Re: Chipmunk's 60th
Had my first engine failure in a Chippy. Malcolm was in the backseat teaching me some low-flying at 500feet over a swamp when the engine started sputtering and was obviously dying. Being my first flight and an ad hoc thing at that, I wasn't familiar with anything, the P-8 compass or the fuel tank selector down on the floor in my front cockpit. Malcolm was a nice chap but he tended to get all excited and stutter badly under stress. When he wasn't stuttering he was stammering. We had Gosport tubes only and through my ill-fitting leather helmet I eventually made out what I thought was the word "fuel". I looked out at the gauges in the wing roots and could only just make out through the dirt and condensation that one of them was flickering on empty. Couldn't make out what the other one was reading. That encouraged me to start looking around and eventually I spotted a likely candidate down in the darkness, on the front cockpit floor. Quickly selected the other selection and was immensely gratified to hear the engine roar back into chippy-song - particularly when I looked up and saw that Malcolm was at 50ft asl aiming at the tree-covered island in the middle of the swamp. When I asked him why later, it was "because he couldn't swim".
He was so shook up that 20 mins later he groundlooped it while landing into a low sunset....so I got a tick in that box as well. After teaching me how to handspin the prop, which was slightly different to the Tiger, He signed me up on it and I had many a fun hour teaching myself aeros and spins. Unfortunately the next Chippy I flew had a completely different configuration and I became a real pain to ATC at a major capital city secondary airport - until, after many NORADIO rejoins, I discovered that it had a Gen Field switch. Switching that on was a monster help and assist to the battery and radio. At age 17 I was immortal and not very tech oriented.
Malcolm Blackshaw, an absolutely tremendous chap. To this day I recall his first words when the engine started coughing and before he started stuttering uncontrollably: "Bloody Hell, rooted by science again".