Frustrated by not having an aeroplane to fly in the current beautiful weather, I took a drive to Insch Airstrip today – another lovely grass airfield hidden away in a low-lying valley at the foot of Bennachie – a prominent hill that almost defines the area as a landmark.

The place was deserted but I found the strip owner there, working away on his group run Cessna 172. I told him I was one of the Auster syndicate members and he gave me a wry smile.

In the hangar was another Auster – a brutish looking J1 Workmaster – a more capable Lycoming powered machine that was designed for crop spraying. One of only nine ever built, it is the only surviving machine of its kind and though a heavy looking lump, I doubt it suffers the lack of take-off and climb performance our loveable old ‘JT’ does.

The Workmaster

Over a coffee in the club house we talked about aeroplanes and the strip – how he and his partner had bought the land from the local farmer in the early eighties and developed it into the immaculate 540 metres of straight running, level ground that it is today, adding the club house to the existing hangars in the early 1990’s.

We also talked about JT and its general lack of power.  With another smile that I took to be a fondness for the old girl, he recounted how it had been involved in ‘several incidents’ over the years, having once being based there.

On one occasion, it had ended up in the trees of the farm at the end of the strip, on another, it had taken out some telephone wires on its struggle to get airborne, but as way of finale, he described how, while a new syndicate member ( an ex Buccaneer pilot ) was being checked out, he had watched from the back of the hangar as the machine veered over the strip boundary, passing close to the windsock and headed straight for where he was stood at the side door to the hangar, at ten feet and ‘just not climbing’. He thought at the time, watching as the sagging frame of the Auster strained along just feet above the crops, that he was going to lose his hangar and possibly more. but at the last moment it had veered away and ‘disappeared down the valley very low’.

I laughed, as I had imagined somehow, that the plane’s performance had grown worse over the years, but this sort of take-off experience was easy to imagine having flown her now for a little under 12 months and he assured me that, ‘that thing has always been underpowered’.

‘If you come in here with the Auster’, he added, ‘make sure you’re on your own and you’re not full of fuel!’ I promised that I would.

He smiled again.’Aye,’ he said, after a suitable pause, ‘every take-off is a drama in that thing.’

God bless JT.