Aircraft I have known and loved...and met again!
Today I met Fizzer, for the first same for ages...and I was so pleased.
Fizzer, G-FZZA, is an F22A, a wonderful responsive aerobatic Italian aircraft that used to live at Welshpool, and which I last flew before I discovered helicopters. Two of us flew her to Cornwall for the 1999 total eclipse, the longest flight I'd ever done at that time. She was expensive to hire, and I decided I couldn't afford helicopters AND Fizzer, and I regretfully said goodbye to her. Anyway, she's long gone from Welshpool, but there she was in the hangar at Hawarden when I arrived there to give a trial helicopter lesson. I walked round her, said hello, and tried to discover what she was doing there. I think everyone thought I was nuts.
I got roughly the same reaction at the PFA Rally recently, when I saw the first aircraft I EVER flew. It was only a tomahawk to everyone else, but to me it was the first light aircraft I ever sat in, the first which I ever tried to fly. I thought that made it pretty special.
Similarly, I was upset, and annoyed, when someone wrote off the R22 in which I did my first helicopter solo. How dare they!!!!
Does anyone else get nostalgic about aircraft that have meant a lot to them in the past?