Louis, sometimes just an ordinary day's flying can be 'special':
It’s cold at Barton airfield; the low morning sunlight is glistening on frost covered hangars, parked aeroplanes, and even the concrete taxiways. The Chipmunk, usually such a reliable starter, won't. After 40 minutes of priming, sucking in and hand-swinging the prop, Rick, our engineer, instructs us to hold up the tail. With some difficulty, two of us raise the tail to the flying (level) attitude, Rick primes the engine, we put the tail down, and she starts first swing. Priming the engine involves pumping fuel into the engine inlet manifold, where it should vaporise to be drawn into the cylinders as the propeller is rotated to ‘suck in’, thus filling the cylinders with inflammable fuel vapour to enable the engine to start.
"Prime was only reaching the back cylinder" says Rick as he walks away. I’m too thankful that the engine has started to ask what this has to do with the sub-zero temperatures. Later I realise that when the air is warmer, the pooled fuel at the back of the tail-down inlet manifold vaporises and all four cylinders get a whiff of the vapour as it’s sucked in prior to starting. In the freezing air of this morning, it just sits there un-vaporised next to the back cylinder and may just give that one a small whiff. Raising the tail allows all four cylinders to suck in some vapour.
Runway 27 right is in use, so off I go west towards Warrington, then south down the Low Level Route through the Manchester Control Zone, noting the high groundspeed readout on the GPS once southbound in the northerly wind. Out over Shropshire into a very bright low sun and now clear of the altitude restrictions of the Low Level Route I climb to 4000 feet to pick up a stronger tailwind and to do a few loops and rolls. First, a loop; as the nose comes up, the ‘G’ comes on and I’m pressed hard into my seat. Farms and villages disappear under the wings to be replaced by sky. Ease off the pull on the stick and Shropshire re-appears over the canopy-top from behind as we coast over the top of the loop before the landscape expands past the nose, then sweeps back under the wings as we finish the loop. But rather than levelling off, I keep the stick back until we have about thirty degrees nose up, check forward - and roll. The landscape travels a-r-o-u-n-d the windscreen up one side, inverted in the top of the screen as I hang in my straps, then down the other side. I pull up again, and roll exuberantly the other way - magic! This is fun, and being a Saturday, RAF Shawbury is unmanned so there’s no hassle of radar vectors from them around their helicopters in the Military Air Traffic Zone.
North of Telford I let the height bleed off, down to 1500 feet, and call the Strip. The strip owner answers on his handheld radio. He has got anti-flyer problems in the vicinity, so I feather off the power for a nimby-friendly steepish but almost silent glide from wide downwind weaving between the farms and scattered houses to a silky touchdown onto the initially uphill runway 33, then I put power on to keep it rolling up the grass slope to the level ground by the clubhouse amusingly labelled ‘Terminal One’, and reach up to unlatch the canopy and slide it fully back on its rails. I swing the Chipmunk around in front of Terminal One where the owner is standing, flick the mag switches ‘off’, and the prop clanks around a few revolutions flickering in the glare of the sun. Then there’s silence; just the whine of the gyros running down, and the tinks and clinks of cooling metal.
There’s a warm welcome, and we enjoy a cup of tea in the clubhouse and chat about his campaign for survival of this glorious rural haven in the shadow of the Wrekin. The Chipmunk, red and pert parked with its tail towards us on the green grass, nose in the air seeming to anticipate flight, looks classic and timeless – the perfect compliment to this country aviation scene.
Time to go, and I’m roaring up runway 33 again, tail high and airborne before the level section of the runway. An immediate steepish left turnout over the western boundary, waving to the owner by the clubhouse as I turn, keeps us neighbour-friendly. I climb to 3000 feet past Sleap for some more aerobatics before letting it come down low by Rednal to see if the owner of that ex-RAF airfield is there. He isn't, and I decide to cruise home on a low level sight-seeing tour to minimise the effect of the headwind.
From eight hundred feet and looking down sun, the bare-branched beech woods cast long shadows across frosty-white Shropshire fields. Every hill and undulation is side-lit and picked out in sharp relief in the golden winter sun - even the sheep each cast a shadow several times the length of the animal. Sleeping villages with golden stone churches, flashes and meres, the lonely remote Whixal Moss, secret places in the middle of a wood, grand country houses and estates, lonely farms down muddy tracks, occasional main roads with beetling traffic, white finger posts at remote country lane junctions all sweep under the Chippy's wings.
I skirt around the Peckforton hills and past the castle. A couple of sightseers look across to this graceful red aeroplane. Beeston hill with its castle perched atop its steep sided and isolated prominence passes the right wingtip. Oulton Park motor racing circuit comes up on the left. Those cars are no doubt roaring and squealing their way around the track, but look ludicrously slow and confined from the freedom of Sierra Lima's speeding cockpit.
A familiar voice from the Manchester Approach controller as I enter the Low Level Route again gives me a Flight Information Service, and once past Northwich a direct clearance from there to Barton which gives me some unfamiliar countryside to look at from above. Barton’s circuit is quiet (everyone’s off flying on a day like this) so I join straight onto left base for runway 32, taxy in for fuel, then go for a nice hot cup of tea and something to eat in the clubhouse – and to thaw out. I love that Chippy - but a heater would be nice.
Aren't we lucky to be able to do this? Beats gardening or DIY any day.
I settle down at home in the late afternoon as a big red sun sinks below the garden trees, and I still have a big wide grin that just won't go away.