DHC-1 Chipmunks and attrition
After making my OP, I soon realised I should have mentioned the UAS Chipmunks, but I didn't anticipate how many of you would have done flying scholarships, or similar, at Scone. The CPL/IR courses like mine represented most of the flying training by 1966. Course 32 started in January, which suggests that CPL/IR courses might have started in or before 1960 - unless the early course numbers were used for PPL students.
If memory serves, there were around half a dozen UAS Chippies in 1966. (Can someone remind me which university?) They looked smarter than the AST ones, and were fitted with anti-flat-spin strakes. Ours were not, and numbered only four at the beginning of the year, so most of us were allocated to the One-fifties, rarely if ever getting our hands on a Chippie - and then only for dual. The Chipmunk guys, who mainly had some previous flying experience, were regarded with a mixture of awe and envy, although some of us were secretly relieved that we didn't have to cope with a tail-dragger.
By the end of the year, we were down to two Chippies. One had stalled in a low turn over the home of a girl the solo student was trying to impress, passing between two trees before hitting the ground, The engine continued for some distance... The other, flying dual, had failed to go-around from a low approach during a practice forced-landing, hitting a stone wall. All three pilots survived with minor injuries at worst, but from then on the type was more or less inaccessible for the rest of us.
Meikleour,
When you were checked out by Lockart, was it an AST or UAS Chipmunk? No, the mid-air (between two Cessna 150s?) was a year or two after I left.
JW411,
Cyril Sweetman did my flight-familiarisation test on selection, and a progress check at about 20 hrs. I don't think Pooch did any instruction in 1966, and I never flew with the CFI.
scotbill,
I remember those great cartoons of instructors in the flying club. Are you saying they've been removed?
mcdhu,
Alec Peddell was my first flying instructor, and sent me solo on the C150. Couldn't have wished for better, and I was sorry when he left for Hamble soon after. (He was also a yachtsman, IIRC.) Don Pow, as deputy CFI, did my CPL dummy GFT (X/C and General).
bcgallacher,
That must indeed have been a shocking experience, and I trust you hadn't previously intended to pursue a pilot career? In the autumn of my own, I was checked out on a Chipmunk for the first time and sent solo. I was greatly impressed by the abilities of my instructor, a semi-retired, ex crop-spraying guy who told me over a beer that he sometimes earned easy money acting as a safety pilot for the well-heeled, but barely competent, owner of an aerobatic biplane. Two months later, I heard they'd spun out of the bottom of a cloud somewhere in Berkshire. May sound illogical, but it affects.