Originally Posted by
Danny42C
Tr.9er (#11869),
Tr.9 - That dates you! I gather that you are one of the Navigating fraternity: I'm sure we were on the four-stud VHFs when I crawled back in under the wire in '49. Let's have a bit of CV. Meanwhile, this is absolutely the right place for your Dad's story; the name does not ring a bell with me (but sometimes that holds true of my own name!)
Danny.
Sorry Danny but I must disappoint you. After his demob my dad trained as a Chartered Accountant and I followed his example in due course. I met my wife during my training and she too is a Chartered Accountant.
I've flirted around the edges of flying. My wife and I lived in Perth, Australia shortly after we married on a two year work exchange and I started flying lessons there. My first instructor in 1982 was a former Vulcan pilot by the name of Adrian Lamborne "a bit of rudder and they're like a fighter", my TIF was in a Cessna C172 and all my lessons were in Piper PA38 Tomahawks. From what you have all said earlier it looks like I'd have been scrubbed in WW2 as it was 12.3 hours before I went solo. I'm sure like all others before me, I remember thinking "Well this is easy" as I took off and climbed to circuit height; at which point the less welcome thought entered the mind "Oh bugger, I've got to get this thing back on the ground myself this time!". And the talking check list has disappeared. I made a nice landing and we went for a cuppa. By the time we came home to UK I had 29.9 hours total and 9.2 hours solo in my logbook and was on the cusp of starting cross countries but hadn't taken any of the exams. Then in the UK we started a family and that was that until in 2007 I decided to start again only this time with the theory first. I passed all the exams at evening classes and then allowed myself to become side tracked with tallship sailing and motor racing. All a bit of a waste of time? No, not a bit of it!
And my user name is a reference to those funny Mk9 Spitfires you're not quite sure about!
I had a 30 minute flight in ML407 in 2011. Would you like to hear about it?