Tiara Days
We acquired the Tiara early in July 1979 after a test flight at Sywell in its French livery. A couple of years after we bought it as a company aircraft, I decided that I would like something different for myself and found my AOP9. I was therefore privileged to have two aeroplanes available at the same time. Rather than go through this chronologically I will recount my times in the Tiara and then go back and do the same for my old girl.
The Robin HR100/285 Tiara is a rare bird. Only about 50 were made and I do not think that more than five were on the British Register at any one time. Currently there are two only. As I said, it has the TDC Tiara engine fitted and this was also produced in relatively small numbers. So we have a combination of a short production run aeroplane coupled to a short production run engine. A recipe for trouble? I’ll say!
For those who are unfamiliar with this aircraft there is a pic of a Tiara on the CAA Registration database here:
http://www.caa.co.uk/applicationmodules ... mgtype=jpg.
BUGWUD had a two-tone blue and white colour scheme, similar to those on the Grumman behind, and looked very smart.
The aircraft had an AUW of 3100 lbs and a top speed of 171 knots with over 1000 NM range. The engine ran at 4000 max rpm but this was geared down to half this speed so the max prop rpm was 2000 with cruise usually set at 1800 rpm. The propellor was a 3-bladed wooden Hoffmann with a wide chord. They used to say that it sounded like a little Spitfire but I never heard it from the ground. It had a thick wing, was very stable with well balanced controls and was viceless in all normal manoeuvring. It was very pleasant to fly and had excellent visibility.
I flew out on a BEA BAC 1-11 to ‘out in the sticks’ Dijon/Longvic, which doubled as a military base. I think the pilot thought he was in one of the fighters based there when he racked the aeroplane round in a steep bank on to finals. Didn’t bother me but some of the other passengers looked a bit startled. The aircraft was at the Robin factory at Dijon-Darois and the French owner and I travelled back in it, now with its UK registration, and eventually left it at Headcorn.
I returned there after a few days to fly it back to Booker and during the checkout, with only 30 minutes on type the alternator warning light came on. This was the first of a whole catalogue of problems, mostly minor, that were to plague me for most of the time that we owned it. In this event, it was only a faulty indicator.
I don’t want to talk down to anyone but some may not know exactly what duplex magnetos are. All piston engines have two magnetos and the sensible ones have two separate drives from the engine. Duplex mags still have two magnetos but they have a single common drive. If you lose the drive, you lose both mags. When I got back to base I had a bit of an audience looking at this rare creation. Among them was Bert, a very experienced aircraft inspector who asked about the engine. I took off the large fibreglass cowling to show it to him and after a minute or two he said, ‘Have you seen your duplex mag drive?’ He pointed to the flange on which the mags were mounted. Two bolts clamping down on small angle brackets similar to those on rotary potentiometers retained it. Except one was missing so the clamping was offset. Despite it being cleared for flight by the original manufacturers and a maintenance company in the UK, there had been this single small bolt between me and the sharks below.
It was a fairly complicated aeroplane and it didn’t need the French love of elaboration added to it. One day, sitting in the cockpit I counted out the number of instruments, gauges, levers, buttons, indicators, radio knobs, widgets, etc and there was exactly 200. The fuel warning system was something. Both wings had two fuel tanks each carrying 25 gallons. There were four amber low fuel indicators on the fascia eyebrow. When you got down to ten gallons in a tank, its indicator would start to flash so you could have four flashing lamps, warning that you had only 40 gallons of fuel left on board – or about 3 hours at normal cruise speed! When the content got down to five gallons, the lamp then glowed continuously. But I will say this about the cockpit, it had the most comfortable seats that I have ever sat in, bar none including cars, and you could fly for hours and climb out pain free.
I know that the more complex the machine the more it likely to go wrong but I arsk you? Within the first six hours of flight time, the new DME went U/S; the engine stopped during the roll out at Lydd on our way to Paris (ATC: ‘BUGWUD, you are blocking the runway!’ – I presume he thought I hadn’t noticed) and we had to pull it on to the grass, all 3000lbs of it, and also the flap motor packed up. There were less than 400 hrs on the airframe and 300 hrs on the engine (they had replaced the original).
To get the flap motor replaced I had to take it back to Dijon for some reason. The missing flaps were not a problem because they were not very effective anyway. When I found out that the flap motor was a Peugeot car window winding motor, I realised I could have saved myself the journey. Ah! The practical French – no paperwork! I stayed for a couple of nights so that they could look over the slow running of the engine re the cut out and had my first taste of frogs legs – delicious – and one snail – the most disgusting thing that I have ever put into my mouth. They couldn’t fault the engine so it was time to go. I thought the manifold pressure was low on take off and so I landed back to check it out. They told me not to worry as it was the airfield elevation, 1600 feet, which was causing it – my inexperience was showing. If only I had realised this I would not have killed that large, beautiful kestrel that rose up from the grass during the landing roll out and was hit by the wing. I taxied back to it but it was too late. Damn! Actually, during the inbound flight when approaching Dijon there were several big birds that were a lot higher than me and I was at about 4000 ft AMSL.
Three weeks later Peter and I flew to Cologne to do some work at West Deutsche Rundfunk, the German TV Station. This is where the Tiara came into its own. We cleared Customs at Fairoaks, tanks full and arrived at Koln-Bonn in an actual flight time of 2 hours 10 mins. We did not refuel and we returned the next day in a time of 2 hours 15 mins and we still had 38 gallons in the tanks. Of course it wasn’t perfect. It might have been if the engine had kept going whilst we were on the runway. This time it was, ATC: ‘BUGWUD, you are blokking ze runway!’ – amazing how observant these controllers are! So again we had to haul it on to the grass. The engine started OK once it had cooled down.
Couple of days later I landed at Waddington. From memory I think that the RAF procedure is that you sit tight until someone has set the chocks. The wing was about 35 inches above the ground and the wheels about 16 inches dia. Unfortunately the only chocks available were the monsters used by the Vulcans. It all looked a bit ridiculous.
The next thing was a brush with the CAA. Peter and I went down to the south coast for a jolly and we tried to locate a boat that we had bought and which was moored in Chichester Yacht Basin. We spotted it and on the way back I decided to do a low level pass over Thorney Island airfield, long disused with the appropriate white crosses on the runways. We flew along the main disused runway at 500 feet, circled and flew over it again. This time we saw someone on the runway waving to us. Thought nothing of it and returned to Fairoaks.
I received a call from the CAA saying that the aircraft had been reported for low flying and could they come to my house to interview me. A CAA solicitor turned up and said that we had been accused of low flying, which is an offence. Just to clarify things, the Air Navigation Order states that an aircraft shall not fly over any congested area of a city, town or settlement below 1500 feet agl nor below such height as would enable it to land clear. It also states that an aircraft shall not fly closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle or structure. So, I conformed with the requirements of the Order and was legal. Right?
Wrong! There was someone on the ground who could judge the altitude of aeroplanes very accurately and apparently he had had a lot of ‘experience’ and had said that I was below 500 feet. I am not making this up. That was what the CAA man was seriously telling me. I pointed out that I had the altimeter, not sonny boy on the ground, there was no significant error between the regional QNH and QFE setting because the airfield elevation was only 18 feet and because of the rarity of Tiaras, did he know how big it was? It so happened that this was just over a year after my IR rating and I was well up to speed on the UK Air Pilot, having our own copy, and about ¾â€