Quick update.
I've managed some flying, but with just the one day a week available to do anything not connected with work, then Mrs. Km's birthday and a trip to the doctor's can be added to the list of flying no-gos, alongside the usual culprits. My plan was to convert to a 4-seater initially, but a long, hard look at my rapidly-dwindling flying fund (any other musos finding the gigs hard to come by?
) prompted me to take the quickest possible route to the Tiger Club's Turbs. These give you £65/hr all-in flying, if you like open-cockpit taildraggers - which I do! However, to fly the Turbs, the Tiger Club likes you to graduate by way of the Tiger Moth. What a bummer! Oh well, time to grasp the nettle!
Here, I must confess a touch of naivety. I fondly believed the conversion process would invovle a couple of check flights to get you used to the beast. Not a bit of it! There's a whole syllabus to cover, from general handling to navigation. The club sends you up with a "check pilot", who's an instructor in all but name. Mine's a serving RAF instructor, a thouroughly professional guy he is too. We did the upper air work okay and now we're onto circuits.
Now I found the Tiger a pussycat in the air. Light and positive on the controls, though you do have to keep an eye on the slip needle which doesn't always work as expected. For instance, who'd have thought you'd need top rudder in a left-hand climbing turn? Well, in G-ADGT you do! But the day we got onto circuits was a different matter. There was a light northerly crosswind of about 5 knots, and I was all over the place. All over the place on take off, all over the place on landing. I don't think I've had the instructor take over this much for twenty years! Quite a humbling experience, let me tell you. A skittish filly in a crosswind, is the Tiger. More of the same on Thursday.
Last Thursday I thought I needed to do something for myself. I've gone straight onto the Tiger and one way or another I've had the right hand (or front) seat occupied by instructors, examiners and check pilots for the last eighteen months! Since my test I've never sogned out and flown an aircraft all by myself so I thought I'd do just that. I planned a route following the North Kent coast to Sandwich, giving Manston a call, routing down to Dover and so back to Headcorn. 'YL is tech so I used the loaned 152 and had a ball. Weather was clear, the cloudbase drove me lower as I went east, Manston Radar didn't answer my calls (
) the thermals played me up, she flew left wing down and hadn't got as much grunt as 'YL but I had a super time and took loads of piccies.
Next Thursday - back to the Tiger!