and hand-eye co-ordination which involved a joystick and using the y axis and rotational movement to keep a target centred on a ball.
Ah! Ye olde bouncing ball tests. I wonder how many hundreds of would be pilots have bombed out on those hand and eye coordination tests and been told `you'll never make a pilot`
The RAAF ran a similar bouncing ball test at the recruiting centre in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney 60 years ago. A candidate I knew underwent the test and failed. Fortunately for him the flight sergeant who operated the bouncing ball test knew the candidate's father from WW2 where they had served in the same squadron.
He told the candidate that he would never make a pilot because the contraption never fails. However, since the flight sergeant knew the candidate's father from the old days, he said he would let the candidate through the test but warned him he would certainly never get through a RAAF Pilot course.
The candidate whose name was Mike started his pilot training course at RAAF Base Uranquinty in NSW. I was his flying instructor there and on 17 January 1956 I did Mike's first dual flight in a Tiger Moth A17-705. Over the following months I taught him to fly the Tiger Moth and Wirraway. He then went to RAAF Point Cook for final advanced flying training which included dive bombing and air to ground machine gun firing. He eventually graduated as a Sergeant Pilot with the coveted Wings on his chest.
Mike was posted to Mustangs and Vampires. In the few years he flew Sabres, and other types and became the CO of a RAAF C130A Hercules squadron as a Wing Commander. One of his postings was CO in charge of the recruiting centre at Rushcutters Bay where he had failed the bouncing ball aptitude test many years before.
One evening when all the recruiting staff had gone home for the day, he opened the door to where the bouncing ball machine was kept and switched on its power. He ran the full test on himself and guess what? He failed! So much for the infallible device who proved he would never make a pilot.
So to all those bright-eyed and bushy tailed candidates going for the pilot aptitude test at Oxford CAE or wherever, if you miss out and fail the bouncing ball test, don't think you will never make a pilot. Just go and learn to fly somewhere else.
