, and the landing is easy. There‟s a wheel-brake activated by pulling air-brake lever further back, so we even stop in more or less the right place near the launch-point. As we push the Fox into the hangar I find myself debating the original two questions. First, are glider aerobatics worth messing with? Well, yes. Unequivocally yes. All aerobatics are worth messing with – I mean messing-with-intent, not being casual about it – because all aerobatics always improve your pilotage. However if you progress there comes a point when the aerobatics themselves become the driver. By that stage in truth you‟re doing it for personal obsession. In glider aeros – even at Unlimited skill-level – the goalposts are necessarily somewhat lower simply because of aircraft capability. But the same applies. The problems might be of a different hue, but Id love to pursue glider aerobatics. The second question is more difficult – whether to learn aerobatics on powered aircraft and transfer the skills to gliders, or whether to learn in gliders from scratch? Today has definitely taught me that if I was pursuing this I‟d have to start by unlearning – well, perhaps not un-learning but definitely modifying – decades of habit because the glider is so different.

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But towering above that is the cost and complication of glider aerobatics. On the face of it you‟re not burning petrol, the maintenance costs are cheap (covered by a £10 per launch charge to the ten members of the Fox owning group as they use it, which I confess seems to me wildly optimistic); and it‟s true that the glider itself appreciates in value rather than depreciates. BUT – it does in fact burn fuel, because the Pawnee has to tow it up to 4,000 ft. Cost – about £40 a tow. Then the glider fee. Then the airfield fee. Then other costs I‟ve not even asked about. Call it about £50 per launch….. For a flight lasting about 12 minutes. With most of that taken up by the aero-tow. So you get about 4 ½ minutes aerobatics – say 12 manoeuvres – before you need to unravel yourself and look to the landing. Less if you have to aerobat a mile – or, God forbid, two miles – away from the landing site, because you‟ve got to quit with that much more height in hand to get back… Starts to look kinda expensive, at a minimum of £50 for every 4 ½ minutes of aerobatics… No aerobatic training or practise is cheap. But I‟d learn in a powered aeroplane and then convert to gliders. No question.

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WALKING ON WATER Endeavour being always worthwhile

The formation bends towards final approach. Inside me a little small voice is saying querulously; “Are you sure you want to do this….?” Over the years I have become familiar with this little small voice. It has a most regrettable tendency to whine whenever I want to do something new with an aeroplane. This is new and something that for some obscure reason I‟ve been wanting to do for ages. So I answer the little small voice with my usual tact and gentility. “Sod off!” I say. I am flying a North American T6 Harvard – a WWII type it so happens I have never flown before, and one I‟m beginning to suspect has a certain touch of elephant lurking in its genes, said touch having gravitated mainly to its control forces. I am flying it as Number Two, which means in right echelon on Lead in this four-ship ensemble called the Flying Lions. And am shamefacedly aware that the combination of unfamiliarity on the aircraft plus a five-year crustation of rust on my formation skills is producing a certain shuffling and fiddling woefully lacking in formation elegance. “Energise… standby for gear… gear down GO”, says Lead. Four undercarriages unfold. “Energise… standby for flap... 20 flap GO”. Four sets of split flaps travel down to half flap. We straighten onto short finals in finger-four formation. But not towards a runway. Towards a huge water reservoir called the Klipdrift Dam, in the middle of nowhere in the South African high-veldt. Because we are not going to land. We are going to water-ski. In Harvards. On wheels. In formation. Right across this huge reservoir. I tell myself again this is a really good idea. There are times when myself does not wholly believe myself, and this could be one of them. Except that I am

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concentrating too hard on my formation backing and filling for any such foible as meditation. You wanted to do this, Brian, so now bloody do it… The Lead Harvard touches down, leaving twin speedboat plumes of water behind the wheels. A second later Number Three touches down, and a second after that I touch down. The Harvard rumbles gently as if landing on mild cobbles, and seems to want to pitch a tad nose-down. I snatch back half-a-tad and we bounce slightly off the water. Settle again, rumble again, and I remember to press a touch forward as I‟ve been briefed. And we‟re water-skiing! On wheels! Aquaplaning, if you like. But not aquaplaning on a five mm skin of water on a hard runway – we‟re aquaplaning on Gawd knows how many fathoms of water in this huge lake. Most certainly more than enough fathoms to swallow four Harvards without even going GLOOP should the Laws of Physics suddenly decide to poke off to the pub. Fortunately, the Laws of Physics do not poke off to the pub. With the Pratt & Whitney radials growling just enough to maintain 90 knots we‟re four sort of superfast hydrofoils. Four Harvards water-skiing on plain, simple wheels! In formation! After 30 years of display flying it takes a lot to thrill me in an aeroplane. This is a lot. As we rumble across the lake, shuddering genteelly through the slight windkicked ripples on the water, I want to shout “Wheeee….!” Although I‟m concentrating on Lead and can‟t look around I am vastly conscious of the lake racing past and the water-feel rumble and a whole new experience. So… well… yeah – Wheeee….! “Lifting off… GO”. We power up and lift off. Just like taking off from a runway. No drama whatsoever. “Energise… standby for gear… gear up GO”. Four undercarriages fold back up. “Energise. standby for flaps.… flaps up GO”. Four sets of flaps retract. I tuck in closer to Lead and say to Arnie Meneghelli, the normal Number Two of the team – and in fact the owner thereof – who has been sitting in the front seat and stoically enduring my clumsy assault on his aeroplane; “You have control”. Just so I can sit back and rack up the experience. Some experiences – a very few, but some – are like that.

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So just what kind of idiot am I? Water-skiing a WWII trainer weighing 5,000 lb which was most specifically designed to operate off land, land, and more land. And water-skiing it in formation… Well, wait up. When the South African Flying Lions team first published pictures of their formation water-skiing three years ago, they brought a deluge of criticism down upon their unsuspecting heads from all over the world. Reactions varied from; “How were these pictures faked?” to “These guys are complete nuts!” A well-respected officer of our own UK Civil Aviation Authority actually wrote that the South African CAA „must be one slate short of a roof‟ for allowing the exercise. At which point I thought B*ll*cks! When Orville Wright first left the ground on the brothers‟ precarious flying machine – some people criticised. When two guys first flew these new-fangled aeroplane things in rough formation – someone criticised. When the first four-ship, seven-ship, nine-ship started to do formation aerobatics – some folk criticised. In aerobatics, when the flick-roll, the lomcovak and other gyroscopic manoeuvres were first invented – some people said they were surely harbingers of doom. When the Boeing 747 first flew… when Concorde first flew… there were always people who criticised. Seems that in the hothouse of aviation you can‟t widdle on a tailwheel without somebody criticising… And now, when four consenting adults elected to do something just a little bit adventurous and innovative – well, what do you know? People criticised. Surprise. The bulk were self-styled „knowledgeable onlookers‟ – journalists and the like. What they all had in common was the fact that they didn‟t have the faintest idea what they were bloody well talking about. I thought B*ll*cks again – and said so, defending the Lions in various publications worldwide. I still feel that way. The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) came in for some stick, which was wholly unreasonable. Being a massive and vigorous country, South Africa is home to a large number of aircraft of a comparatively huge range of types. Get over-officious on the more esoteric of these types – rare and odd-looking Antanovs, for example – and you remove aeroplanes which are peculiarly suited to the African scene. And so the SACAA has a reputation for being firm but reasonable – and hence a number of historic aircraft have taken refuge there from

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countries who regard protecting their regulatory asses as being more precious than preserving their own aviation heritage. Third-world countries, of course… And sadly prominent among these third-world countries is… Great Britain. The last airworthy RAF Lightnings and Buccaneers now fly in South Africa. With a 100 per cent safety record. I merely mention this. “Why didn‟t you stop those crazy Lions?” said the critics to the SACAA.. Well, that actually boils down to two questions. Why should they – and how could they? The African Lions demonstrated a well-practised operation which by no possible leap of the imagination could be the slightest danger to any spectator unless some onlooker had found a way of viewing an airshow from 20 feet underwater. Danger to the pilots? Well, there is that – but these were highly skilled and experienced consenting adults, and if you want to see more intrinsically dangerous manoeuvres, just take yourself to any airshow, any time, anywhere in the world. Illegal? What‟s illegal about it? Low flying rules are a combination of minimum height restrictions in some circumstances and miss-distances in others. In the middle of the Klipdrift Dam, I can testify, there is no question of a minimum height restriction. So that leaves us with minimum miss-distance – in the UK, 500 feet from any person, vehicle or structure, either vertically, horizontally, or any combination thereof. It is much the same in South Africa. And this too does not apply in the middle of the Klipdrift Dam, unless you are inclined to count fish as structures. So the Flying Lions could easily have stuck two fingers up and just done it. However, one Scully Levin, legendary figure in the very active South African display flying scene, does not need to resort to two fingers. He talked to the SACAA . And one of the things he said, quite rightly, was that water-skiing on wheels is nothing new. No-one really knows, but it probably began with Canadian bush pilots wishing to get the wheels or skis on their Beavers replaced by floats as the spring melt removed the ice from ten thousand lakes which were their landing grounds and therefore daily bread. If their float provider didn‟t have a land runway – which many didn‟t – they‟d simply ski up the lake, chop the power at (hopefully) the right moment, and then (hopefully) sink gracefully the last six inches onto the bottom of the slipway, from whence they would taxi in with a nonchalant grin. One has to imagine that this didn‟t always entirely work out, with sometimes embarrassing results. However the idea caught on and after a while a few pilots all over the world were doing it – some for bravado, some for show complete with

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wing-walkers, and some, in dusty climes, simply to wash the undercarriage in a river on the way home from a hard day‟s bush flying. As we four Harvards drum our way at low level over the dun-coloured high-veldt back to Rand Airport near Johannesburg, I find myself sliding back for a moment into memory. Because I‟ve actually done this before. Water-skiing on wheels. Or have I…? Cut back more than 35 years. I am flying a Piper Pawnee crop-duster. Only I‟m not dusting a crop. I am spraying an experimental chemical oil-dispersant way out in the English Channel onto a real live oil spill. This oil emanates from a tanker called the Amoco Cadiz which recently tried conclusions with some rocks near the French coast following a steering failure. The rocks won, and the resultant oil-spill has already contaminated many beaches most nastily while politicians and agencies various squabble over the solution. But in the meantime the sorry saga has provided us, the UK Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries contracted company for oil-slick aerial dispersant experimentation, with a God-sent opportunity to test... well, aerial dispersants. We are not expected to clear the slick – it‟s far too late for that, and in any case a slick now some 250 km long would require 200 Pawnee crop-sprayers rather than two – but we can try different dispersant chemicals and observe the results. So we fly as a two-ship – one spraying, the other sitting back higher and to one side to see what happens. It is my turn to get down on my knees and spray. I settle five feet over the calm oily water – a height never easy to judge when there‟s no shore-line or ship you can see out of the corner of your eye for orientation – and move the spray lever forwards. I cannot see the results of course, but Nigel is watching from up on the right… After half a minute Nigel‟s voice is suddenly in my ears. He says very calmly but very firmly; “Brian – pull up!” I so pull up, and off the spray. “Why?” I say. “You left wheel-tracks on the water for the last 300 yards”. My face feels suddenly hot. Wheel-tracks! And I never felt a thing. If I‟d been on my own over that oil-slicked sea… Suddenly, the English Channel is a most hostile place. So – did I accidentally water-ski back then? I do not know.

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Judging from today‟s experience I‟d have thought I‟d have felt water contact – but on that very calm, oil-slicked water? I don‟t know. Even now, 35 years later, I would like to ask Nigel again about those wheel tracks – but this is impossible because Nigel, who tended to live life very much to the full, departed this world two decades ago with a skilful of booze and a misjudged low level loop. So… I will never know. But now, skimming over the sun-parched, dun-coloured plains of the African high-veldt, I have finally water-skied for real, deliberately and with malice aforethought. Nigel would have approved. I may have given the impression that water-skiing on wheels is easy. Indeed, at worst I suppose I could be accused of encouraging the very gullible to go plonk their Cherokees onto the nearest lake. So before Britain‟s lakes get choked-up with sunken Cherokees, let me unencourage. Let me say most loudly that I am not, repeat NOT, suggesting any person do any such thing. The unadorned fact is that water-skiing a wheeled aeroplane is quite obviously dangerous, and quite obviously a knack. It‟s a tad like looping an aeroplane starting and finishing three feet off the deck. It‟s perfectly possible – but (a) you must have the right aeroplane, (b) you must have appropriate training and experience, (c) you must have considerable handling skill on type, and (d) you must be well-acquainted with the potential hazards. Let‟s take (a)….. The right aeroplane for water-skiing really boils down to the right wheels. You want something with big puffy low-aspect-ratio tyres so that the weight per square inch of footprint is relatively low. Modern GA aircraft, where the designer is generally trying to make the wheels as small as he can to reduce drag, do not tend to have big puffy tyres. The last thing in the world I would want to try water-skiing is a Cherokee – or most especially a Pitts Special or an Extra. So okay – (b). Training. I suppose you could amble up to your local Chief Instructor and ask for an hour of circuits on the local river and see how far that gets you. He‟ll most likely give you a nice cup of tea and take your temperature. No – there ain‟t no training. Period. Item (c) – handling skill. Well, anything I can think of with the right kind of wheels is going to be a taildragger. The Lions water-ski at 90 kts, which is about 1.5 times stall-speed, which would seem to argue that you need the ability beforehand to roll

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your wheels tail-up onto a hard runway at 1.5 times stall speed without bouncing and then keep them there using power to maintain a constant speed. Is one-and-a-half times stall speed a good guide for any other type? Don‟t know. And how slow can you water-ski? Don‟t know again. And since the only way of finding out is to slow down until the wheels suddenly dig in, flip you ass over kettle, and send you straight to the bottom, I for one have no particular aspirations towards finding out. So I suppose Rule One is; DON‟T SLOW DOWN. Which brings us to (d) – hazards. Apart from floating hazards – the almostsubmerged log or alligator – the main hazard is the water-state. Over the sea – despite my own questionable experience over an oil-calmed slick – forget it, particularly near inshore. Chances are you‟re going to bounce off the first two waves and plough straight into the third. No, what you want is a placid lake or river. But not too placid. Only someone who has tried it can appreciate the incredible difficulty of finejudging height over glassy-calm water. The Lions have before now resorted to having a speedboat zap around their touchdown zone a few times to create just enough ripples to make the world snap visually into place. But then you don‟t want it too ripply, either. Wind can fetch up a lop on the normally calmest of waters which looks pretty harmless from upstairs – but when you settle on it at 90 kts carries out an instant structural test on the undercarriage and threatens to shake the teeth out of your head. So no – don‟t try this at home… All aerobatic teams hate it when some crass writer singles out one member. But I hope the Flying Lions will forgive me when I say I have to write about Scully Levin, South Africa‟s tribal chief of display flying. I first met Scully a quarter-century ago when I flew in a World Masters Aerobatic Competition in South Africa. After the competition there was a public air show. In that show Scully flew the corrugated Junkers JU52 restored by his employers, South African Airways (SAA). He hopped straight out of that to fly an attentiongrabbing crazy flying act in a Piper Cub. Then he led a three-ship formation aerobatic team of Pitts Specials. Then he flew a Harvard. Then he did the best truck-top landing act I have ever witnessed, again flying the Piper Cub. Like a oneman band beating a drum, playing an accordion, and blowing a trumpet all at the same time, Scully seemed to be about 30% of the air show.

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In later life, now as a very senior Captain of SAA, he also display-flew Boeing 747‟s and Airbus A340‟s – sometimes with two A340‟s in formation so close it would not disgrace a pair of fighters. He has also displayed Spitfires, Yaks, Zlins, Extras – you name it. The short summary is that if it‟s not the fuel bowser or some machine actually nailed to the floor in the back of a hangar with flat tyres, Scully Levin will display-fly it. Or his family will. Scully is a devoted family man and he and the long-suffering Mrs Levin have a son, two daughters, and six grandchildren – and it has to be said there is a certain aura of dynasty about this family. Son Ellis is an A340 Captain with SAA, most effectively display-flies the A340, and also flies as Number Three (traditionally the most difficult position) in the Flying Lions. And as Number three in Scully‟s Gabriel-sponsored three-ship Pitts Team. And flying a solo Pitts display. Daughter Sally (Mrs Sally Bates) flies 737‟s with SAA and also normally flies in the Lions formation, give or take a recent wee break to produce the most recent grandchild . Normally, as a UK Display Evaluator (AKA Examiner) – a role which requires a bit of a po-face from time to time just to prove you‟re paying attention – I would regard Scully‟s lifetime habit of flying everything from a Pitts to a clockwork Pipistrelle bat in one afternoon as kinda pushing it. But Scully is different. He is one of those guys with a face as craggy as Mount Rushmore, an almost permanent gentle grin, and eyes which seem to look straight through into your brain. The day after water skiing I went with the Lions to an air show at a place called Potchefstroom, where Scully was booked for his usual Pantheon of acts – from the Harvards to the truck-top landing to leading his Pitts team, plus commentating on Ellis visiting the show with an SAA Airbus A340. At no time did his pulse seem to raise itself above a gentle tick-over – in marked contrast to my own lifetime tendency to wind myself up like a clock-spring before each and every performance. If this is what 23,000 flying hours does for you – well, all I can say is that it doesn‟t do it for most 23,000 hour pilots. So how did the water-skiing come about? Well, Scully and a pal went off on a camping trip a long time ago with a couple of Piper Cubs. Talk over the evening braai (South African for barbeque) ranged over the subject of water-skiing, which they had heard of. Later, lying under the wing of his Cub, Scully thought about it. The airstrip was alongside a river. And in the dawn he arose, took a very deep breath – and went and tried it. It worked. In the ensuing years he water-skied for various films – and then son Ellis suggested they water-ski the Lions formation team as an act. Which they duly did…

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However. The $64,000 question. Is it of any actual use? Er, well, probably not, as it stands. The number of air shows in South Africa which are alongside calm water are exactly zero, airshow organisers having this quaint idea that it‟s sort of preferable to have a hard runway on the premises rather than a river. The same goes for most of the air shows in the world, and in any case Harvards of all aeroplanes are not suited to being rapidly and repeatedly dismantled, crated up, and transported around the globe. Other types, however, are. Super Decathlons, for example, would crate up real easy, and could form a water-skiing-cum-formation-aerobatic act. And then there‟s a certain air-race series which needs back-up acts and takes place around the world mostly over rivers and estuaries which are pretty calm….. Just a thought. Just merely a thought… This muse is not an air test of the Harvard. It seems there were something like 15,000 Harvards built in the usual bewildering military jungle of different Marks, specifications, etc. The South African Air Force had a great many of them, which they started selling off into the civilian market in the year of our Lord 2000. Thus South Africa is reasonably awash with Harvards. Arnie Meneghelli bought five of them, and thus is the patron – and Number Two pilot – of the Flying Lions. What do I think of the Harvard on very brief acquaintance? Well, not a very great deal, to be honest. Yes, it‟s a big growly beast with its 550 hp P & W Wasp. It looks, sounds and smells like a real warbird, which is why it‟s so popular. It is a real warbird in that it trained untold numbers of pilots to fly Spitfires, Mustangs, Thunderbolts – you name it. It had the priceless trainer attribute of being slightly more difficult to land than the fighters which were to follow, and the other priceless attribute of being as tough as old boots. Handling-wise? Well, it‟s a tad better than a Tiger Moth, which is damning by faint praise. A Chipmunk will walk all over it, and a Bucker Jungmann piddle on it from a great height if it notices it at all. The left side of the cockpit sprouts levers various. The command “Energise” means you hit the heel of your hand on a lever which supplies enough hydraulic pressure for one action – say, putting the gear down or selecting flaps – hence the complex command calls of the Lions. Like the Harvard? Difficult. Respect it as a trainer? Yeah, well, sort of…

Since this was written, in 2009, the very public, very fatal crash of the last airworthy English Electric Lightning happened at a South African airshow – a

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horrific combination of an in-flight fire plus an ejector-seat failure. The operating company, Thunder City, has now ceased trading. One swallow does not a summer make, and this does not change my good opinion of the South African Civil Aviation Authority.

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BEYOND THE LAW OF AVERAGES In salute to Lady Luck In a few short hours it will be my 60th birthday. I am unsure how to celebrate this dubious anniversary for the simple reason that I never seriously expected to reach it. Oh, I‟ve been a careful aviator – well, most of the time, anyway – but if a man would earn his living for half a life-span by flying aerobatics at low level, then he would be foolish indeed not to recognise that there is such a thing as the law of averages. Over the years this law has caught up with many good friends in the same line of work – friends who were also careful aviators until the day came when being careful was not enough. As the toll mounted it seemed somehow to be tempting fate to even think about reaching sixty. By all the odds there must be that one mistake out there lying in wait… Living with this law of averages can lead a man to brood. One becomes ultracareful. Pre-flight inspections turn into young Certificate of Airworthiness checks. Preflight briefings become a minute dissection of every possible permutation of every ascension. One even seeks to deposit a degree of virtue in the bank by ostentatiously refusing to have anything to do with such high-risk endeavours as night or instrument flying on one engine – something along the lines of; “See, Lord, how very very careful I am. So surely you can smile on a few rolls on take-off? And the odd pull-out at 30 feet. Say, about 100,000 of them…” In mellow mood I can think of times when this mumbo-jumbo has indeed played a part in saving my ass from possible termination. But I can also remember times when my undeserving neck was equally certainly saved by – luck. With hours to go before this unexpected birthday, perhaps it is time to doff my flying helmet to Lady Luck. The Lady sat at my shoulder many years ago as I took a laden Piper Cherokee into the island of St Barths. St Barths, back then, had two claims to fame. Quite possibly it was the most unspoilt island in the West Indies – and quite certainly it also had the nastiest „airport‟ not only in the Indies but anywhere else this side of the Urals. The approach was through the V of a mountain col, in the bottom of which someone had thoughtfully placed a religious monument with a cross on top. You flew through the col as low and

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slow as you dared in the invariable turbulence, lifted your left wing momentarily over the cross – and then chopped all power and shoved the nose down hard. This filled your windscreen with the vision of a very short runway sloping downhill and ending in the sea. You dived at the threshold, plonked the aeroplane down, and immediately hit the brakes and whipped up the flaps to get as much weight onto the wheels as possible. If you did all that you knew it would stop before the end even though it didn‟t look like it… On this day I did that. And after five seconds of braking the right brake failed entirely, the disc having chosen this rather inappropriate moment to shear clean off its hub. The instant choice was try to stop – which you wouldn‟t, or at least not with a whole aeroplane left at the end of it – or open up and take off again. Half a second to decide. I opened up. Wrong move. The end of the runway was appallingly close. Lapping the concrete the Caribbean Sea looked calm but exceedingly wet – and, I seemed to recall, exceedingly deep even yards offshore due to the steep volcanic slopes of St Barths‟ creation. Feet from the runway-end I snatched down nearly full flap. The Cherokee, insulted and astonished, sagged into the air, stall-warn blazing. We were airborne but far too slow and in high drag. We mushed down evilly until the wings compressed the airflow in ground-effect – or more accurately water-effect. I held it there at about two feet with sweat running into my eyes while I prayed for speed. We were half a mile out over the bay, still at two feet, before I‟d quiveringly milked up enough flap to encourage the thing to finally commence some resemblance of acceleration. We should have died there. What I should have done was stayed with the braking, ground-looped, probably wiped the landing gear off, and slid to a stop. What I did in that split second of opening the throttle was throw the dice and entrust the outcome to Lady Luck. Who smiled… She smiled again in South East Asia. We had re-assembled the Pitts Specials with their ROTHMANS logos out of their transit-racks, and I was air-testing the craft allotted to me. The sky was hot and steamy, redolent even at 3,000 feet with the exotic sandalwood scent of Malaysia. Our climb, the Pitts and I, has been languid, as is to be expected when the temperature and humidity produces a density-altitude at sea level something like 3,000 feet in Standard Atmosphere. But otherwise all is normal. I check rigging, dive

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to Velocity Never Exceed plus an unmentioned excess, execute stalls and spins, then turn to aerobatics. We drift down as I seek to discover which manoeuvres can be coaxed into holding their height in this limpid steam-bath. I go for a lomcovak. Pull hard to the vertical. Half-roll right – then full left-forward stick and full right rudder. The Pitts snaps into the outside vertical flick, processes roughly through the inverted, and tumbles nose-over-tail. As the cowling clubs down into the scenery my hands and feet move instinctively to kill the gyration – not so much a by-rote procedure as a matter of slamming whatever is necessary to hit the accurate downvertical, at which point the Pitts has no angle of attack on the wings and therefore no alternative but to obey the normal laws of aerodynamics… Except that these laws now appear to have gone on strike. For the controls do – absolutely nothing. I can only stare aghast while the nose swings straight through the down-vertical and carries on up, up into the sky despite my having the stick hard back. After a moment of total confusion the green horizon appears almost lazily above the left wing-tip and rolls over the top of the centresection. Then suddenly the windscreen is full of wildly rotating jungle. We‟re spinning… Yes, idiot – but which way? Left? Right? Erect? Inverted? The answer is quite simply that I don‟t know. After a completely disorientated spinentry these details can be very much more difficult to work out than you might think. There are ways of establishing the truths, but these ways take several, perhaps many, seconds. And you don‟t have many seconds, idiot. You weren‟t that high in the first place. In less than five seconds you‟re going slam into that whirling green disc… The truth of that day is that I got the spin stopped and pulled out with the trees about 100 feet below me. The further truth is that back then, and even now, I do not have the slightest idea what I actually did to achieve this result. Whatever it was must have been right – but it was utter chance. Subsequent cautious – and much higher – experimentation revealed that about one in five lomcovaks behaved like that in this place. Just why, we didn‟t know. We could only theorise that it must be to do with the density-altitude – perhaps a tumbling Pitts was somehow cavitating the muggy air so that the controls had nothing to bite on…? We finally settled the matter by black-balling lomcovaks for the duration of the Malaysian display tour – a decision for which I was secretly profoundly grateful. I knew then and still know now that the outcome of that first foray was – pure luck.

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The Lady smiled again in the Arabian Gulf. I topped a stall-turn at 950 feet, half-rolled on the down-vertical, then went to pull out – only to make the fascinating discovery that the stick had jammed. I pushed instead – the second time in my career that I wildly overstressed a Pitts under negative G – and most narrowly missed becoming a new decoration on the Dubai waterfront. Climbed out inverted, rolled erect at a respectable height, and there established that I had just enough elevator control for level flight at fairly high speed. And thereby proceeded to a landing which used up almost the entire length of Dubai International‟s vast runway – possibly the longest landing-roll in the history of the Pitts Special. I still have the bent Dirham coin which had dropped neatly down the control torque-tube and blocked the backward movement of the stick. I was lucky. Lucky again at a military air show when the engine of my Extra coughed once in mid-performance. Once being enough for the cringing man within me, I immediately quit and landed. Turned off the runway with the engine now rumbling perfectly. Taxied back half a mile to my parking-slot thinking bitter thoughts about maybe getting senile and imagining things like a tiny cough. Parked, shut down, climbed out, walked round the wing…. And found fuel pouring out of the engine cowling like an elephant urinating on a flat rock. Dashed back to the cockpit, turned the fuel off, and joined the fire-crew and other interested onlookers watching from beyond the fall-out zone of the possible conflagration. After half an hour the leaked fuel had evaporated. Brief investigation – hell, one glance up into the cowling – revealed that the commonest fuel gascolator in use in general aviation had, presumably under the influence of repeated G, finally succumbed to a fundamental design flaw and partially dismantled itself. (Shortly thereafter we pushed through a Minor Modification to correct the stupid device so that it could never, ever, do the same thing again). But the real stupid thing that day was me. I did quite rightly land an aeroplane which coughed on me – but after so landing, instead of immediately swinging into a taxiway and stopping to investigate, I did then proceed to taxi half a mile, totally oblivious to the fact that petrol was peeing out at the rate of about three litres a minute six inches to one side of the blattering exhaust. At any moment I could have turned cross-wind and the vapour would have blown into the invisible flame and we

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would have exploded like a bomb. As it happened I did not so turn, and so we did not blow up. Luck, of course. Pure luck. Being the saviour of a fool. The hands of the clock have just crossed at midnight. I am now, against the law of averages, officially 60. They say you make your own luck, and for a pilot this is almost true. Forethought, planning, and a deep suspicion of all things mechanical add up to an aviator who does not rely on good luck. And so has the best chance of avoiding bad luck. 99-point-9 percent of the time. For the odd 0.01 percent luck is just – luck. So come, Lady Luck, join me on my birthday. I believe I owe you a drink.

The End

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