Up, up and away…

Firstly,

I didn’t post as much as I should have last year, I’m not one for resolutions so as for the post count in 2020 we’ll have to see. It really depends how much interesting stuff I get up to.

That said, this daft old collection on nonsense has now been read in 65 countries…

 

Back to the Flying Circus,

The day of the trial flight arrived. I got there early so I had plenty of time to worry about my fear of heights, fear of flying and to consider the  best excuse I could use to wimp out of the whole thing…

I managed to put on a brave face, as well as a reserve pair of undercrackers (you cant be too careful) and knocked gingerly on the door. Mike (the Flying instructor) and Jamie ( the ground school instructor) were great. I spent some time with Jamie and was honest about my fears, he told me that a manageable fear of flying was a good thing and could save my life one day… That’s an interesting point of view and needs to be considered in the context of a Gung-Ho attitude where important checks might be over looked or missed.

Soon enough I was introduced to my ride….

Be honest, when the term Microlight is used this isn’t what you thinking is it?

This is a state of the art, new (as in not a year old) Eurofox 3K. When I was looking at flight schools lots of them were (understandably) running older aircraft with many more hours (usually in the thousands), The Eurofox had just over 500 on her when I stepped in for the first time.

The cockpit is a site to behold with some nifty kit factory installed.

One of the bits you can’t see here is the Ballistic Recovery System (BRS) which is basically a whole aircraft parachute, so if the very worst happens, we wont drop like a stone from the sky.

We spent about 20 minutes running through Aircraft checks, then the pre-start checks, then the Engine start checks. There are a lot of checks….

Soon though, that 100HP Rotax engine was throbbing and we were taxiing to the run way. Before we got there however, there were more checks. Then, before joining the runway there were some checks. That’s more checks than a divorce settlement…

Shortly after we were a full power and pulling into the beautiful blue sky.

Mike demonstrated the exceptional benign handling characteristics and its inherent stability as we climbed and descended, turned this way and that over the beautiful countryside.

as the hour drew to a close Mike asked if I’d like to take the stick for the journey back to the airfield. I said I would, and then….

Maverick and Goose it was not, but it was simply amazing.

Once we landed, taxied to the hanger and did yet more checks, the flight was over and it was decision time.

I still had nerves, I was still far from confident, but I did love the experience. I took a deep breath and signed up… Where this will lead I don’t know, but I’m determined to put the effort in to learn to fly.

If you want to see this actual aircraft in operation, one of my fellow students has a YouTube channel detailing his journey, I’m somewhat behind him in the syllabus, but you’ll get the idea.

Learning to fly with Matt

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bronco Jr’s Flying Circus

I’ve kicked around the subject of learning to fly for what seems like years. There are a couple of basic problems though, I have a fear of heights and a fear of flying…

then….

Sunday 6th October 2019 was a dull day, the weather was crap, it was too cold to bugger about in the garage. I was BORED…. So I fired up the laptop and decided to check out learning to fly.

Back in the mid 1980’s, before the internet, I’d seen am advert for microlights somewhere ( I wish I could remember where) and me and a friend of mine booked a trial lesson. Back then a Microlight was a Hang Glider with a canoe hanging from it and a two stroke engine on the back. In these enlightened times they’re call weight shift Microlights, back then they were just microlights.

Anyway we had a trial flight and it was fun. However I was a student back then I couldn’t afford my next lunch let alone learning to fly, so the microlight flight was filed under “experiences” and I got on with my life.

In the intervening decades I’d though about flying often, but then I’d remember I don’t like heights and, as a secondary point, when on a holiday flight I shit myself if its turbulent. Microlighting had moved on two. No longer was the category all about scaffold tubes and bedsheets, with an old bath dangling beneath, no, these days they were proper aircraft. Its about now that the Weight Shift brigade are massing with burning pitchforks and a copy of some document that proves they are proper aircraft…. They may be, but they’re not for me.

Back to the present day and the boredom and the laptop and Google. Learning to fly General Aviation (GA) aircraft hadn’t changed that much, in fact, checking out the age of some of the various flying schools fleet, many of them were flying back when I did my trial flight. Microlights on the other hand, they’d come on leaps and bounds. You tube is a great resource for researching this kind of thing and I was soon engrossed in Rory On Air and Ben Atkinson 

I was hooked… I wanted to do this… but where?

There were a number of options locally, one school stood head and shoulders above the rest. Breeze Aviation had a proper website and a grown up feel. I’m wise enough to know that any old shit can be dressed up in a nice website, but Breeze were also packing a new, state of the art aircraft. I sent an email…..

Later that same day a gentleman by the name of Jamie called me back, he was very knowledgeable but not in the way that makes you feel dumb, we had a good chat, he suggested I book a trial flight to see how I got on and we could take it from there.

I booked a trial flight…. Monday the 21st October was the day…. What would happen…