Be Excellent To Each Other

I got over my fear of flying by going up with some dude from Enstone. It was my mate, who wanted to become a pilot, so he arranged a trial flight, and he could bring friends, so I said I'd pop along as well, as I'd been drinking and was over confident (see also: "Yeah, I can ride horses, I'm pretty neat at it, even the skittish ones"; “Yes, I’ve shot guns before, no worries” and “I’d be perfectly happy to sit in a rubber ring attached to a rope attached to a speedboat in the Solent driven by someone with a 1000cc motorcycle that has just told me his record speed for a wheelie was 130mph down the A3”).

Anyways, we rock up to the airfield and enter some Nissin Building, and it was empty, with an honesty box and a kettle. So, we made ourselves a coffee and dropped some loot in the box and waited.

A few minutes later, the instructor appears, and I kid you fucking not, he had a brown bomber jacket on and an almost handlebar moustache and greeted us with a happy "Good Morning, chaps!". We introduced ourselves and he demonstrated how aeroplanes work with a Lego model that the dog had been chewing (by this time, I'd realised the foolishness of my endeavours, and was able to block out the threat of a dog attack by realisation of the fact that a Biggles impersonator was explaining why aeroplanes don't drop out of the sky using fucking Lego).

Then it was time to walk to the plane, and my heart was seriously thumping and I was feeling slightly fearful. The sort of fearful where your balls retreat up into your body cavity fearful. I climbed into the back and Biggles walked about the ‘plane, chatting with my mate, hitting various bits of the plane and then got in it.

The plane was the size of a small Ford Fiesta but with a couple of wings attached to it (this one, in fact, or one like it). He sticks the keys in or whatever, leans over as I was sat in the back and indicated where the sick bags were if I "needed them". I tried to smile and nodded. Biggles hits the start button and... nothing. Tries again, still nothing.

By this time I was seriously beginning to think that getting out and running would be a good idea, but that would leave me alone, in a deserted airfield, with a dog. I decided that being thousands of feet in the sky with someone who, and it was at this point it dawned on me that I was taking it on a metric fuckton of trust that he actually WAS, someone who could fly this shitheap. Biggles got out of the plane, fiddled with a couple of things out of view and climbed back in. "Forgot to turn the fuel on" he said, grinning.

Great.

Fiesta started on the third go, and we trundled away, and I was now beyond the point of no return. I rationalized this by it making perfect sense that nobody in the plane had actually asked this lunatic if he could do this, the state of the plane and the fact that there was no one else around and this was probably ‘normal’. For psychoactive drug induced values of “normal”. Fuck it, I thought, Worst case is, I'll briefly understand the gravity of the situation, anything better than that is a bonus.

And off we went.

There followed about 5 minutes of my not enjoying it at all, but then I relaxed and was given a map so I could work out where we were. We looked down at the old airfields, now used for storing unsold Rovers, and other points of interest were indicated to us. It was pretty pleasant, to be honest. The next hour passed, and I was actually enjoying myself.

Biggles, turns around in his seat and says “Now, chaps, check this out. This is how you turn all the alarms on at once, enjoy the lightshow” and pointed to the instrument panel.

VROOOOOOM! Went the Fiesta, into a spiral dive. The plane went down, my breakfast almost went up. The noise in the cockpit was really rather loud, with the engine racing and many different sirens, klaxons and buzzers indicating various things that were, in all probability, not great for the airworthiness of the ‘plane. He straightened it out again, climbed back up another 1500 feet and let my friend take the controls for 5 minutes and chatted with us about life in Enstone.

It was time to go home all too quickly. On the way back, we were told we could only use half the runway. Biggles muttered something about hating “Car owning wankers”, and we circled the airfield. Indeed, half the runway was out of use, there was a parade of Ferrari’s going up and down it. “Let’s show them, lads,” he says to us, a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Control, we will be doing a touch and go”
“Roger”

We circled around and lined ourselves up with the runway and began our descent. “Excellent” says Biggles. I sit up to get a slightly better view. In front of us there is the runway, the half of it between us and where we can land, is where the cars are. We’re really rather low at this point.

“The red one” says Biggles, and guns it some. We passed over the top of this open top Ferrari at a height of maybe 25 feet. They probably weren’t able to see us until we were almost right on top of them in their mirror. Dabbing the wheels within the first ten feet of the bit of the runway we were allowed to use, we bounced up did a second circuit and landed.

Home for tea and medals it was.

Best bit? The alarms going off was pretty cool, but buzzing an open top sports car in a fucking aeroplane is even better.

You made me laugh. You get brownie points for this.

He sounds a bit like my flying instructor, the first time I flew with him we headed for the bay and he was 'strafing' ships and flying so low over the water that I'm sure if the waves were a foot bigger we'd have been in it. He did also get warned by the CAA for buzzing his dad on a golf course once.

Nice one, thanks

Good story.. makes me want to play Pilotwings on the SNES again.

The first time I ever went in a plane was with that guy during your lesson.

It was like the Dukes of Hazard had stuck wings on a mini.

Excellent stuff. The plane looks like a Piper of some description, possibly a Cherokee... or maybe a Beechcraft.

When I was in cadets we went on several flying days, one was at the former CFB Downsview airbase in Toronto. We had two planes, a Cherokee and a Cessna 172, and have several goes in each. It was a bitterly cold day, and our flight path was southeast to Lake Ontario over the Scarborough Bluffs, and then turn around, fly along the lake shore for a bit and then back to the base to land.

Many adventures that day, but the best was in the Cherokee. One of us got to sit up front with the pilot and, and two of us crammed into the back seats. Out over the bluffs, he told us to ensure we were strapped in tight. And much like MaliA's Biggles, he climbed and then put the plane into a steep dive and spin. We began to float around the cabin. The layer of dust atop the instrument panel lifted into the air, as did the pile of maps and charts on the shelf behind us in the back. Eventually he recovered from the dive and the two of us in the back came crashing down into a heap of scuffed uniforms, dust and old maps.

Marvellous!

It was a Tobago, IIRC.

"Worst case is, I'll briefly understand the gravity of the situation, "

999 bananas.

Mark - how much does it cost to get a PPL? I've heard figures of around £10,000, which is fucking terrifying.

If that's true, I'll be going for a microlight licence which is around £2,500 and you only need a handful of hours per year to maintain it. Plus I can buy a microlight for the same price and keep it in the shed.

Ah, found it. Socata TB.

PPL stuff is ridiculously expensive, never mind trying to turn that into a CPL.

"Hammond, I'm not allowed to drive the plane at night."

Yeah, my trainee's dad is a CPL and does charter flights and whatnot. I may be asking her to put in a quiet word with her dad on my behalf, as he's a qualified commercial instructor as well.

My old lodger was training for his CPL when he lived with me. He plunged fuck tons of cash into that, and is now a research scientist again, doing a bit of tuition on the side.

I'm not sure now but I can ask my brother's fiancee as she just regained hers after letting it lapse, had to do it all again. It is expensive, and it carries on being an expensive hobby even after you've passed. Basically instructors are usually people who are putting in the hours toward get their ATPL so an hour's flying doesn't cost much less than an hour's lesson. I never got my PPL I just did enough lessons to be able to take off, fly around and land again and I really enjoyed just doing that. I've flown gliders as well and I'd love to do that some more at some point.

PPL is circa £7k, IIRC, and about 42 hours flight time.

CPL - Heh, £25k+

Even if you had your tuition for free, you'd still spend the GDP of a small country on your aircraft rental, fuel, and landing fees.

From elsewhere, doing it in teh states: