Propellerhead - Antony Woodward

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Gingerly I opened the throttle from its tick-over rate of 3,000 rpm. We didn’t move at all until the revs had reached at least 5,000 rpm, when we sprang forward across the fairing. ‘Steady,’ said Sean, promptly reducing the power with the dual lever his side.

      It all felt most bizarre. Although pressing the left pedal turned the plane left, and vice versa, there was a slight delay in the reaction (and it worked much less effectively at low speed). This made it tempting to over-react, and our path towards the airfield commenced in an undignified zig-zag. When we got to the end of the runway, Sean stopped us on a slight upslope into wind and showed me the checks I had to do. These were mercifully few, boiling down to giving the stick a good stir to see that the controls were ‘full and free’, checking our seat-belts and helmet chin-straps were done up, that the few instruments were reading within their limits, and that there was sufficient fuel in the tank. Then he instructed me to taxi round in a circle (to check for any ‘traffic’ in the circuit) and line up. ‘Off you go then. What are you waiting for?’ he said, when I had done so.

      I briskly opened the throttle and immediately incurred criticism.

      ‘Gently—everything you do in flying should be gentle. But positive. And open it fully: that’s only three quarters.’ We began to move forward along the grass, picking up speed. ‘Right, stick forward to raise the tail.’ As the tail came up, the ride stopped feeling rough and bumpy, and she moved much more easily. ‘See? Feel how much better she runs. Right, keep her straight with the rudder pedals. Now. Once you can feel that the tail’s up, just gently let the stick back to where it naturally goes, in the centre. Gently. That’s right. That’s all you have to do. Let the speed pick up now, and…there you are.’ Suddenly the ride felt smoother still, and I realised that the grass underneath the wheels was sinking away from us. ‘See? Simple as that.’ And it really was. The plane took off by itself.

      I knew what to do now, from my Cessna lessons, and began to pull the stick back to make us climb. Sean briskly shoved it forward again. ‘Don’t pull the stick back yet: you’re not flying well enough: you’ll stall and crash. Just let the speed build up ’til she’s flying nicely. OK, now…just ease the stick back.’ A big flock of starlings fluttered into the air and wheeled away from us ahead and to the left.

      In front of us, as we climbed, I could see a town. ‘Dereham,’ said Sean, pointing out the characteristic water tower, a big, ugly, conical edifice, as if a giant, round, plastic funnel had been jabbed into the ground as a mould and filled with concrete. (I did not realise then how much I would grow to love that water tower.) I could see cars moving along the A47 to Norwich. South of the airfield (though at the time I had no idea of my bearings) was the village of Barsham Green, with its church tower. There was another church, of worn and weathered brick and flint and a round tower on the north side of the airfield, and, to the east, a winding river meandered through lakes and gravel pits. A distinctive enough setting, perhaps, for an airfield, but the moment I looked away it disappeared and I was lost over an infinite patchwork mat of countryside.

      That is pretty much all I took out of that first lesson. No doubt we practised a few turns and manoeuvres, but in no time we seemed to be back over the airfield and Sean was telling me to reduce the throttle to 5,000 rpm for my descent. ‘Gently. Christ,’ he said, as I inadvertently overdid it and we started to plummet. The approach to land was by far the hardest part. To judge, in three dimensions, an even descent from where I was in the air, to a specified point on the ground—let alone carry it out by co-ordinated manipulation of stick and throttle—was a task beyond impossible. ‘Right. I have control,’ said Sean, as I nearly hit a hedge a field short of the Barsham runway. He gave a burst of throttle which carried us neatly to the airfield.

      After the confinement and intensity of the cockpit, it was good to stretch, peel off my flying suit and feel the warm air playing around my arms and ankles. The temperature had been about right at 1,000 feet with my ozee suit on. Back on the ground it was uncomfortably warm. As I slumped onto the grass, Coke in hand, and Richard strapped himself in, Sean shouted. ‘Get on with your ground school, Ants,’ (he had taken to calling me ‘Ants’). ‘Don’t just laze in the sun.’ Circumstances, however, were not conducive. The sun blazed from a spotless blue sky, with the breath of a breeze, just enough occasionally to twitch the big windsock on the west of the airfield.

      For lunch Sean took us to the Barsham canteen. ‘We could go into Drear-am,’ he said doubtfully (Sean called East Dereham ‘Drear-am’). ‘But it’s hardly worth it.’ He referred, I knew, to Barsham’s labyrinthine one-way system with its platoons of sleeping policemen and 6 mph speed limit, enforced by the military police with the true viciousness of total boredom. The canteen would today win awards for its authentic war-time-rationing experience. From its bare, wiped-down counters all that was available were triangular meat paste sandwiches on curling Homepride (and maybe an apple or two) and Nice, Rich Tea or Digestive biscuits. The one concession to indulgence were some ‘Club’ biscuits, which turned out to be cracked and pale with age beneath the silver paper. A woman in a nylon apron served cups of stewed tea from a battered aluminium teapot.

      After lunch, Sean showed us how to mix fuel for the Thruster. He added 200 mls of blue Duckhams motorbike oil to a 20-litre jerry can of petrol to make up the two-stroke mixture, then he swung the heavy can vigorously this way and that, twisting it as he did so to mix it. ‘Always make sure you’re putting in two-stroke mixture, not just petrol,’ he said, inserting a funnel with a stocking over the top into the Thruster’s tank. ‘You can tell by the colour. Petrol is straw-coloured. Two-stroke mixture, if you use Duckhams, has a blue tinge.’ He held the jerry can with the spout uppermost until it was half-empty, then turned it so that it emptied without surging and gulping. ‘Never fill up in the hangar, and never over grass. You’ll spill it and we get bare patches.’

      My afternoon lesson felt a little better. The controls were not quite so strange, though I would not always have guessed it from Sean’s noisy imprecations. The taxiing and taking off now seemed straightforward, though Sean grabbed the throttle lever a couple of times while I was taxiing out and consistently told me to slow down. I had observed that while he made me bump and trundle along at a snail’s pace, when he taxied he opened the throttle, raised the tail and scorched along at about 30 mph.

      Once off the ground, however, he couldn’t stop fussing about the air speed.

      ‘Always keep an eye on the air speed indicator. Your cruising speed should be 50-55 knots. Never let the air speed drop below 40 knots. What will happen if you do?’

      ‘We’ll stall.’2

      ‘Exactly. We’ll stall. And what happens if we stall?’

      ‘We crash.’

      ‘Exactly. The plane stops flying and falls out of the sky unless you take steps to recover. So make sure you don’t. Keep the air speed at, say a nice, steady 45 knots when you’re climbing, and somewhere over 50 in the cruise.’ I was sure that what he said made good sense, but the air was so pleasant, and my mood felt so good that I wished he could have relaxed a bit. I had complete confidence that, even if I did inadvertently stall the aircraft, Sean would soon have the situation under control. It was a lovely summer afternoon. Beneath us a tractor was cutting hay, and the scent drifted up. Most of the fields were deep with standing corn which was just turning from green to gold. The view was fantastic—I could almost see the coast—and up here the air was cool and refreshing: there was no doubt that it was the place to be.

      ‘Look at your air speed. Come on, wake up. Now, make a 180° turn to the left, and I don’t want to see the bubble move.’

      I forced my mind back to the task in hand. Another of Sean’s preoccupations was turning out to be the slip indicator: the ball in the horizontal glass tube in the centre of the dashboard. This was supposed to remain central in its window at all times, indicating that the controls—the stick and the rudders—were being used correctly together, or ‘balanced’, in turns. Attempt a turn with too little rudder, or too much, and the bubble shot off to the right or left. In severely unbalanced cases the bubble disappeared altogether.

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