WH's Raven
I was in the States in '99 doing some flight training at Scottsdale with Budd Davisson. He had a prior engagement one morning but took me along. We met with Wayne Handley and Tim Webber at a field north of Pheonix.
The plan was that Budd would take some air 2 air of Wayne flying the Raven. It was a most impressive aeroplane (airplane!) and the finish was superb. Wayne had just broken a bunch of records, including the inverted spin record, I can not recall exactly how many it was but it was something like 72 rotations from 10,000ft. Three is plenty for me!
The photo-ship was a SenecaII with Tim and his "assistant" in the front. Budd and I stripped out the rear seats, took off the left cargo door and loaded ourselves and Budd's camera gear in the back.
We joined up a few miles north of the field and Budd called Wayne into various positions, erect and inverted and all I did was pass Budd various lenses and stop him falling out the door!
The pix were later printed in either Sport Aviation or Sport Aerobatics and the shots were superb.
We landed, pushed the aeroplanes away and were just about to start on the beer.... Wayne and I were chatting about the aeroplane, safely tucked in the hangar when I mentioned Beta.
Son, "Gimme a hand to get this baby out and I'll show you something."
We pushed the Raven out, Wayne jumped onto the wing and said, "Stik, this is what I call a vertical pattern" (circuit in UK/English).
He lined up on the taxiway right in front of us, brakes on, conditioning lever forward and the tail rose; as the PT6 finished spooling he released the brakes, rolled I guess 25 metres and yanked the stick back. The aircraft rotated to the vertical and climbed like the proverbial homesick angel. He called out "1, 000 feet", within seconds and pulled again so that he was inverted and tracking downwind along the along the taxiway at circuit height. After about 150 metres, he pulled again to the vertical downline, popped her into Beta and she slowly descended. It was almost cartoon-like, the propeller was pushing the aircraft backwards.
I kid you not, he was at 30' when he rotated/flared and immediately put the tyres on the taxiway. He ended up taxiing back to the hangar door with the tail up.
Now - he didn't have to do any of that. He wasn't showing off - he chose to show me exactly what his airplane was capable of. A thoroughly decent man and a very good mentor (one of his ex-studes is a US top competitor, display pilot for Red Baron and a mate of mine.) His accident was terribly tragic but he is up and flying again and has been for some time now. One of those aviation days that I'll always remember. I have some photos somewhere to look at when I'm an old man.
Stik