Classic British Flight Sim

auster wrote:Martin,

What a wonderful long weekend for you. Congratulations on your water crossings. You have more nerve than I ever had. I know exactly what you mean about the silence over water. I used to get worried when crossing the Thames and I am not talking about the estuary end. But seriously, you’ll remember that forever.

I would be very interested to know just how much fuel you put into the tanks after your flight to Prestwick. Had the port tank run dry? I reckon that if 2 hours 55 mins was your flight time then you may have had about 5 galls on board and I found that the port tank would be empty at that point. I will explain why I am interested in this in a future post.

Ralph

Well, to make matters worse, I can't swim and wearing a lifejacket I've heard is only a quicker way for the body to be identfied as the waters are shall we say rather cold.

As to the fuel tank scenario, you are indeed correct with your calculations, as the left hand tank did seem to be run quicker than the right. Its not something that I really wanted to pay close attention to, but you cant help looking at the ever decreasing amounts in the tanks (not that I worry ok!). We wouldn't have attempted that leg as was intended, if we didnt have the fuel required. Its a matter of common sense.

I couldn't have asked for a better aeroplane to have flown in. Its funny how you can come 'attached' to a particular aeroplane. G-CTKL my first Harvard will always be my favourite I'm afraid, but XR240 G-BDFH is now running a close second!!

Best wishes to all,

Martin

Thanks for the reply Ralph, looks like that Auster I used to fly in will still remain a mystery.

Regards Nigel.

Skylarking in an Auster

The following accounts are in no particular order and are vaguely related to their appearances in my logbooks.

Previously, I have mentioned George, who was to make quite a change to my flying. He was a larger than life character and an exceptional and truly natural pilot. I have never flown with anyone who could equal him. He had been an instructor on powered light aircraft as well as a CFI of a gliding club. Many of the students that he taught went on to take their places on airline flight decks. He had been in the GA world for years and he knew so many people. We would land at some airfield or strip in XR240 and of course there was always a lot of interest in this camouflaged ‘flare’ carrying aeroplane, but when George got out of it, the interest usually switched over to him as he renewed old acquaintances.

We spent the first few months of my MK9 days with him showing me how to really get hold of it. It was an ideal aeroplane in which to learn the principals not least because of the ease of communication and he himself enjoyed flying it very much. Because of his popularity, he knew quite a few people who were ex-students of his and had remote private strips and he had their permission to use them whenever he wanted. This enabled us to do a lot of low flying around those areas because we were there ‘for the purposes of landing or taking off’. So we did numerous landings of all types three pointers and wheelies, cross wind landings with one wing low and crossed controls to let the upwind wheel touch first (we never bothered with ‘kicking off the drift’ – too chancy), side slipping in, glide approaches to try to land on a spot, very steep approaches, diving approaches, fishtailing approaches, forced landings, circuits and stalling with the ASI covered, engine failures at take off and so on.

In the upper air we did very steep turns with rapid reversals looking for the double buffeting when you crossed your own wake turbulence, deliberate skidding and slipping turns, wing overs, figures of eight, flying at just a knot or two above the stall speed at various flap/engine settings and actual stalling again at various flap and engine settings to experience the feel of the controls, etc. I did these exercises over and over again and the result, after many shouts of ‘Use the effing rudder!’ was that I was truly flying the aeroplane. He gave me the confidence to get really close to the hedges dropping it down when just over them, then at full power holding it a couple of feet above the ground for the length of the runway and then pulling up very steeply into a climbing turn. I considered myself to be very lucky to have such an instructor and to have the opportunity to fly in such a way that is denied to most PPLs. Flying then became just a whole lot of fun. Of course, this was not aerobatic flying because our tired old frames, all three of us, were not really up to it and it was not the right aeroplane for that sort of thing, but we flew it in the way for which it was designed. For building low-level confidence it was priceless.

Certain things, whilst gaining experience in flying are self-taught. In particular, I mentioned instructor Ben earlier and I noticed that whenever he took control, the turbulence seemed to disappear or become minimal. Later I was surprised to discover that I had acquired the technique of sensing the turbulence and reacting immediately with small stick movements in pitch and roll when a very senior pilot who was checking me out, commented on my handling. It was Ben who said to me that unless you were a gifted pilot you needed about a thousand hours before you could truly fly. I did not believe him at the time but in my case it turned out to be true.

I know that I have put George right in the middle of the above accounts. The reason is that I just enjoy new experiences and learning and he contributed so much of this to me. However, a lot of the flying that I did without him was routine and has nothing of much interest in it.

During our affair, the old girl sufferered from both mechanical and human problems. With an old banger you should always expect there to be snags, big and small. It goes with the territory, as they say.

Don’t get me wrong. The sun did not shine out of George all the time. He could be fallible. XR240 was equipped with a P11 magnetic compass. This is similar to the P10 but it is upside down, high in the cockpit. To be able to see it there is a mirror on a universal ball joint which is locked off by a lever. In the retracted position, this lever projects to the right and was nicely placed to give George a jab in the forehead nearly every time he climbed aboard. Fed up with this he fixed a cloth pad over the lever to protect his brains. Shortly after this I noticed that the compass was playing up but I didn’t relate the fault to anything. Because the gyrocompass precessed very little I used to set it on the runway direction before take off. I had never handled the pad separately until one day I had reason to remove it. I then felt these inserts in it. He had used an oven pad, yes, that’s right, the kind that sticks to the oven side! So all the compass errors were now explained. Incidentally the mirror was useful as a rear view mirror when suitably positioned.

The collector tank in the cockpit had its own pump, with a vertical axis. At the bottom was a rotary seal and a chamber to collect any leakage. A capillary tube attached to the chamber was routed outside the cockpit to get rid of any fuel. One day I saw that fuel was slowly dripping on to the hangar floor from the tube. Because the pump was stationary, a matchstick pushed into the capillary tube would stop the flow. Before each flight my pre-flight checks included removing the matchstick. Until one day I forgot. We had just taken off and were approaching Henley when we noticed the smell of fuel. Looking down, petrol was swilling about on the sealed floor of the cockpit. So we put our fags out, figuratively speaking, and beat a hasty retreat. What had happened was that with the pump switched on, the seal was leaking, and the fuel could not go down the tube so it got out somewhere else and dropped into the cockpit. That gave me the kick I needed to find a replacement pump.

This is a ‘I Learned About Flying From That - ILAFFT’. Provided I did not land after hours, I always filled the tanks after every flight. Total fuel is 30 galls and burning 8 galls/hr gave me about 3 hours flying time with a bit in hand. I had taken XR240 up to D. to have another Permit Renewal done by him and later went up to collect it. I had known him for several years and we used to have lots to talk about, he was both licenced engineer and pilot with about 2000 hours and a CPL. On this day the time came for me to leave and he said ‘It’s all ready for you, Ralph’. I jumped in, he gave me a prop swing and I was away. Getting near Booker, I did my approach checks and when I looked at the left hand fuel gauge in the wing root it was showing empty! I looked at the right hand gauge and it showed less than four gallons. That was impossible! The flight time was always 35 to 40 minutes, which should have left me with 20 gallons on board at that point. To add to the strain, the gauge is placarded, ‘NOTE: MINIMUM RELIABLE READING 4 GALLS’. I asked Booker for a straight in approach and after landing, took it over to the pumps where they put in 28.5 gallons. When I remonstrated with D. he said, ‘Sorry about that, Ralph. I had to borrow some and I forgot to put it back’. Moral: Only fools omit the pre-flight checks whatever reassurances they have been given. After that, all my pre-flights were done in silence and nobody, but nobody, talked to me whilst I was doing them.

Here’s a yarn told against himself by a GP doctor who owned a glider and usually kept it at Booker. He was taking it home in its long trailer through the narrow Buckinghamshire country lanes when someone behind started to sound his horn. ‘I’m not going to stop and let him pass’ he thought and increased his speed. The horn was being sounded persistently but he was having none of it and continued to drive at speed. Eventually he came to a dual carriageway and the car behind drew level with him but did not pass. The driver signalled the Doc to stop, which he did. ‘I’ve been trying to stop you for the last three miles to tell you that your glider fell out the back in the last village!’

One of the gliding instructors was Dudley. I flew with him once in a Cub when I was wondering about getting one prior to buying the MK9. He had been at Booker for years. In fact he had been there as an instructor on Tiger Moths during WW2. One day, my brother in law Bill, mentioned that he had started his glider pilot training at Booker and he remembered the name of his instructor. It was Dudley. He remarked how impressed he had been when he flew as a passenger in a Tiger whilst Dudley climbed up into the overcast to do a weather check and when they descended and broke through the cloud, they were exactly over the airfield. Bill was one of the glider pilots who, during the Salerno landings in Italy, had the misfortune to be towed behind Dakotas that were being piloted by American civilians. When the flak started coming up, the tugs released the gliders and cleared off (officially it was due to bad weather – it wasn’t). Unfortunately, the gliders were still over the sea. He never had a good word to say about Americans after that.

One of George’s ex students was K. who had a small strip, at the side of the Thames at Wallingford within the Benson MATZ. It was great fun to land there and on a couple of occasions we had breakfast fly-ins. After landing you had to turn off and taxi across a bridge made of railway sleepers. Everybody wanted a trip in the Auster so after George had eaten everything in sight we were kept busy giving joy rides. Taking off involved flying obliquely through a gap in the riverside trees and so we saw the surprise of many of the walkers and small boat crews on the river as we flew just a few feet above them during our climb out. I have a precious copy of a video of one of the fly-in. Poor quality but still something to reminisce over.

I was at Booker when the CFI of the gliding club decided to give an impromptu aerobatic display at the end of a flight. He finished by beating up the clubhouse. It was excellent flying and good to watch. Unfortunately for him there was an officious CAA jobsworth around and C. ended up in court. Whatever makes these insufferable microbes tick? As sure as hell it isn’t common sense.

There were a lot of characters among the aircraft owners. One of them, Jan, had a Horizon Diplomat. That’s the one that needs the undercarriage to be wound up manually. One Sunday, I was at Booker at about 11 am and went to the hangar where Jan was just climbing out of his Diplomat. ‘Would you like some French bread, Ralph?’ ‘I didn’t think the shops were open today’. ‘Not that rubbish. Some genuine French bread, baked this morning’. Seems that he had made an early start and dashed off to Le Touquet for his bread. I didn’t know this at the time but apparently it was a regular ‘milk run’ for him.

One day, we thought we would do some low level circuits on the gliding side at Booker. We were the only aeroplane flying and by using a circuit height of 200 feet only, we were able to get about ten of them in within an hour. There was no need to talk to air traffic on that side of the field so we switched the radio off. Eventually we landed and I got a signal from the tower telling me that they wanted a word with me. I then got a bollocking for flying so many low level circuits over the married quarters. He finished by saying ‘We’ve been trying to contact you to tell you that you‘ve got a twenty feet long flame coming out of your exhaust every time you open up after landing?’ Seems I had a leaking injector that was putting unburned fuel into the exhaust manifold.

I once got quite a scare when coming in to land when the whole cockpit was filled with a very strong smell of burning rubber. I couldn’t get the thing down fast enough. After stopping I started to look around for smoke but the smell was starting to dissipate. It transpired that I had passed over a pile of burning tyres on the rubbish tip next to the airfield. They didn’t call it High Heavens Refuse tip for nothing. With regard to fire I was told that the Army once had a MK9, which had been written off, and they decided to set in on fire. It took one minute only for the flames to spread over the whole airframe and that’s without the forced draught that would occur in flight.

At one time George had a job with an insurance company based on Booker airfield. They had a Cessna 172 in their area and he would pilot it for his bosses when visitors had to be flown on. He was a general odd-job man and one of his duties was to collect visitors from Heathrow and chauffeur them to the offices. Whilst they were there he would do some sweeping and wash some of the aeroplane, making sure that the visitors could see him. He took the greatest delight in showing them to the Cessna and helping them in and then watching the startled looks on their faces as he climbed into the driving seat in his working clothes.

One calm day we were out, stooging about and George said ‘Are you properly trimmed out?’ I confirmed that we were and he said,’ Right. Hands and feet off the controls. You see that church at 2 o’clock and about three miles. Put me over the top of it at 1500 feet without touching the controls until we get there’. ‘What? How am I going to do that?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you a clue and he opened the door on his side and pushed it outwards. The old girl yawed to the right but very slowly it started to turn and he let the door back in. ‘But George, we’re at 1800 feet. How’s that going to work?’ You’ll have to sort it out for yourself but I’ll give you another clue. You’ll have to release your harness.’ I unfastened the straps and stood up as best I could and leaned forward over the fascia. Sure enough, the nose dipped with the slight change in CG position. I then leaned back as far as I could with my arms above my head and, the nose rose slightly. So we used to give each other little tests with us opening our doors or asking for the other door to be opened and standing up in the cockpit and waving our arms about. Great fun.

Peter’s father in law was called Bert and he had served in the RAF during WW2, as did Peter. He was flying Dakotas over ‘The Hump’ in the Far East whilst Peter was in Bomber Command. He came to the airfield once or twice and had a pole around in a couple of our aircraft, landing them OK. But the interesting thing about Bert was that he did a lot of evaluation work on the Avro Ashton (What?) for the RAF. He told me how one day he had taken off and both ASIs went u/s. I think it was due to a faulty common static line, or something like that. With only a few hours on type he had all his work cut out to get it back on the ground without bending it. It was a development of the Tudor so it was quite a lump.

We had another Bert who had been at Booker for many years. He was part of the ground crew and did most of the refuelling on the pumps. The thing about Bert was that he was a brilliant pilot with perfect eyesight and when Adrian Swire kept his collection of vintage aeroplanes at Booker, Bert used to fly some of them around, whilst still working on the pumps. He would fly the Dragon Rapide, the replica Fokker Eindecker etc., and wait for it(!) the Spitfire. He was reputed not to use navigation charts and if he was in France, say, he would just point the aeroplane to the North and then he rely on his vast knowledge of the geography of the south of England to get himself home. I believe that he did some film work flying too.

A bit more Skylarking to come.

Ralph

What more can I say.....brilliant and so informative....now know why you asked about the fuel state!

Hate to say this, but flew in a different 9 this weekend - the prototype WZ662, along with an Autocrat, Chipmunk and L-18C Super Cub. Not your normal Bank Holiday, but then again touring Scotland and Ireland in an Auster 9 isnt your normal holiday either!!

Best wishes,

Martin

Avro Ashton (What?)

For those who may not be familar with this beast.................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Ashton

A Bit More Skylarking

Again, these accounts are in no particular order.

I joined the gliding club at Booker, mainly to have the facility to use the MK9 in the gliding area, which operated on the opposite side to the powered aircraft. So typically, on any given day, the power people would be using a right hand circuit say, and the gliders would be using a left hand circuit. There was much more freedom on the gliding side – no ATC, no landing fees, etc. I did join a gliding syndicate at one time but did not really fit in. There seems to be a completely different attitude between the power people and the gliding people. The power people want to arrive at the field with their aeroplane having been pulled out of the hangar by the duty crew, jump in, fly, return and then leave the airfield. The gliding people treat it more as a club in which they all join in, doing the chores, getting the gliders out, assembling them, helping each other, patiently waiting for their turn to fly, packing all the stuff away at the end and generally making a day of it. I didn’t really fit into this scheme of things and although I was able, through my workshop, to provide the odd device to help things along, they did refer to my apparent lack of commitment in terms of time. Running a factory just did not allow me to spend whole days up at Booker and so I resigned from the syndicate. I did do some dual gliding and I found it to be great fun and quite exhilarating, having no engine to rely on.

I mentioned earlier that George had been the CFI of a gliding club. One day we went off to the west and he said, ‘I wonder what this old thing’s like as a glider?’ I trimmed it to 55 knots, the best glide speed, and then he went looking for thermals. He flew it under some big cumulus clouds and as soon as he felt one wing lift, he turned into the thermal and proceeded to keep inside it. I was amazed to see the old tub actually climb more than 2000 feet before we had to drop out just under the base of the cloud. On another day he found a ridge facing a strong wind and by ‘ridge soaring’ we again went up 2000 feet.

We were doing some side slipping approaches on the gliding side and after we had finally landed, one of George’s ex-students Peter R. came up to us and said that he had been video recording my landings. After a short break, we decided to get hold of another aeroplane, a Cessna 152 and to shoot some video of the Auster from it. We would not be in communication with each other so I said that I would just fly straight and level along the M40. They would tuck in behind with George piloting and Peter R. filming. I had a teenager next to me and there was a girl, about 10 years old in the back. George positioned the Cessna in various ‘spot plane’ locations and when he was behind me on my port side I thought I would liven it up a bit. I asked the lad next to me to keep the aeroplane straight and level whilst I opened the port door and put my leg out and my foot on to the step. I didn’t know what their reaction would be but I have a copy of the tape and at that point George is shouting, ‘Bloody hell! He’s climbing out! Has he gone nuts?’ Then he starts to chuckle. Oh, by the way, the young man in the right hand seat was George’s son who had flown a lot and the little girl was Peter R.’ s daughter. At the tail end of the video, they were on my starboard side and as I rounded out with the wheels about to touch, there is a small wing drop as previously mentioned. It is interesting to have it on tape. Incidentally, using the Ito Kazunori AOP 9 in FS9 and the Photographic Scenery covering the M40, I am able to effectively reproduce the scenes that I have on the video tape with the spot plane replacing the Cessna.

When the Army disposed of its MK9s, the CAA stepped in and decided that the aileron droop was ‘too dangerous’ a feature for PPLs to handle and so the first one up for sale had it removed. It was, as it happens, the prototype, WZ662. I do not know the circumstances, but I believe that Bill Fisher was instrumental in getting the decision reversed by asking the CAA if the Army had been flying unairworthy MK9s throughout their service, or something like that. John B. acquired it and had the aileron droop put back. He had flown the MK9 in Malaya a lot and he commented that without the droop, the slow speed handling was noticeably degraded.

The MK9 excelled in steep approaches, nose high with full flap and aileron droop, on the back of the drag curve, with plenty of power and maintaining 50 knots. Whilst descending the attitude was virtually the same as when it was sitting on the ground. As soon as you were about to touch down, the power was cut and the loss of the extra airflow from the engine literally stopped it flying and it would just three point and come to a rapid stop. There is, in this type of landing, a potentially dangerous zone when you are nearly down because an engine failure at that point would cause the aircraft to literally drop out of the sky. Once I was being checked out for a GFT renewal and the check pilot, John M., asked me to show him a short field landing. He wasn’t familiar with the MK9 but he had plenty of experience, commanding a Shackleton squadron at one time, then still currently flying professionally and re-building a Chiltern monoplane. So I demonstrated what I had been taught. I sensed that he was a bit uncomfortable when we got down low because of the above reason regarding engine failure. However, the donk kept going and I aimed for a point just over the hedge at White Waltham. The old lady actually stopped on the numbers. To say he was surprised is an understatement.

I was returning to Booker with George beside me and as I turned on to the base leg he said, ‘Keep the power up and stay at 800 feet.’ That was the circuit height. ‘Keep going and turn on to finals’. Once established I went to reduce the power. ‘Leave the power as it is and put the flaps fully down. Now tell me when you think you need to start the descent’. ‘Well now’, I said. ‘No. Leave it’. This was repeated a couple of times. The threshold had long disappeared under the nose. ‘Right. Stuff the nose down and aim for a point well short of the hedge’. The dive angle seemed to be very steep but the generous flaps restricted the airspeed to about 65 knots (Flap limiting speed is 70 knots). As we got close to the ground I eased back and was 5-10 knots too fast over the hedge but went on to carry out a normal but extended landing. ‘That’, said George,’ is what you do if you get an engine failure and the only field available is under you’.

I thought that someone recently mentioned the Chrislea Super Ace. There used to be one hangared at Booker at one time and a bit of it will appear in a pic in a future post (I hope). It was owned by P. who was a flight engineer and was well experienced. Several of us went to a PFA meeting one year and the weather was gin clear. Cranfield is about 30 miles from Booker and after getting to cruise height you could see the wood on the high ground at Woburn, just south of it. The compass setting for going there is 02 and therefore 20 for coming back. We all returned in the evening but there was no sign of P. It must have been an hour later when he turned up. ‘Where have you been P.? ‘ ‘Set the bloody compass wrong, didn’t I? I set 02 so I’ve been for a sight seeing tour!’ The moral is we can all do some odd things no matter how much experience we have and setting a reciprocal is one of them.

This is another ILAFFT. I had arranged for a chap in the Army, he was of staff rank, to try out XR240. He had been part owner of an Auster for a number of years and I asked him if he would like to take the left hand seat, which he did. He was all togged out in a khaki overall, pencils all over the place, bone dome and visor, the lot. So I went through the various procedures with him and found that he had all the numbers off pat from the pilot’s notes. As he started to taxi, I had a misgiving or two. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Anyway we got down to the holding point of the grass runway 35. I went through the pre-take off checks with him and then he asked for take off clearance. ‘Shall we do an engine check first’, I said, apprehensively. He cancelled the clearance, did the checks and all was OK. Renewing the clearance he turned on to the runway and I talked him through the take off. The wheels lifted off and then, and THEN, he pulled back on the stick. I mentioned earlier that once you were flying, you held the nose down to let the speed increase. The nose came up and it started to yaw to the left. It was right on the brink of a stall. I’ve never moved so fast in my life. I grabbed the stick and rammed it forward as hard as I could at the same time as he said ‘I’ve lost it, Ralph!’ I held it just above the ground as we flew 20 degrees off the runway centreline. The flight to Bassingbourn was carried out in virtual silence. The return flight was a bit better. I blamed myself for making assumptions about his experience and about the fact that the MK9 was not like any other Auster that I had flown in. Again, don’t assume. Get the facts.

There were one or two minor problems that I had with XR240 one being vapour locking which I have mentioned before. It occasionally appeared on very hot days but it never occurred in flight as it had done in my first trip in her. It was a bit disconcerting because I would line up on the runway and open the throttle, the engine would roar into life and then it would stop. I got used to it and at that time always carried cartridges for the Coffman and so I banged one off and carried on. I once tried to run it on Mo-gas out of necessity. I had been told that Avgas was available at a fly-in but it wasn’t. Although the Army ran the Bombardier on Mo-gas in Malaya, to avoid carrying two types of fuel, they had to derate the engine somehow. My old lady didn’t like it one little bit and it just would not idle. I had to keep the throttle well open to get it to run. Needless to say, I got the proper stuff in the tanks as soon as I could.

Having something as rare as a MK9 meant that maintenance organisations knew little or nothing about it and this effectively meant that you had to find out as much as you could and then do the maintenance yourself. At that time there were a number of people around that had worked on MK9s and they were always very helpful with suggestions and advice. Perhaps the most important of these was the maintenance unit of the Army Historic Aircraft Flight, which included XR244, a MK9, at Middle Wallop and its foreman Rolly. He was a fountain of knowledge as they say.

Unfortunately I had a couple of long periods when the engine was playing up (shades of the Tiara!). The first sign of trouble was when I couldn’t get more than 2000 rpm static out of it as opposed the normal 2500 rpm maximum. I was advised by someone to adjust the pressure compensating capsule on the injector pump. Eventually we got it to run normally but I cannot remember the details. Later there followed a prolonged period of the engine running roughly. All sorts of suggestions were made and we had new plugs and two rebuilds of the left magneto. It was all to no avail. So I went back to Ted, the ignition expert, with the mags and ignition harnesses and after an enormous amount of time, his rig showed a fault in the harness. This was re-wired. All problems solved!

It is tragic to note that Ted was killed shortly after this in an engine failure at take off. He was somewhere in the West Country where the fields are small and are separated by stone walls.

A disconcerting quirk of my Bombardier was its ability to ‘gulp’ oil, that is, it retained oil in the galleries instead of returning it to the tank. The tank holds 14 pints and I always filled it before each flight and checked the level after each flight. It happened regularly but the most extreme case was after a short flight of 15 minutes. There were 2 pints left in the tank! I got quite alarmed at that. It used to splash a bit of oil around but that was ridiculous. I did a short engine run and then checked it again. There were 13 pints in the tank. Blackburns solved this problem by adding a breather and this modification had not been done on XR240. I arranged for it to be done soon after that.

Just like a car, which you cannot keep for years on end and not have things go wrong with it, an aeroplane will have its share of problems. The difference is that you hope the problem is not too serious because you usually find it when you are up in the air. At various times there occurred a burn out of a suppressor, oil pressure sensor failure, voltage regulator burn out, right brake locked on when landing at Cranfield (it was a corker!) and the throttle jammed wide open and we had to do a very interesting WW1 approach by blipping the mags.

A few memorable flying events stick in my mind such as the time we went to a meeting at Enstone and took part in a spot landing competition that George won (he always did!) missing the line by one yard. This was followed by a flour bombing competition in which the target was ‘Adolf Hitler’, all togged out in his Brownshirt uniform and standing up in the back of a landau giving the old salute. Nobody ‘got’ him.

Another meeting was at Taston in Oxfordshire and was organised by Ron Gillman, another acquaintance of George. It was combined with one for the Bentley Drivers Club. We all met and were driven off in the Bentleys for a slap up lunch at nearby Charlbury. I sat beside the President of the club in his 4.5 supercharged monster – it was one of five that he owned – and we careered along the Oxford lanes, just like Toad in the ‘Wind in the Willows’. It was probably one of the hairiest rides that I have ever endured. The front of the bonnet, so far away, seemed to wander all over the road and the steering looked decidedly iffy. The suspension could be said to be firm, if you were being kind. I cannot say that the car impressed me but it was exhilarating. We returned to the airfield and gave some joy rides to repay the Bentley drivers. During the program, Ron came up to George and said that he had a ten-minute gap in the schedule and could we take the MK9 and show it off a bit. I let George do the honours and he proceeded to perform a lot of low level manoeuvres, remaining within the confines of the small field and often banking with the wing tip ten feet above the ground. It certainly got my adrenalin going. We landed and later I saw Ron and said that I hope we hadn’t done anything wrong by flying towards the crowd. He said,’ No. Actually I found it a bit boring’. It is a fact that things always look much dodgier from inside the cockpit than they do to an outside observer. However, I later read his book ‘The Shiphunters’ in which he describes his experiences when flying Blenheims out of Malta. As young men they were making very low level attacks on enemy shipping during which they endured murderous AA fire, losing all but two of the squadron over a two month period. I could well see that our old lady would not impress him. Incidentally, after the war, he went on to a very senior position in BEA.

Another couple of flights that I remember was when we visited a narrow strip near Newbury. It was about 500 yards long, ran north/south and had a hell of a gradient. Whatever the wind, you landed uphill and took off down hill over the factory estate. It was so steep that I think it could only be used as an airstrip or for pasture.

Another trip that I vividly remember was when Roy and I went to Duxford, just to look around. When we arrived we could see four khaki Boeing B 17s lined up alongside the taxiway. They were filming ‘The Memphis Belle’. I had a video camera with me and the best shots were when they fired up the engines, amid great clouds of blue smoke and then they taxied forward and turned right on to the taxiway on their way to the holding point. It was an exact copy of a scene in ‘Twelve O’Clock High’ (near the top of my best flying films) except that this was in colour. There was a lot of flying on that day with plenty of Mustangs, etc., about.

Shortly after I bought XR240, Peter my colleague, had a couple of flights in it and decided that he would like to have a MK9 himself. He found that Jim had more than a complete MK9 in bits and wanted to sell it. So Peter went ahead and bought it. Unfortunately he had been a marathon runner earlier in his life but had given it up. Almost as soon as he bought the MK9 he re-acquired the bug for marathon running and the aeroplane re-build was hardly started. The adrenaline rushes took over and he became quite involved with the organisation of the London Marathon so it was goodbye to a MK9 rebuild and he sold off the parts. I do not remember the registration or serial number

Jim had a scary strip near Washington, Sussex and I spoke to him on a few occasions after I had helped Peter carry the MK9 back to his house. Jim had been a sergeant pilot in the AAC, had flown MK9s and was very familiar with their construction and operation. One day, George and I flew down to Jim’s strip, just to have a look around. He was using his video camera whilst I manoeuvred around the dicey strip. Suddenly there was commotion in the cockpit. George had stopped looking through the viewer and had looked out and of course everything was that much closer. He thought that I was about to land on this hilly strip and he panicked. It was hilarious to look at the video afterwards to hear the expletives and see all the disconnected shots as the camera went all over the place. It was a bit like ‘You Have Been Framed’.

Jim’s strip had been the last resting place for a German aircraft that had ended up in a deep hole at one end of the runway. It had been covered up but he had found various bits of it in and around the bushes that were on the strip. Later he brought a number of aircraft into the country from Russia. Perhaps the most notable of these was the Focke-Wulf Fw 189 that was in bits. I seem to remember seeing the wreck in a marquee at one of the Middle Wallop shows. The last I heard of it was that it was being restored in the Czech Republic.

In my early years at Booker there were always some interesting aeroplanes about because Doug Bianchi was based there. They were in addition to Adrian Swire’s collection. I remember seeing a Spitfire being built there but the most surprising rebuild was a Westland Lysander. Joe Austin, in charge of the work told me that it arrived on a Queen Mary in bits with no manuals. He told me, in all seriousness, that the only paperwork he had to help him was a 1/72 Aeromodeller 3-view drawing!!

Then, in July 1991, George had just climbed out of someone’s aircraft when he collapsed with a heart attack. He was overweight but he had never had any sort of problems with his medicals and he had always been teetotal. He was rushed to hospital and underwent a quadruple by-pass operation. He was recovering well and was his usual self when I visited him at St. Mary’s in Paddington, London. A few days later, on 25 July 1991 he died. He was 61, three months younger than me but I had regarded him as a father figure as far as flying was concerned.. It affected me quite badly. I did not meet him socially except to visit his house occasionally so I suppose that it might have been because we had been in quite a number of situations that were on the edge. He flew with so many other people and we all sensed the loss and realised that much of the pleasure that we got from flying was linked to him and now he had gone. There was a Memorial Service for him in September 1991 at St. Peter’s in Dunstable and the church was filled to overflowing with his students including a number of airline captains and first officers.

Next: Last Post.

Ralph

Ralph,

Great stuff as usual...The .pdf file is now up to 49 pages and I have corrected all the corruptions that occurred with the site software change. I have also made your link to the picture work (all it needed was the full stop at the end of it removed...That full stop was preventing it being a hyperlink!).

A see that the next episode is the last and what I propose to do is let you have both the full Word Document and also the .pdf document which will automatically open in "Acrobat Reader" which is free to anyone.

However, you will not be able to EDIT anything in Acrobat Reader, so I'm suggesting that you do any required editing in the Word document. If you do not have "WORD" then you could copy and paste the whole text to NotePad and edit it there. Anyway, whichever you like to do, let me have the final WORD or NotePad document back and I will re-convert it to the .pdf document. If you wish any pictures to be put in or more links to pictures then let me have those as well, with your instructions

Again a superb and so interesting read. Thank you.

The Chrislea Super Ace as mentioned in the last post was G-AKVF which was flown back from Pakistan in the late 1950s and then restored by Paul Longthorpe, first at White Waltham and then at Booker. It was the first vintage aeroplane that I flew in (1985) when it was based at Bodmin. We flew down to Lands End to look at all the stored ex-Leisure Sports WW1 replicas.

At Eggesford we now have the sole surviving Chrislea SkyJeep which was the more conventional controlled tailwheel version. I must be one of the few people in the world to have flown in both types.

Think I'm off to Middle Wallop in two weeks time for the 50th Anniversary of the Army Air Corps in 240, but this is yet to be confirmed.

Best wishes,

Martin

Peter,

Sincere thanks for your interest and for all the work that you have done on these posts.

I am a bit out of my depth here. When you say that you will let me have both the Word document and the .pdf document, by what means will I receive them? I have both Word and Acrobat Reader installed. In fact I draft and edit my posts in Word, not always successfully – it’s the vodka, you know - before copying them to the ‘cbfm’ forum. Are these the edits to which you are referring?

Was there a problem with the link to the Tiara? If I double click either my Word draft or the cbfm post, it seems to work (with or without the end full stop in the draft). Or am I missing something?

The photos are pretty ropey but I will post them just to complete the ‘picture’.

Many thanks again for your work and effort, Peter. I really appreciate it.

Martin,

Thank you once again for your comments. The Chrislea Super Ace at Booker was indeed G-AKVF. I had no idea that it had been as far away as Pakistan. Thank you for the information.

What happened to the ex-Leisure Sports replicas? I remember the Supermarine S5 replica crashing. I live about seven miles from their original home at Thorpe Park and two directors from there were learning to fly at Booker at the same time as I was. The difference was that they bought a Tiger Moth whilst learning.

Ralph

auster wrote:What happened to the ex-Leisure Sports replicas? I remember the Supermarine S5 replica crashing. I live about seven miles from their original home at Thorpe Park and two directors from there were learning to fly at Booker at the same time as I was. The difference was that they bought a Tiger Moth whilst learning.

Ralph

From what I remember the majority of the airframes ended up in the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton. The Fokker Dr.1 triplane went to the late and great Robin Bowes. The Supermarine S6 replica was bought by a friend - Bill Hosie and was rebuilt at Bodmin to flying condition. All the airframe was rebuilt except the tail and it was this that failed in May 1987 when the replica crashed at St Mawes sadly killing Bill. His son Bill Jnr now plans to build another S6B in memorial to his Father.

Best wishes,

Martin