Plane nuts

[Chris558]

Perhaps he was flying a Navy carrier type with folding wings!

[Garry Russell]

Nice one Chris

Garry

[Nigel H-J]

And downdraughts Nigel

You are absolutely right Prop Jockey, don't know why on earth I hadn't added that, though it could be me age!! :roll:

Garry, that incident involving the B.O.A.C. 707 you mentioned had an eerie start to that flight as it had to pass the remains of an aircraft that had crashed onto the runway the night before so during taxi prior to t/o all the pax and crew would have seen it and barely half an hour later.......... :-(

Nigel.

[Garry Russell]

Indeed Nigel

There is a famous grainy pic of G-APFE taxying past the wreckage on the way to the runway.

Minuets leter the same photographer caught the aircraft breaking up.

Garry

[Prop Jockey]

I only remember because I learnt the hard way Nigel :-( I've never experienced turbulance like it - there were 6 aircraft flying to Matjiesfontein - I was in a 172 which struggled to 9000ft in the hot + high conditions anyway, so it had a snowballs chance in hell of staying there when the rock n roll started. One of the guys took a more direct route in a Piper Arrow, and 'arrived' in Matjiesfontein having had the passenger seat collapse, the door come open, and his Skymap GPS ripped out of its yoke mount and smashed by the turbulance.

I was the last to land and it was captured for posterity by one of the other guys. It all looks so tranquil in this shot - the only giveaway is the lack of flap. An hour later in the bar with a cold Windhoek :drinkers: I still had a slight tremble in the hands. Two hours later normal service had been resumed :partyman: - but what's the phrase ? ................ ILAFFT - I learnt about flying from that

Cheers

Rich

[Techy111]

That looks pretty awesome country to fly over !! But very unforgiving as can be read from your post...

Thanks for sharing mate...

Techy

[Nigel H-J]

Rich, I think from the account you wrote I would next time opt for a 'potty', it would undoubtedly save a change of underwear!!

The only experience of bad turbulance that I have ever encountered was to fly a glider under a cumulonimbus, the turbulance was nothing that I had ever experienced ,very nearly thrown on my back as the gliders' wings hit the point of ascending and descending wind. The one thing that was really scary was the variable sound of the wind blasting the sides of the cockpit.

Nigel.

[Prop Jockey]

I may be responsible for a bit of thread drift here ...........

But this wasn't you Nige was it ?

http://web.archive.org/web/200410092301 ... 00699.hcsp

[Nigel H-J]

Now that was a nasty experience they had Rich, wonder if that put the student off gliding for good?

Remember one accident that our gliding club suffered when a new RAF Recruit went up for his very first air experience flight with us. On the day the cloud base was 1100ft and we had an RAF Chipmunk in for aerotows, I was waiting to be launched from the winch when the Chippie took off towing the K13 with the recruit in the front seat, once clear I was launched and released just below the cloud base. I just got a fleeting glance as the Chippie and the K13 entered cloud to my left so I commenced a right hand circuit. Some time after landing there was still no sign of the K13 until both pilot and recruit arrived from the direction of the A46 minus of course, the K13.

Cutting a long story short after about 10 - 15 seconds on entering cloud he pulled the release knob, when below the cloud base he must have been disorientated and did not know where he was, bearing in mind the cloud was only 1100ft that does not give much time to work out where to land, he picked a field and turned in for his final approach....one problem......he was landing downwind!!! :o the glider came to rest the other side of a road after having crashed through a hedge. Cat three or four damage as I remember. When we eventually had it repaired it never appeared to fly the same.

Incidently, we never saw the recruit again!!

From my gliding log book my last flight was 29 March 1973 though the ink has faded slightly, at the time of that incident I was flying a K8 under the thunderstorm.

Although I had a total of 501 launches I can't be bothered to add up the hours and minutes!!

Nigel.

[VEGAS]

Interesting story regarding G-APFE and one of which I had never known about. Managed to find some pictures here. :think:

http://www.luftfahrt.net/special/text.php?id=12