Ahhhh Austerrrrrrrrrr (Merged)

[RiskyRossco]

Cooda/LowNSlow

Thank you for your comments. There was, I knew, a connection 'twixt Taylorcraft and Auster though lost in the mists of time.

[pulse1]

My first ever XC experience was in Auster G-ANFU from Cardiff to Coventry for the Lockheed aerobatics championship. With his brand new PPL, courtesy of a Flying Scholarship, a friend gave me the job of navigator. although I only new the theory from my ATC training.

Anyway, on a hazy day we ended up well left of track, over Birmingham which we easily recognised because it had the name writ large on a hangar roof. Fortunately for us, this was before Birmingham had a large control zone and we were above the ATZ.

After a boozy weekend thanks to Shell hospitality, we set off back to Cardiff and, once again, we ended up well to the left of track and would have ended up in Bristol if it wasn't for the obvious signs of the Severn Estuary.

It was only two weeks later that we happened to notice that the ASI was calibrated in mph and all my calculations had been in knots.

I see that ANFU, with it's Lycoming engine, is still on the register but the C of A expired in '76. Does anyone know of her present whereabouts. She used to belong to the Welsh commedian, Stan Stennet, who I'm sure few will remember.

My pilot went on to a distinguished flying career in the RN and, before his untimely death, worked hard to get the only surviving Sea Vixen flying. I am pleased to see that they have printed his name under the cockpit in recognition of that. I hope that they keep it there after it's repaint.

[Aerohack]

Lovely photos, Mr Grubby, especially that red/white Mark V. G-ANFU (or part of it) is on rebuild in Newcastle, incorporating rear fuselage and wings from three other Austers. I remember Stan Stennett having the then tri-gear Cessna 170 G-APVS, then Bonanza G-APTY, both named 'The Minstrel'. Both still exist, though the 170 has long been converted back to standard tailwheel gear.

[LowNSlow]

Great pics Mr. Grubby . When I get back to the world I'l try to get some pics of AM posted.

BOAC embarassing isn't it :o

bingoboy I have heard of Austers which have had their paperwork disappear and the only way of registering them again is via a PFA permit. I've also been told that it can be the only way to get a "bitza" made up of other airframes into the air......... Realistically speaking, if you use an engineer to do/assist with your maintenance, the costs aren't hugely different between PFA and CAA. As the PFA route has been closed for Cubs etc and people realise that Austers aren't the wayward beasts they are made out to be, I reckon that their value is set to increase. I'm not going to go and buy a hangar full based on this theory however.....

[Mr_Grubby]

Aerohack


The photo of G-AOFJ was taken soon after landing at Doncaster after a flight from Perth in Scotland. I have flown many hours in FJ, or ‘Mabel’ as she has always been known.

She has an interesting history. Her previous owner, a lady, attempted to fly her out to Kenya. However leaving Tripoli, I think it was, the propeller was damaged and that was the end of the trip. Mabel was pushed into a hangar where she stayed for several years.

In the early 70’s my friend flew out to Tripoli on a schedule flight carrying a new prop. as hand luggage. He fitted it and flew Mabel back to the UK.

She had a Lycoming engine and an extra fuel tank fitted between the wheels. There was no gauge on this tank. We would fly on the tank and time when we switched over from one tank to the other. One day over Basingstoke we miss calculated our maths and the engine stopped. She had no starter motor and always had to be hand swung. Fortunately we were high and stuffed the nose down, changed tanks, and watching the Vne, managed to get the engine going.

In 72 we took her down to Biaritz. It took two weeks. Longest leg was Biaritz to Tousouss Le Noble non stop four and a half hours. I remember following a long straight railway line somewhere near Poitiers and being overtaken by a train. We landed in a thunder storm and the hail stripped all the paint off the leading edge of the wings.

Then Mabels C of A expired. She was based at Blackbush. She was completely recovered and given the current red paint scheme. I think Cliff Lovell did the work.

We flew many hours in her. Even once, four up. Never again. She was never meant to carry four. Maybe we were just too fat ! Possible.

Then my friend moved to Perth and took Mabel up there. She flew a bit but in 1979 the C of A expired again. She is still in a hangar up there. I saw my friend last summer. He hopes one day to get her airborne again but she needs a lot of work doing.

A sad end to a fine lady.

Mr G.

[Oscar Duece]

Ah Auster. A real aeroplane.

If only the Caa and Pfa could work something out that would allow them onto a permit scheme. It really would save a lot of money.

After all they are over fifty years old. Really only used for pleasure flying by private individuals and of a very simple design.

I am sure this is part of the reason they cost so little (ish). Yes I have heard of the phantom re construction method of doing it. But I though flying was an honest community.

Also who does own the type certificate. I thought it was bought by Hants and Sussex after the collapse of Beagle in the late sixties. (with only the Beagle designs going to SAL). What happened after that ??

[Fokkerwokker]

I speak from a position of minimum knowledge on the subject of Permit vv Cof A BUT.....................


I am with Oscar Deuce on this one.

Time for a realistic rethink on Permits for genuinely vintage aircraft? Better to see them in the sky rather than a'moulderin' in the hangar.

Bregds

FW

P1 on G-AMZI/G-AOZL/G-AXRR/ and a bunch of others!

[grow45]

Had my first flight ever in an Auster (G-AGOH - engine test bed for the J1 and now resident at Newark Museum) from Leicester at the age of about nine. Still remember it clearly - particularly the odd (to me at the time although I know better now) way it turned by banking rather than turning flat like in a car and also being suitably impressed by the fact that the pilot (who I think was called Phil Goodwin) had flown Lancasters during the war.

I also still have part of the fuselage fabric from it with the registration on it pinned to the wall in my study - I was given it when she was re-covered to her current cream and green scheme shortly after my flight. (I like to think this is a slightly better way of collecting aircraft registrations than simply writing them in a book).

I recently also had the pleasure of taking up my nine year old son for his first flight in a light aircraft (sadly only an Archer) and I hope he remembers it as well as I did mine in years to come.

grow45

[LowNSlow]

Fokkerwokker entirely agree on the need for a rethink regarding the certification of old aeroplanes. Can't see it happening in my lifetime though given the recent reverses regarding Piper Cubs etc.


grow45 my 4 year old thinks flying in the Auster is great as long as we do steep turns and Battle of Britain breaks

[treadigraph]

Grow 45, don't give the Reggie S Potters ideas! They'll all be wandering around with sharp kives and metal shears! And getting arrested...

[GotTheTshirt]

Very versatile plane the Auster

We had an Auster in the flying club at Burnaston that was rented by a Mr Setty.
He did a quick trip to the south Coast and back.
When it came in the hangar for check there was blood under the carpet on the back platform
Cant remember the reg
Apparently got rid of his wife.

I seem to remember that they couldnt do much as there was no body.

[Vick Van Guard]

Don't forget to check out the Auster Club

Excellent members magazine to.

[Aerohack]

GotTheTshirt: If this is the same Setty I'm thinking of, he was the victim rather than the murderer. Stanley Setty was an East End used car dealer. He disappeared in October 1949, along with £1,000 in cash — a very tidy sum back then. Some time later a wildfowler on the Essex marshes found a parcel that contained the dismembered torso of a man who had been stabbed to death, and forensic examination revealed this to be Setty's. There was much newspaper publicity, which prompted members of a flying club at Elstree to report to the police that one of their members, Brian Hume, had hired an Auster around the time of Setty's disappearance, and had been seen loading parcels aboard. When the aircraft returned it had a damaged window. On questioning, Hume claimed the parcels contained forged petrol coupons that he'd been paid to dispose of at sea. He was tried for murder but acquitted when the jury failed to reach a verdict. He was, however, found guilty of being an accessory to murder, having claimed that the coupon forger must have killed Setty, and was given a life sentence. This has gone down as the first recorded occasion in British criminal history on which the body of a murder victim was disposed of from the air. I have it in mind that the Auster involved was later given away as a prize n a competition organised by a national newspaper, but may be getting confused with something else.

[GotTheTshirt]

Aerohack,
Yes seems like the same episode.

At Burnaston we did the maintenance for Elstree Flying club ( Austers, Maggies) and David Ogolvy was a regular visitor. He flew the Sparton Mossies when we did them.

Originally it was the Wolverhampton Flying Club (Ron Paine) that first moved into Burnaston when it opened up.


Non aviation follow up but the fate of Mr Donald Hume is quite interesting !!

... Donald Hume served eight years in Dartmoor Prison before being released. ... not one to stay
out of trouble for long, he shot and killed a taxi driver in Switzerland. ...

He got life in Switzerland which in Switzerland means exactly that

[Aerohack]

Yes, looks like we're singing to the same song sheet. It was Brian Donald Hume, and he was known by his second given name. I presume he ended his days in a Swiss jail. I'm pretty sure the Auster still exists, but so far its identity has eluded me. I had G-AGYD in mind, but that was 'Mad Major' Christopher Draper's mount for his London Bridges escapade.

I remember seeing one of the Spartan Mossies that didn't get delivered rotting away at Hurn in the early 1960s. David O later became (and remains) a friend and now a colleague on AOPA's relaunched 'Geneeral Aviation' magazine, for which I pen the odd word. Small world.

[treadigraph]

Aerohack, I have a vague recollection of hearing about the Mad Major - how many bridges did he manage, and when was this? I seem to remember he was drawing attention to something...

On a similar vein, I have an equally vague recollection of someone flying a Rallye through the Arc de Triomphe in the late 70s/early 80s - I didn't imagine this did I?

Treadders

[CamelPilot]

While I was writing this two posts appear about the same thing!

No Treadders you didn't imagine it - it did actually happen. I tad hairy too. A gust of wind caught the pilot out and he had to make a sharp adjustment! If you can call it that.

In my youth - about 10BC - I saw the intrepid Major Draper fly under Westminster Bridge on the Thames. He did all the other bridges from Tower to Wandsworth if I am correct. I think he was fined about £50 - maybe his licence was endorsed as well - but it was considered fun by many, including me, but when I later learned what it took to do it - I realised it was bl@@dy dangerous.

However, I later flew in Army Auster 7's at Kenley and at Middle Wallop, and the the bubble tyred 9, a lovely aeroplane.

Then even much later while training the Leisure Sport team at Lands End at Easter 1977 I flew 'our' Auster J4 - G-AMRF - and gave a couple of glider tows. Amazing that! A guy who lived at St Ive's 'heard' that there was and Auster at St.Just, and just happened to bring his glider along He got his tow for his cheek.

Later, in 1985 I bought an Auster - G-ATDN - dressed in camouflage and with the Army No TW641. Had that aeroplane for a few months, displayed it at Fairford, West Malling, Biggin and other shows before selling back to the original owners, whose daughter now flys it 'here and there.' They did rather well out that as a matter of fact because I put a Txponder in it together with a rather good radio stack.

Those were indeed the days!

[Bus429]

Anyone ever fly, or fly in, an AOP 9? It had a Blackburn Bombadier (180 HP) and went like a pocket-rocket.

[Aerohack]

Major Draper flew beneath every bridge from Waterloo to Kew, barring Hungerford, which he skipped over because "it looked too dangerous". He had 27 years previously flown a Puss Moth under Tower Bridge, and been fined £100. The Auster escapade was no impromptu act. He'd planned it for 18 months and made nine boat trips along the route to assess the gap beneath the arches at different tides. By the time he landed 'GYD back at the Herts & Essex Aero Club at Broxbourne the police had already been on to its owner, the speedway rider Buster Frogley, who was waiting for Draper and Joe Matthews, the cine cameraman who'd accompanied him. Draper apologised and told Frogley, "Don't worry. I don't suppose I'll ever fly again." "You bloody well won't from this club," Frogley assured him. Draper's pilot's licence was immediately suspended, but at the inevitable court appearance threats of a swingeing fine and up to four years in jail receded. A sympathetic magistrate gave him a conditional discharge on payment of ten guineas costs. Draper, who had been unable to find employment because of his age (no change there, then) said he made the flight "to prove that because a man is over 45 he is not necessarily ready for a wheelchair".

The Rallye-through-the-Arc flight certainly took place. I remember that at the time some people pooh-pooed it, claiming that, dimensionally, span-for-span, there was bags of room. Still looks very tight to me, though arguably less fraught than driving around the Etoile at rush hour. The Aerospatiale test and demonstration pilot Maurice Seree once flew a Rallye thorough a cave (or maybe it was several caves) in the south of France. Anyone remember Maurice's party-piece, often demonstrated at the Biggin Air Fair and Farnborough? He'd get the Rallye to live up to its 'tin parachute' nickname by doing a steep, fishtailing deadstick landing culminating in virtually zero ground roll. I was once privileged to ride with Maurice on a wave-hopping trip around some of the smaller islands in the French Antilles in a Rallye 235GT that he was ferrying to a customer in Venezuela. Shadowing porpoises low over the Caribbean is one of those lifelong cherished memories, that and the subsequent four-up deadstick into a tiny dirt strip that, with Maurice's short-field technique, seemed like 5,000 feet of runway.

[treadigraph]

Thanks Aerohack and Camel Pilot...

The Arc looks tight to me too!

I do recall seeing Maurice's Rallye act at Farnborough - brilliant stuff. I remember hearing about him flying backwards in a stiff breeze at one Air Fair. Wish I'd been there...

In the Caribbean - you lucky so and so... One day...

On the Monday or Tuesday after one Farnborough, '78 I think it was, one of the Aerospatiale pilots - presumably - was ferrying the tail-wheel 235 (The Agricole?) back to Tarbes via Biggin Hill (courtesy call to ATS?). He lined up on 29 in the teeth of what seemed like a gale (a Pitts S-1 that took off ahead of him left the ground in no time and climbed like a home-sick angel), applied power and reshaped the prop into an interesting and decidedly aerodynamically inefficient curve on the tarmac!

I remember that day very well as I came across an interesting shape on the ramp outside Surrey Aviation - an EP-9 Prospector... I'd never heard of that one before!