A surprise aftrnoon fly

[sixtiesrelic]

On Friday I was cold… sitting in front of my computer for hours, downloading files from my new video camera. Computer was being contrary and not wanting to download them straight onto a hard drive.

 

I’d gotten past the swearing and threatening stages and was up to, “Rightyabaaaast’d I’ll show YA.” I was copying the files onto CD for a later transfer to the HDs.

 

Computer got the last laugh by slowly downloading for about seventy five minutes, EACH of the two CDs it needed.

 

Mobile phone rang. It was downstairs. We live in a gully, which means a rush out of the house and forty metres up the drive to get reception. Reckoned the caller wouldn’t wait that long, so let it ring out.

 

I let curiosity take over and ambled down stairs to check missed calls. Didn’t recognise the number, so I checked all the numbers in my phone… really must sling out all those numbers I don’t talk to now and get rid of the double up of numbers in the phone and on the sim card.

 

Got a SMS while playing with the mobile … “You have two missed calls.

 

Rang 231 and was glad I did. My friend Charles wanted to know if I wanted to go flying in a Tiger Moth.

 

 

I phoned him and tore around the house getting warm clothes and collecting video cameras. Had to leave the new JVC behind as it was still supplying the computer with files.

 

Got three goers at the moment and a ‘sick’ older tape one.

 

You beauty … I can try out the tiny GoPro helmet camera I bought off a parachuting instructor mate from work a couple of days ago. Maybe, attach it to a strut.

 

Chuck had the old girl ready for me when I got to Redcliffe.

 

 

I started learning to fly in Tiger Moths a bit over fifty years ago and just that morning had looked in my logbook to see what date I did my first solo. Reckoned I’d ring a man I know with a Tiger and ask him if he’d take me up for a quick ride to celebrate fifty years since my first solo in his aircraft. It has the same rego as that first one. VH-RVE

 

I’ve had a few short rides in Tiger Moths over the decades and I keep forgetting how cramped they are.

 

Trying to get comfortable with bulky clothes snagging the seat harness as you try doing it up, getting pockets sorted so I could stow two video cameras, attach Chuck’s new helmet camera’s hard drive/touch pad to my leg with Velcro tape, around a pair of loose track daks. Wasn’t much room left.

 

Chuck played, ‘Starting Gypsy Majors’ which is complicated.

 

Open the right cowl and tickle the carby (like we did with the old Victa Motor mowers way back). Make sure the cowl’s locked close or the prop-wash will swing it fully open. Go round to the left side and open the throttle all the way and check the four Maggie switches are off.

 

Pull the prop through the number of times THAT engine likes it, to suck fuel into the cylinders. Wind the prop backwards the number of times the engine likes it to un-flood the engine.

 

Lean into the front cockpit and close thren set the throttle for start up. Lean way over the front of the wing to reach the rear cockpit Maggie switches and flip them on, then turn one of the front switches on.

 

Next grab the prop tip and hang onto the rear of the left cowl with the other hand and pull down and get outa the way.

 

If ya’ve been nice to her, the Gipsy coughs and starts. If not, you pull the prop some more.

 

If she’s cranky you’ll have to clear the engine and start again with sucking fuel in etc.

 

Some like seven suck in pulls of the prop, others eight. They’re like a certain sex, who need to be treated just right OR ELSE!

 

Better than the older aircraft where pilots had to have a small jar with a rag in it. They’d soak the rag in fuel and stuff it in the air intake and pull the prop through to get the cylinders full of fuel vapour, flap the rag in the wind to dry it a bit, bung it in the jar and stick it in their pocket then if it was a big engine get back and take a run up that culminated in a mighty leap to grab the prop and pull her through with their momentum.

 

Bit of a bugger getting the rag outa the jar going through the soaking and puttin’ back in again if the old cow wouldn’t start.

 

 

Today Chuck didn’t have any one on the wing tip to help taxi on the bitumen… no brakes and a slippery steel tail skid makes the old girls a bit skittish on hard surfaces if there’s any sort to breeze.

 

 

Chuck walked beside the rear cockpit … pilot always flies from the rear one … weight and balance problems if you’re solo.

 

He worked the throttle and could grab her airframe if she wantonly wanted to go off somewhere he didn’t. I could hit the front mag. switches off and there’s rudder pedals in the front cockpit if there was an emergency

 

He also walked her on the grass beside the bitumen taxiway so she had enough drag from the grass to stop her cantering off.

 

Once Chuck got in the rear cockpit, it hardly seemed any time before we were taking off.

 

I was swinging video cameras all over the place, so wasn’t watching what he did or note how long things were taking.

 

When I was a terribly knowledgeable student pilot with maybe ten hours solo in my logbook, ‘a mate of me father’s’ came and stayed a night at our place. The old man was flying Viscounts and his mate, Super Connies. They’d been courier pilots during the war, flogging unarmed DC-3s from Oz through Dutch New Guinea to the Philippines ... Well, not totally unarmed… they had a Colt 45 and they told they should use the last bullet on themselves if they survived a crash… The Japs wouldn’t believe they knew nothing even though they were Civvies. They might be a bit rough with their questioning.

 

The mate mentioned he’d had a fly of a Tiger Moth recently and, “Hell Charlie, there’s nothing to do in the checklists!”

 

I sat up, but knew ‘to keep my gob shut around my betters’

 

I thought, “Whaddya mean? … Trim … set, Throttle friction nut… tight, fuel…on and sufficient, switches…on, slats…locked, instruments… Altimeter, ASI, tacho compass, oil, pressure checked etc. hatches ‘n harness and controls.

 

 

Fuel... sufficient. Half full.

 

Inexperience… knows one hundred percent of what it knows but hasn’t a clue of the huge world out there. Jet and instrument pilots know volumes of stuff VFR blokes haven’t heard of yet.

 

Those two old blokes were doing VAR approaches in **** weather at many aerodromes they went to.

 

VAR was four, set radio beams in a rough cross, not the three hundred and sixty of the VOR. Two beams, sort of opposite each other, eg one north and the other south of the station, moved a needle so you knew you were left or right of those beams, they used a blue side and a yellow side, while the other two were pushing out Morse code in say, east west directions. The beams could be moved away from opposing each other by maybe twenty degrees or so to allow for turning points on an airway or line up on runways.

 

You knew where you were, sort of, by looking at the needle and listening to the Morse… “We are on the yellow side in the A hemisphere”.

 

They might have to do an aural instrument approach… Fly along the sound beam, continuously listening to the Morse code. One side of the beam you’d hear an A the other side an N. when you were on the beam you’d have the two superimposing each other…. A continuous tone as dot dash was heard at the same time as dash dot.

 

They’d have to fly on times and descend to safe levels at specified time intervals, do procedure turns and if they got it right they could go down to a minimum altitude to hopefully break out of the overcast and land.

 

I have to agree with them now …There isn’t much to check in a Tiger Moth.

 

This old lady has a Chipmunk engine in her with extra horses so she gets the tail up and leaves the ground in a hundred or two, metres. Climb away at a cozy fifty eight knots and twenty one hundred RPM with a nice clatter of four exhaust stubs chattering into the slipstream

 

You know if you’re slipping or skidding in a turn because the wind comes into the cockpit from one side or the other. Normally you just get little wafty breezes when you are keeping the skid needle centred.

 

Chuck had given me gloves and a helmet… never needed the gloves and the helmet was a bit of a pain as one earphone wasn’t working and the mike had come adrift and I had fun locating it when I needed to talk.

 

Letting the hatches down gives you a free field of vision beside you as you cruise along. You can even sit with your elbow hanging out if you like. With them up they are up to your shoulder so you feel quite enclosed.

 

We oozed out to my place and circled to say hello to the Memsahib. She was either napping or watching TV and didn’t hear us flying around.

 

 

Chuck asked if I wanted to do some aeros… “You betchya!”

 

I’d get some footage with my two cameras looking forward and maybe one pointing out to the side while Chuck’s looked at us and the tail.

 

Mini Helmet camera went blank…. ‘Bugger flat batteries! S’OK I got me Sony”.

 

Soon as we started tearing downwards to get up enough speed to get over the top of a loop, the Sony went on strike and flashed messages at me for about twenty seconds.

 

Loop! …over by the time it wanted to work again.

 

Cuban eight, Barrel Roll, Spin… every time the ****** camera couldn’t handle either the G forces or more likely all the noise and bluster of the wind.

 

The tiny windshield was a bit dirty so I was holding the camera above it.

 

Same thing happened when I hung the camera out of a Havard a year ago.

 

Looks like hard drive cameras need a quiet place.

 

I’ll have to try and get the old tape one going again as it worked well when I hung onto it out in the slipstream of a DC-3.

 

I told Chuck that was enough with the aeros, I was feeling a bit off. Too many years flying gently around to keep the customers happy.

 

Chuckie said, “Wanna go back, or up to the Glasshouse mountains”

 

We went north and got close and personal to the ancient glistening trachyte, volcanic plugs and the immaculate patchwork of pine forests and pineapple patches.

 

 

The wind was kicking up a little bit of turbulence so many clips have to be edited to a few seconds… all I need really.

 

The sun was out and beaut fair-weather cumulus gave the horizon an interesting bright contrasty look in the yellowy winter sunlit foreground..

 

Onwards over the pine forests and Bruce highway at a bit over 800 ft, past Wildhorse mountain to the Bribie passage and then southbound, looking down on very expensive boats and coves looking up at us while wasting their time feeding toadfish from their tinnies.

 

I was filming all the time trying to get the ambience of travelling at eighty knots surrounded by bits of pipe and rag covered sticks, looking through struts and wires.

 

Turbulence at that slow speed isn’t bad … sort of woozie rather than thumps.

 

 

We entered a quiet circuit and crabbed along lined up on the grass beside the runway, with the usual cross wind and landed nice and gently on the mains and the tail slowly settled as we decelerated.

 

 

Stops pretty short so Chuck jumped out and walked her home while I played with video cameras.

 

 

Not much fuel to refill her from the bowser and Chuck lifts the tail up and pushes her to the hangar with any helpers pushing a strut.

 

Put her away in the hangar and Chuck got out a rag and lovingly wiped the oil that had collected in the bottom of the cowl so now she looks like new.

 

He attached his helmet camera to his laptop and was disappointed to find it had played up and hadn’t filmed the aerobatics. There’s been a problem and now he knows it’s the camera seeing as he has the other bit replaced already.

 

Gunna have to go and do it all again aren’t we.

 

Next time I’ll take something to sit on and get a few inches higher… couldn’t see over the dashboard.

 

Back when Tiger Moths were the normal starting off aircraft, the clubs had collections of standard sized cushions. There were two sizes, three inch fat ones and ones half as thick. When you started out on day one you’d sit in the cockpit on what the instructor reckoned was the right combination so you could line up certain parts of the aircraft. That way everyone could see the same view.

 

The seats still were just the pan for parachutes. I was a two and a half cushion man. Tall blokes got no cushions. THEY sat on an aluminium dish and developed the technique of gentle landings very rapidly… no padding under them.

 

That idea of standard eye position came back in the DC-9 when we had to set our seat so we could line a couple of things up in the cockpit…. Forget what now.

 

The 737 had three orange balls set on a plate attached to the centre pillar of the windscreen. We’d raise the seat and move it sideways, back and forward till the far ball and the one on our side were lined up. We would be in the correct eye position to be able to see over the nose and downwards to the correct angle where the correct lead in light’s crossbars would appear as we busted out of cloud at minimum altitude in an instrument landing.

 

Funnily we weren’t cold after an hour and a quarter in the air, even though it was a pretty cool day for Brissy. I think it was because we were having fun just mooching around in an aeroplane.

 

We followed a similar career path, although Chuck has had the more serious adventures. He flew in PNG for around ten years and flew into many of the short, high, hair raising strips I flew past and thought “Holy smoke!”. He’s also flown larger Boeings than I have, in and out of ports I don’t want to know about like, Heathrow, Singapore, European and Middle Eastern airspace… all the horribly busy places with complicated airways in and out with impossible accents coming over the radio that have you asking the other bloke, “Wha’d ‘e say?”.

 

To me, it’s like, Chuck rode a kayak down the wild rapids of aviation while I walked along the path beside them.

 

 

[siznaudin]

"...bits of pipe and rag covered sticks, looking through struts and wires."

 

Sixties, you are a true Romantic - and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

 

What a beautiful account: thanks for posting it...

 

And how interesting that it was the you-beaut modern camera gear which gave the problems - not the old technology rag, string and tube aircraft!

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Hi Siz

 

The the only way I'm going to get the movie I want is wait ....

 

Remember waiting?

 

Wait till I've gotten another three or four days of clips.

 

I plan to go to the aerodrome when he's flying again and get some fill in stuff. Throttle moving, rudder and stick moving. Close ups of starting from the exterior. Getting in behind her on take off for the beaut close up of the tail that diminishes as she hoots down the runway. Go to a hill overlooking the area to get the aeros. Go to the Glasshouse mountains to get her flying around them. Then I can string it together to get the feeling and sights of a fly in a stringbag.