Classic British Flight Sim

Hi Ralph,

As has already been stated, please don't equate lack of response to lack of interest. From time to time someone like yourself comes along who is prepared to spend a great deal of time sharing their memories and experience, on a subject that is of obvious interest to members of this forum...

...I can assure you that each installment is avidly read

Incidentally, I forgot to answer your question about Catterick...I was there during the mid-seventies so the 'fearsome reputation' had probably been toned down a little by then..but it felt like the middle of nowhere..until we discovered Otterburn :shock:

I was a Radio Telegraphist, Royal Corps of Signals (Hi Chris )..but this is your story, not mine

ATB,

Derek

Yes please Ralph...keep them coming...very well written and most enjoyable. I print them out 2 sided as well and now have 26 pages, punched and tagged together...I'll put up a .PDF file of it for you when you have finished, if you like

Firstly, I must apologise for my last post. It was the vodka talking. Now, I wonder where I picked up that 50-year old habit for late-night relaxation (or agitation)? Frankly, I have been a bit overwhelmed by some of your answers. I had no idea, my dears. . . (a Col. Godlewski variation).

Rick, thanks for your encouragement.

Leif, I know that you have an interest here. Thank you for sticking with it.

Rick, I am in awe of your creations. I am still struggling with elementary bits of detail design. Sincere thanks for your support.

Scorpius, when and where did you fly? I would be very interested. Glad you like the thread.

Martin, after reading your post I turned a horrible shade of green. Did I meet you when Richard collected my old love? I would like to talk to you more about your and my favourite AOP 9. I knew about your involvement with Kazunori Ito from SOH. Did you ever get his creation to fly in FS2004?

Trev, nice to know that you too are still here on this thread.

Chris, thanks for the reply and compliments. You are right! The B40 was quite ancient, even in our day and it wasn’t particularly reliable. Even then, military equipment often fell short of the best available. Thanks for your interest.

Graham and Garry, many thanks.

Paul. Thank you. Yes, it is all backed up. I use Acronis True Image for my C: drive and every week, back it up on to a dedicated separate disk, as well as keeping hard copies of the texts as they are completed. Sincere thanks for your concern.

Derek, I do appreciate your comments. It is sometimes difficult not to go meandering off at a tangent because, of course, lots of things happen in other areas of ones life.

How does a Radio Telegraphist differ from Wireless Telegraphist?

Peter, sincere thanks for your post. I have looked at your site and am astounded at what you were doing. I take my hat off to you. My flying was of the amateur variety and if I got within a mile of another aeroplane, I started to panic. Hope my experiences, soon to come, do not bore you.

I would be very pleased to take you up on your offer of the .PDF file. Thank you.

Ralph

Hi Derek,

Snap! But Harrogate (also in the mid 70s) not the dreaded Catterick (although I did spend time there on various courses). Otterburn - what a lovely place, particularly in mid Jan!

Hi Ralph,

Re your query as to what is the difference between a Wireless Telegraphist and a Radio Telegraphist - possibly not a lot except that in our time RTG's (radio not wireless) were expected to be able to set up and communicate in all normal tactical and static modes (except for tropospheric and other esoteric forms) from radio, wired (e.g. field telephone) and data comms. As RTG's we did, of course, look down on the DTG's (Data Telegraphist - none radio) until, that is, we had to do their job as well (Belize anyone) which often was at a much faster pace and was generally more intense.

Regards,
Chris

Starting to Fly

Everyone remembers the first time that they handled the controls of an aeroplane in flight. My first air experience flight, in a Cessna 172, was memorable for another reason too. I had arranged to go on the flight with my wife and after the exhilaration of ‘being in control’ I asked if we could have another short flight with my wife in the left hand seat. The instructor said that it wasn’t possible because it had to be booked in officially. ‘And anyway, we don’t have any club aircraft available’. This surprised me because there were several of them parked on the field. ‘What about all these?’ ‘They’re grounded’ ‘What, all of them?’ ‘Yes, until we find out which ones are affected’. ‘Affected?’ ‘Yes, some of them have got incorrect fuel in them’.

It seemed that they had had a fuel delivery and the new driver, unsupervised, dumped his jet fuel into the Avgas storage tank. I asked how they had found it out - ‘the hard way?’ ‘Yes’, he said, pointing up in the air off the end of the runway, ‘at about 200 feet up there!’ Fortunately, it was a training flight with an instructor on board and he was able to make a safe dead stick landing. Needless to say I did not join that club to learn how to fly.

I started off as most people do by only managing to book lessons at intervals (pressure of work) with the result that the first half of each one was spent re-familiarising oneself with the aeroplane and getting back to the previous level of skill. I had a variety of instructors and one of them should not have been there despite his fighter pilot handlebar moustache. He used to live in the bar in the evening and the effects were noticeable the next day with his hangover bad temper. His lessons were largely a waste of time. He obviously didn’t realise what the effect was on a student because he got very petulant when I told him that I was not going to fly with him again.

John, a top class instructor and an ex-Squadron Leader, then taught me. We got on just fine. I won’t go through the tedium of recounting the PPL syllabus because it has been done many times before.

We were flying beat-up Cessna 150s and one of them had had a crash on the nose. I swear the engine centreline was offset because there was very noticeable yaw and I found the constant rudder pressure a bit disconcerting for a beginner. I tried to avoid that one.

All went reasonably well and I soloed at just under 13 hours, the lessons having been spread over 3 months. I think every single pilot can remember his first solo as though it were yesterday. This is old hat but I remember everything - the time, the weather, the wind, the alarm when John got out and said ‘OK. Just do one circuit. If you’re not happy, go round again.’ No ‘Good luck’ because that was not what I needed. I just needed to remember all that he had told me. And then after take off, climb out, turn on to the cross wind leg, watching and checking everything and climbing to circuit height, turning then calling ‘Downwind’ when square with the upwind end of the runway, doing the downwind checks and then, at that point, with some distance to go to the base leg turn thinking ‘What the bloody hell am I doing up here on my own when I have a wife and 2 kids?’ Turned on to the base leg and finals and was busy again. The weather was kind, the visibility perfect, the runway rapidly approaching, the adrenalin pumping and we floated on to the grass. Nothing, I repeat nothing, can ever compete with that! Which of you pilots has forgotten your first solo?

By comparison I remember virtually nothing about my Driving Test.

Carried on with the training. Came the day of my General Flying Test (GFT) that would give me a PPL and enable me to fly with passengers. Prior to the test I was being instructed, not by John, but by Ben, who used to fly as backup to the Rothmans Aerobatic Team and their Pitts. For some reason or other my flying had become very scrappy and really not good enough for a GFT. Even during the pre-test flight check I had done a circuit and on finals had lined up on the grass taxiway between the parallel hard and grass runways. Fool! Ben was convinced that I would fail though he didn’t tell me that until later.

However, and rather surprisingly, the CFI - an ex-RAF Wing Commander, Transport Command who hated negative g and which I was very careful to avoid – spent a whole hour with me and said at shutdown, ‘Ralph, that was very nice’. Can you imagine my elation and Ben’s disbelief? Adrenalin is a funny thing.

Shortly after qualifying we decided to get our own aircraft and so I sampled a few light singles, finally deciding on a Grumman AA5 Traveler, G-BAJO. It was very clean, having a bonded structure, and generally speaking, I found it to be a nice reliable aircraft with only one shortcoming and that was its undamped nose wheel. The castoring wheel itself was brilliant as long as you didn’t turn on one main wheel and try to screw it into the ground. But the leg was just a piece of steel tube. Result? OK if you stick to hard runways both for take offs and landings. Not so OK on bumpy grass runways. Landings were not too fraught provided you held the nose wheel off as long as possible, but take offs? One day I had a real scare at Coventry. Landed on the main tarmac runway and then they closed it. We did some work in the city and returned to the airfield. I now had to use the very bumpy grass runway for take off. Start the run, hit a bump, nose wheel bounces up off the grass, up goes the drag, down goes the speed and we now have a shorter runway ahead. It happens again and again until finally we are off. The only trouble then are the bloody trees at the end of the runway. We just skim over the tops of them and never again did I take off from an unpaved runway in that AA5.

Over the years there have been numerous landing accidents involving the Traveler, Cheetah and Tiger range due to the nose wheel design, which could cause porpoising. One company in the UK decided to try and overcome the problem by fitting a damping cylinder to the leg and then attaching the other end to the engine bulkhead. It must have been an unapproved mod and it doesn’t say much for their stressman, if they had one, because the first time it hit a bump, the jack buckled the bulkhead. I don’t think that Grumman ever bothered to try to improve it.

Incidentally, the 2-seat Grumman AA1 Yankee was used for training but it also had a nasty fault. If you entered a spin, it recovered so quickly that you had to neutralise the rudder promptly otherwise it would reverse the spin. I seem to remember a fatal accident involving an instructor and pupil when the aircraft spun in this way all the way down to the ground. I believe spinning the AA1 was then banned.

Had the Traveller for about 3 years and clocked up about 350 hours in it. I had flown in various weather conditions around most of south and southeast England as well as the Midlands, flown a variety of other light aircraft, done some aerobatics (not in BAJO), etc. We bought an AA5A Cheetah, G-BEBE as an investment and I flew it a bit. Waste of time really because after a year we sold it at a small loss.

Went to Manchester once and ATC told me where to park. Had to do some work at the Polytechnic and then returned to the airport. I was in the relatively small (in those days) café and over the PA system they called for the pilot of BAJO to return to his aircraft. When I called them up they told me to move the aeroplane because I was in the Boeing ‘Guppy’ parking area. What happened? The engine would not start! I asked for instructions and they told me to move it to another position with no offer of assistance. So there was I, pulling at the aircraft and struggling to get it out of the way whilst the Guppy had landed and was taxiing towards me. I watched the Guppy slowly park in its bay. Quite a sight! Of course I still had to get the engine started. I cleaned the plugs and all was OK. Some engines tend to oil up if they are left at idle too long and this had happened on my arrival. Big airports, little aircraft - they don’t really mix.

During that time I also managed to get night and IMC ratings and then went for a full instrument rating (single engine). Looking back, it was ridiculous to use the AA5 for this purpose. It was light, a bit lively and therefore not a particularly good instrument platform. The instructors said they ‘put it on’ when they climbed into it. I found, at my age, the whole process of the instrument rating training the most demanding thing that I had ever done, both mentally and physically. There were masses of learning to take in. Instrument functions and operations, meteorology – a vast subject, airways procedures, arrival and departure procedures, Morse for beacon identification, etc. and of course the exams as well. You had to do at least 20 hours of simulator training. I did the latter on a fixed Cherokee simulator that had a full size cockpit but you didn’t see anything because you were on instruments all the time learning procedures. The instructor had the stylus pen and chart outside and communication was through a headset.

The actual flying test lasts over 2 hours and consists of several exercises such as a flight on airways, a holding pattern, an NDB approach, an ILS approach and recovery from unusual attitudes, etc. It is a slog. The blinds come down at 200 feet after take off and you don’t see the ground again until the test is over. After about 90 minutes of continuously gazing at the instruments without respite, I started to flag and still had 2 exercises to go.

The first test was a fail. I must say I was a bit intimidated by the rather serious CAA Captain with lots of egg flip on his cap (he had taught Prince Charles to fly). My ILS approach into Cranfield was not good enough and neither were my recoveries from unusual attitudes. Fortunately, when being re-examined, you are tested only on those failed exercises.

The next test was another fail with the same examiner. We had penny pinched with second hand NAV1 and NAV2 units and the former had been a bit unreliable.
There was I doing an ILS approach into Stansted, both needles beautifully held on their centre lines, when the examiner reached forward and rapped the face of the instrument. ‘It’s U/S ‘, he said and indeed it was, except that I hadn’t spotted the small barbers pole flag that comes up to tell you that fact. That’s why the needles were perfectly placed! I was blind but he of course could see the airport and it would have been clear that I was all over the shop. I had been practising my ILSs and thought that I had polished them up enough. Pity I hadn’t polished my eyeballs at the same time. If I had seen the flag and commented on it, it would have been an abort and not a fail but I didn’t, so it was.

If you fail three times, you have to do more training before you can be re-examined. I was getting a bit frustrated by all this because we were having serious production problems in the Company that were quite distracting because it limited my time for practice.

The third attempt was with a very friendly examiner, still with the egg flip, and we did an ILS approach into RAF Benson. It all went well and I passed. Mind you, I think that they were being a bit charitable because of the ‘funny little aeroplane’.

As an aside, the flying instructor with the handlebar moustache was also on the same course as me, with a view to getting a commercial licence, and he was hopeless. He kept saying how he was running out of money and had to be tested, but he just wasn’t good enough for them to put his name forward. Last I saw of him, he had failed the test three times and was doing further training. One day I asked the CFI how he was getting on since I had an interest and he said that really he should give it all up.

Immediately after this, instructor John, with whom I had kept in touch, suggested that he show me the procedure for flying abroad – customs, flight plan, fuel drawback, etc. He did this and we went to Le Touquet and back. We crossed the Channel at its narrowest point and as we got over Cap Gris Nez he said, ‘Look down there, Ralph. Can you see all those dents in the ground? I put some of them there when I bombed the cross Channel guns from a Whitley. I was eighteen at the time!’

At this point, we decided to upgrade from the Traveler and to buy a more ‘business type’ aircraft. Many of our company products - they were high end very expensive units for the film and television industry – were being sold in Europe and we felt that it would be useful to have a fast single available for sales and servicing purposes. Clearly the Traveler was not suitable for this function and so we had a look around.

Peter and I tried a Beech P35 Bonanza with the butterfly tail. As soon as I sat in the cockpit, I immediately felt at home. It was roomy, well laid out and comfortable – just the right size for a big bloke. We climbed up to about 3000 ft and it seemed to be stable and easily controlled. I was sold on it. I knew that we were at an inversion layer on that day with its attendant turbulence but I didn’t give it a thought. What I didn’t know was that in turbulence this model of the Bonanza was subject to a sort of Dutch roll and although I had been unaware of it, being more or less at the CG, poor old Peter some way behind me had started to feel airsick for the first time in his life. So we continued looking for another aircraft.

The next aeroplane that took my fancy was a Robin Tiara HR100/285. Robin aircraft at that time were producing those marvellous wooden DR series that used the highly efficient Jodel wing, but this one was different. It was an all metal retractable, powered by a 285 hp Teledyne Continental Tiara six cylinder fuel injected engine, with a top speed of nearly 200 mph and it carried 100 gallons of fuel. The concept was brilliant but it was French!

I really liked this one. It was being used by some French government border patrol air division and its specification was ideal for our purposes. Fast, long range, excellent instrument platform. So we bought it, G-BGWD, or BUGWUD to me.

It was at this point that my problems with aeroplanes started. The Traveler had been small but reliable and trustworthy with a quirk that could be handled. All that was to change.

Ralph

Airlife Books would pay you for all this, Ralph. Please continue.

Yes, keep it coming Ralph!
So many stories of this type make the author seem like 'Biggles' himself and do not illustrate the difficulties of obtaining 'only' a PPL. As someone who thought he had a natural aptitude for flight (and didn't :crying: ) this is very interesting reading.

auster wrote:Martin, after reading your post I turned a horrible shade of green. Did I meet you when Richard collected my old love? I would like to talk to you more about your and my favourite AOP 9. I knew about your involvement with Kazunori Ito from SOH. Did you ever get his creation to fly in FS2004? Ralph

Am afraid to say wasnt there on the day and from my records, my first flight in her wasnt until 4 July 2004. Richard has now bought another 9 (in the States) and has a half share of another on rebuild, so thats 6 AOP.9s at Eggesford (well seven if you count the remains in a barn).

I've had 20 trips in 240, most of them from the back seat going to shows etc and most of them with a gentleman called Jeff Houlgrave. As he has bought the prototype 9 WZ662 (G-BKVK), my time in 240 is a lot less now. Its funny how one can come attached to a particular aeroplane!

As to the FS2004 Auster AOP.9, there was after its release, quite a lot of talking on here about it and some very kind and talented people here came up with a better .air file. Perhaps someone can think of the link to the new file?

Best wishes,

Martin

Ralph - fascinating yet again. I shared a Yankee at one time G -AYHA - my recollection is that spinning was prohibited because it tended to flat spin ; I recall demonstrating to a friend the really frightening thing about it, which was that if one held the nose up a little, with power on at perhaps 2200 rpm, and 75 mph ( too slow - 85 was approach) it would gradually develop a stable plummet at about 2500 feet/min rate of descent, the only indication of which was on the VSI

I also shared a V35 Bonanza - G - APVW, which had an interesting history in that it ws ex Israeli AF and had some repaired bullet holes to prove it. But I did not like it for the reason you cite : it tended to porpoise rather horribly and was a bugger to fly on instruments as a result. Nonetheless, we went all over Europe in it and it was a very reliable and quite fast old bus

Christopher Storey

Trev, I didn’t find flying at all easy, certainly not in the early days. One of my problems, I suppose, was that I knew a bit too much about aircraft loads and structures than was good for me. Very few aircraft design staff show any inclination to want to fly. I met only two and both came the other way; they were pilots before going into design. It was only when I realised that if you didn’t pull the aeroplane about too much and you didn’t bang it in on landing, you were in a machine with a large margin of reserve strength. In fact, I wasn’t really happy about flying until I had over 500 hours in my logbook.

You remember you mentioned ‘Think Like A Bird’ by Alex Kimbell and I could not find my copy. Well I got it from Amazon as you posted and read it again. You will also remember that the author had Mr Summers as an instructor. Well I was extremely lucky to find my own ‘Mr Summers’. Only after flying with him did my knowledge and appreciation of true flying begin. More of that later.

Martin, thanks for the post. I only sat in the back seat twice, but I did admire the panoramic view. Of course, sitting backwards you have no idea where you are going, only where you have been. Or did you change the back seat around? I would be interested in that .air file. Was the talk here or on SOH?

Christopher, thank you correcting my comment about the AA1 Yankee. As you say, it was because of the flat spin that spinning was prohibited. Having to use a chute to recover, as NASA did, is a sure sign of that problem. I have been under an illusion for a long time about this. At one time, I was doing some statistical work on spinning accidents to light aircraft and had access to numerous Accident Reports. Clearly I have been mixing my types because one of them certainly reversed its spin.

Interesting to here about the Bonanza. I suppose it was all sorted on the A36 – way out of our price bracket.

Ralph