Noted yesterday late that the Tiger field at Jacobs Well is deathly quiet.
All locked up. No signs of life. Hope GS can get the business
up and running again before too long. When the hurly burly's done. When the battle's lost and won.
Re- hot seats. Ann Welch in her brilliant 'Accidents Happen' recounts being in a 3 glider X-country tow in Jugoslavia. Three gliders behind three PO2s.
They were flying close together because the Jugoslav pilots enjoyed flying in close formation. (Their aeroplanes were smaller than the gliders). Shortly after take-off the middle glider, piloted by a Swiss, started to fly in a most erratic manner. This was unexpected because he was known to be a most competent pilot.Ann and the third glider pilot, on either side of the Swiss, watched the performance warily, ready to release if the collision risk became too high.
The Swiss fellow's glider continued to be flown as if the man were inebriated.
Arriving overhead their destination,the Swiss released, opened his airbrakes and went rapidly down, while the others released and stayed up in the evening sunshine as long as they could.
What had happened was that shortly after take-off the Swiss pilot had decided to have a smoke (permitted in fuelless gliders), but his box of non-safety matches had burst into flames and not surprisingly he had dropped them. The ball of fire disappeared out of reach under his plywood seat where the control cables lay.
Thoroughly alarmed in his wooden glider the pilot wondered whether to release and land in the unsafe looking country below, jump out by parachute before this too caught alight, or try somehow to extinguish the fire.
He kept feeling the base of the control column to see if it was getting warm, and wriggling about in his seat to extinguish any hot spots his parachute might be acquiring. During one of these body shifts both bottom seat harness straps came free, charred right through. None of this improved his formation flying capability.
Becoming desperate, he suddenly remembered that he had a bag of plums in his pocket. Laboriously he wrung out the meagre juice from each plum above where he hoped its dribbles would do most good. Not any too soon did the welcoming home airfield appear, with the Swiss pilot losing no time at all in getting back to terra firma.
It turned out that for the last minutes of his flight, there had, in fact, been no problem. The fire had burnt through the bottom of the fuselage and fallen out.
The Jugoslavs thought it was hilarious.