Helicopters and Microlights
I’m not a pilot but I use to work at a helicopter company at Sywell Northampton, this is my "Down Wash Yarn" experience. My role at the company was Ramp Supervisor, this involved me holding a CAT 2 fire certificate and I was also part of the Sywell Aerodrome crash team.
Back in 1998 the airfield asked if I would stand in for the Aerodrome fire fighter, as he wanted a day off, which I was happy to do. At Sywell there is one full time fire fighter, the Chief Fire officer who also was a Controller (FISO) in the tower and the rest was made up of people like myself how worked at the airport.
On this particular day, the first time I had done this job on the airfield, I got the fire truck out and done the fuel checks, the rest of the day was either sitting in the office, re-fuelling or dealing with anything that came up. As the day went on I though I would jump in the fire truck and have a drive round, runway inspection ect., I stopped not far from ATC to watch a Jetranger cross the active and land at the
Jet A1 pumps which are close to RWY 07/25.
Making an approach to RWY 07 was a flex wing microlight, as the microlight got to the point where the helicopter had crossed the runway it started to brake dancing in the air, it landed at least three times before it turned over on the runway. I sat there watching this thinking “Not today, not on my first day… please”. Lucky I was not far away and was there in seconds with the fire truck. As I came to a stop I could see the pilot still strapped in looking at me with a big grin on his face; this made me feel better as I could see he was not hurt. But what made the moment was the Chief Fire Officer appeared puffing, panting, bitch and moaning that it was the second time the fire truck had gone and left him behind and he had to run for it; he was also getting some stick from some of the retain boys who appeared on scene about the same time. I can't say what he said back to them in reply as it's unrepeatable!