Today couldn’t have been a better day for flying; blue skies, warm sun, a lush green landscape to float happily above and a nice little 10 knot south – easterly. Perfect, no? Actually, no. Not if you fly an Auster and not if you fly one out of the boggy marsh that is our home strip.
The western end of the strip is a sodden mess of lumpy, tussocky turf that even I was sinking into as I assessed the surface on the usual pre-flight walk ( I like my cakes and cheese, it’s true, but still, being able to create my own little hollows and swamps just by pressing my feet into the grass a little, really ought not to happen on a well-kept grass runway ). At about two-thirds down the western run, a well-chosen line of traffic cones marks the boundary between useable and un-usable and how right their stout little boundary demarcation is! There was no way the heavy Auster would be able to even taxi on the section beyond the cones, let alone get airborne from it. What to do?
I had two choices: 1) Either give it a go from the line of cones, taking off into wind and hope that JT could get me airborne and climbing before the trees at the far end in only 2/3 of the distance I would normally use, or 2) Give it a try with the slight tail-wind I would have from the other end, where I would at least have good grass to accelerate on and no trees on the climb out, with more space to accelerate in Ground Effect above that sodden mess that was the western end of the strip.
Peering down the strip, the trees looked horribly close. I didn’t fancy that option. I eyed the windsock and tossed some grass up into the air. I guessed I’d have about 5 knots on the tail if I chose to take-off to the west, with a bit of a cross-wind out of the south. I decided to try for that.
“Never try to get airborne with a tail-wind in the Auster” The words of Alan, local examiner and flying guru, were echoing around my head as I lined up. Ah well; I thought, I could bin it by the intersection if it wasn’t going well.
It didn’t go well.
I went home, and came back later having spoken with another syndicate member who had got airborne from the cones in a similar easterly a few days previous, and with a passenger on-board! Though he does weigh about as much as one of my legs…..and it had been a fair bit colder with a good ten knots straight out the east. It was such a beautiful flying day, though, I felt I ought to give it a shot.
Here I was again, then – lined up an alarmingly long way down an already short runway, staring at the trees. I pushed the throttle forwards and off we went. Hmmm; the tail was up nice and quickly – good sign – the wheels felt light, but as we bumped across the ruts of the intersection she still wasn’t airborne. I then entered that horrible zone where things are teetering on the edge – you could be well justified in abandoning the take-off and, well, equally well justified in carrying on, too. Time for a gut feeling – an intuition – in short, a guess. I guessed we’d make it.
We did make it. We cleared the trees comfortably, with that wonderful process of converting kinetic energy into potential energy and then reversing the process, just as smartly, but I wouldn’t have liked to try it two up, or with less wind. It seemed just enough; the space, the performance; just enough and no more.
I had a lovely flight, after that. I followed the meandering course of the River Don through to the Vale of Alford and past the local land-mark hill, soaking up the scenery from the pleasant, rumbling vantage point that is the Auster’s cockpit. Coming back to the strip to a nice, un-stressful, even graceful, landing, the slight drama of the take-off was almost forgotten.
A lot of aviation is a science – all numbers, calculations and clear-cut, well-defined limits. Sometimes though, there’s no real knowing in advance and a ‘suck it and see’ approach seems the only way. That’s the problem with these old aeroplanes and tricky grass strips – sometimes, it boils down to guesswork and today, I luckily guessed about right.
There was a moment there, though, when there was a little doubt, a little question in the mind that asked if my experience on the old thing had not given me sufficient judgement to make these sorts of fleeting educated guesses. It ended with another one for the building store bank of situations that gives the pilot an idea of what they, and their machine, will and won’t do. It’s a pity that you need a fair amount of luck to build up a store bank sufficient for you not to have to rely on luck anymore. If there’s any doubt, then there’s no doubt, is an axiom I usually prefer to live by.
So, would I do it again? Well, yes, but next time I want a good ten knots on the nose, and maybe a bit less fuel on board. A properly kept grass strip might be good, too.
The Auster Diaries 