Know Your Subject
Entry posted by caldrail
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I've had a bit of an argument with someone. There's an american chappie on another website, who claims to be a pilot of fixed and rotary winged aeroplanes over fourteen years, who's said a few things that to me seemed casually ignorant. I do actually have some sympathy for Americans, I know they get a lot of stick, but then sometimes they really do ask for it and a few times in the past I've encountered their brash arrogance - or at least the behaviour we Brits see as such. I think sometimes they get a little bewildered by our differences in language and ettiquette.
Who's right? Me or him? Well, I was trained as a pilot in Britain largely by a World War Two veteran, so naturally I can sleep safe in the knowledge that I fly the right way. There is a persistent point of view that "Americans can't fly". Actually, a great many of them can, but just as in any nation you will find good or bad pilots. I'm not the worlds greatest after all.
Perhaps the most interesting real comparison was a chap who popped over from the States to give flying enthusiasts a lecture about his companies homebuilt aircraft range. He knew his subject. Clearly his knowledge of aeronautical engineering was well up to the job of building, or indeed selling, his companies products. The most telling thing though was when this Californian man was asked what he thought of flying in Britain.
"Well..." He mused thoughtfully, "I sat as a passenger on a flight between the Isle of Wight - Is that the right name? - and Fairoaks. Heck, I was lost in the first ten minutes".
My Very Own Aeroplane?
People do get a litle suspicious about my claims sometimes. I understand their reasons. Maybe I just don't conform to their preconceptions of the sort of people who 'do' things, or that they cannot comprehend that someone they know has done something beyond their own horizons. What I never do is lie about it.
As a child I was always imaginative. My desire to fly aeroplanes emerges from those early years, playing out battles with plastic kits and wondering what it would be like to fly those wonderful machines, never mind the inspiration of the books with page after page of exotic aircraft beyond my experience.
As a schoolchild I designed a sidevalve V8 as a project for my technical drawing classes. As an engine, it was horribly crude and it's doubtful it would ever have run succesfully had some idiot actually decided to build it. But it kept me busy. And my teacher was more than happy about that.
Then along came adolescence and my leanings toward aviation could not be contained. My creative instincts took over and I began doodling not only sleek and slippery shapes, but all those interior details that an aeroplane would need. Little by little a seed took hold, and without really understanding what I was taking on, I found myself developing a concept. An aeroplane design. My very own aeroplane.
Ah yes. The "Mark One" as I called it. There was never any official designation. If I were honest it was merely an attempt to realise an adolescent daydream. The problem with making something real however is that daydreams make no account of the realities. In any case, it should be pointed out that a large proportion of designs never reach fruition even with aircraft manufacturers.
It wasn't an especially ambitious design, just a single engined, two seat, low wing monoplane taildragger. Wooden frame, glassfibre skin, fixed undercarriage. I didn't like the typical 'club' trainers or the flashy teardrop 'cruiser' aeroplanes that were becoming the norm back in the seventies, and some of the american oddities like Jim Bede and Burt Rutans offspring, often featured in magazines, were viewed with increasing concern by officialdom. I think deep in my heart I wanted a substitute for warbird flying and at the same time the satisfaction that I'd created this thing myself. Unfortunately, even in the less stringent regulations of the time, my design fell outside the accepted categories.
Of course I was only eighteen or nineteen years old. With no qualification or practical experience of aeronautical engineering, my design fell woefully short on overcoming some of the basic obstacles of system functionality, and I knew very little of the mathematics I would have needed to succesfully convince the Popular Flying Association that the design was airworthy. They set a higher standard than the EAA and for good reason. Back then I wasn't a pilot either, and my experience of aircraft was limited to that acquired as a member of the Air Training Corps. In retrospect, I have to accept I was being hopelessly naive.
That said, I did make the effort. I learned a few things. There was a positive atmosphere in my life at that age. I remember one chap who was part of my cadet flight and in the year above me at the same school who'd managed to get a board game produced commercially. It all felt as if everything was possible if only you found the right door. In my case, I ldidn't know the right equations, and I didn't know anyone who did.
Perhaps if I'd found an engineer who knew more about the practicalities of aviation then something might have emerged from that particular project. As it was I'd reached the point where even I realised it was going no further. It didn't matter. I'd left the air cadets, moving on to further education at college, and music was to become the major focus of my life for the next twelve or thirteen years.
I was thirty one when I found the time and finance to qualify as a pilot. There was a brief flirtation with the PFA but had I found the money and workshop facilities to build an aeroplane for myself, I would have built an established design, which the PFA naturally encourage.
If any paperwork concerning the my little "Mark One" survived the passing of time, it was sent to landfill eight years ago. My father was never a man to value paper you couldn't spend. I have this cute mental image of a seagull nesting in a ragged sun-bleached remnant of faded notes and diagrams with my name on them. You never know.
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