Where Are They Now?Please feel free to post contact information here if you are looking for long lost friends or trying to find out what has happened to colleagues. Obituaries and condolences can be posted here too.
I would like to ask a huge favour to any of the ex Trident pilots on this thread that if you could post in ICARUS on our behalf to ask any ex trident pilots to send their flight imformation of G-ARPO to us as we are trying to get to our first hundred of pilot entries and we are at 86. My email is tonyjarrett73@btinternet.com and our website is www.savethetrident.org. We would also like to ask on icarus if any one would like to donate through the trident website if they would like to help us . We are saving towards a carpet for the front as well as 33 seat covers that we will need to buy the material.There is also a lot of other bits and pieces we will need to buy as we progress like sanding discs for the outside, for when we treat the metal and etch prime. We also wouldlike to put a solid fill in the tyres . Any help will be gratefully received . many thanks tony
No idea, but I flew "father and son" on the S1-11, only once 'cos the management didn't like it! Something about it wouldn't look good if there was an incident - go figure.
Hi Tony, I am new to these forums but my father, Capt. Frank Wheeler, flew G-ARPO several times between 1980 and 1982. I have all his log books, what do you need? Emma
Emma, was Frank ex Northeast ? If so, enjoyed flying with him on the 1e (except for the pipe smoke) ! Excellent handler, very cool & one of the very few who, in those days, nurtured his co-pilots with the "leg for leg" philosophy.
Emma, sorry to hear of Frank's passing. A truly exceptional Trident pilot and ready to pass on years of experience and knowledge whenever asked. Oh & before other readers not in the profession wonder about "leg for leg" and just what on earth were trident pilots up to on the flight deck; a leg is a sector. London to Leeds, say. Two sectors = two legs, etc. On the glorious Trident, we were crewed with a Capt, a First Officer and on the T1e, a real Flight Engineer. Captains & first Officers, both being pilots, would hopefully, share the flying because on each leg, one pilot would be nominated the handling pilot and the other, non-handling pilot. The handling pilot flies the plane while the other looks after comms, navigation, telling jokes etc. Captains would decide who was to fly the plane. In Northeast, very few gave away any flying. Frank always swopped handling legs and laughed his head off when chaps like me got the last 50ft , or so, completely wrong. On a three leg day, he would regularly give away two legs and operate just one, himself. Sorry this is a lot more boring than you might have immagined! Raising a glass to Frank right now and all fellow Trident Pilots. Good luck to Tony & G-ARPO.
Hi All, Just would like to ask you all to go to our website and see the new pictures we have on there of the new carpet and vinyl now down, more pics to be added over the coming day or two. We will be refurbishing the seats next Any donations truly welcome if anyone would like to help as we are saving money for two tables that we will be making for the BKS livery in the inside front plus also need to buy chipping to roll trident back onto the new ground we are preparing.. If you still know pilots who havent given their flight imfo of PO to us yet could you talk with them on our behalf as its so important to this project we get as much of the flight history back as we are not all around forever as the years roll by.
Thankyou to all your kind words and support
regards tony
Hello Emma, another FW fan here! When I joined BKS in 1966 I was posted to the HS748 based in Leeds. Before I took up residence there I had to take a 2 week groundschool course in the BKS operations building at Heathrow north-side. The instructor was no less than Frank! Having survived that I moved up north and duly appeared for the aircraft training which consisted of doing circuits and bumps (a series of take-offs and landings) both by day and by night. We also had to practice flying on one engine and various other manoeuvres. The instructor was – yes, you’ve guessed it – Frank.
He was an excellent instructor and had endless patience with us 20 year old sprogs who had come straight from flying school with 150 hours flying under our belt (about 2 months worth of flying with BKS!). Subsequently I flew with Frank many times both on my training and then on ordinary line flying both on the 748 and then the Viscount, I too remember the pipe smoke, but to be fair he wasn’t the only one to indulge in those more liberal days.
I left BKS in 1970, which if I remember was around the time he was “dating” your Mum and again if my memory serves me right she was a ground girl at LBA. We had all assumed that he was a confirmed bachelor – after all he was the same age as my father – and were delighted he had found a partner at what we then considered such a late stage in life.
If you consult his logbook then you will find 4 entries between 20/12/66 and 22/12/66 on HS748 G-ARMX, which were my training between Leeds and Tees Side and I then flew several times with him again on line training between Christmas and New Year before being let loose without supervision on January 1st. It is just coming up to the 46th anniversary of those meetings and since then I completed another 23k+ hours and am myself retired. I cannot remember what I had for lunch yesterday but remember those days with the greatest clarity and they were made memorable by the companionship of people like your Dad and many other war-time pilots who were happy to impart there knowledge to the next generation.
Gordomac and Flightwatch, thank you so much for your reminiscences and kind words, they mean a great deal to me.
Flightwatch you are right, he was dating my mum then, I was born in 1971 and had my first flight aged 2 months old, when dad flew a Britannia on her last flight up to Newcastle on New Year's Eve 1971. Mum remarried and now lives on a boat, if you saw the BBC Diamond Jubilee coverage you would have seen her being interviewed.
I imagine dad's experience in training young pilots came in handy when dealing with small children and later, of teaching stroppy teenagers to drive He was usually very good-humoured and patient, only occasionally losing his cool, wallpapering usually being the culprit.
Anyway, thank you so much again for your memories, they really are appreciated.
Have I passed through a time-warp, or have several posts disappeared from this thread? I'm sure 'morecomfortableseat' posted here yesterday (15-12-12).
Hi It appears that seems the case, maybe a glitch occured on this thread, All we could do is ask if your post has disappeared, could you repost on here .
(although he did give up a few years earlier)
Emma
