After two months of enforced Auster abstinence, I grabbed the opportunity to blow the cobwebs away and get into the air yesterday.
Arriving at the strip, I found Jim already out with his machine – a nice, two seat, three axis microlight with bags more performance than the Auster but still, to my eyes, resembling a tent with wings, which is why I’d still take JT any day of the week; yes, it may be horribly sluggish by comparison on the take-off, but at least feels reassuringly solid in the air and will bounce across the ruts of the strips’ intersection without a seconds thought, unlike Jim’s small wheeled microlight. Horses for courses, I suppose…….
Also there, was a beautiful RV8 I had not seen before and which had popped in on a visit. I gazed at this thing with some envy for a quite a while, imagining zooming about in one of these hot ships, only disturbed from my day dreams by the thought of old JT sat forlornly in the shadows of the hangar – bout’ time she got airborne!
The strip was still only part serviceable, with the north – south run unusable in varying states of extreme mushiness and even some patches of standing water and only two-thirds of the main, east – west run available due to similar bogginess.
What I really needed, after two months off, was a nice westerly so I could use the main area of the usable strip, but, nothing’s ever simple it seems and there was a 10 – 12 knot south-easterly. This made life awkward, in that I had both a crosswind and the need to take-off from the easterly end, which meant navigating my way through several soft patches of turf and the traffic cones that had been erected to mark out the boggiest areas of ground.
After some Uhming and Ahhing, pacing up and down the strip and a chat with Jim, who’d been starting his take off run from the intersection and landing long on the southerly in his microlight (a luxury I did not have in the reluctant and floaty Auster ), I decided to use the easterly run from the top left hand corner. This would give me a nice acceleration down the slope before I would reach the soft ground and a narrow gap between two sets of cones, which allowed passage between the worst of the soggy areas at either side of the strip. All being well, I’d be light on the wheels by the soft ground and up and away before the intersection, with enough room to spare to accelerate in ground effect and climb away. I wanted to do a few circuits to get the rust off and the plan was to land beyond the soft area and swiftly apply power to be up and flying in good time.
Taxiing over the soft ground between the cones, I needed almost full power to climb up the short hill at the far end of the strip and as I watched the mud splatter up on to the cockpit window and the wing support struts in thick globules, I wondered about the wisdom of my strategy.
I lined up, carried out the power checks and then pushed the throttle open. The Auster accelerated quickly down the hill and the tail was up and flying in no time. I could feel her want to drop the nose as we hit the softer patches and skew sideways on the uneven ground, but she was light on her wheels by now and a little back pressure brought us off nicely. The crosswind caught us as we reached the open intersection and keeping the nose down to accelerate in the ground effect, we flew along sideways together, down the middle of the strip with her nose into the wind. With plenty of space to spare we were climbing happily away.
It felt great to be flying JT again and I stooged about in the overhead, waiting for Jim and Bob in their microlight to get airborne and head to Longside – once a WWII Spitfire and Mosquito Sqd base and now a microlight and light aircraft field a few miles inland from Peterhead. It is now home to ‘The Buchan Fliers’ – an active local flying club. I had agreed to see them over at Longside but wanted to get some circuits in to get back into the swing of things after my lay-off and because I knew there’d be a significant ( for the Auster ) crosswind up at Longside with the southerly in that wind getting stronger.
I spent about twenty minutes in the circuit and once happy that I could still fly the old thing, getting comfortable again with cross winds, set course for Longside. It was a lovely flight up; the bright fields of freshly cut crop floating past the window and a deep blue sky above filled me with that ‘glad to be alive’ feeling and in quarter of an hour or so, I was over-head the field at Longside and eyeing the windsock, which was billowing joyfully at 90 degrees to the narrow tarmac strip, with what I hoped was a detached stoicism.
Down we came for the classic ‘wing into wind’ crosswind approach method, ready to go around if things didn’t feel right, but the wind was steady without gusts and JT felt as though she was content, so we continued down and arrived with a satisfying little squeal from the port tyre as it touched down. Jim and Bob were already there and I parked up next to them.
The Buchan Fliers were deeply involved in some meeting or other and among them was an old friend and colleague of mine who had first introduced me to the various strips of the North East. He had recently had an engine failure in his beautiful Luscombe Silvair, from which, both he and the Luscombe had escaped unscathed and I hadn’t had a chance to catch up, since. He also flies an immaculate little Taylor Monoplane – a real cartoon of an aeroplane that is built for nothing more than the sheer pleasure of flying and I was keen to have a closer look. Richard spied us and blustered out of the meeting, as keen and full of energy as ever as he rushed off to the hangar, with me in tow, to pull the Taylor out so he could get on and go flying.
The Taylor was as lovely and as crazy as I had imagined it to be – bright yellow, open cockpit, hand started VW engine and a ridiculously tiny tailwheel at the rear, which I am sure has left some unfortunate shopping trolley somewhere, somewhat lopsided.
The overall size and cockpit, especially, reminded me of the Pitts S1 I had owned and I felt a rush of nostalgia and momentary longing for the raw excitement pulling that machine out the hangar used to induce in me – that feeling that you are about to truly go aviating in its rawest sense.
Richard fussed around the Taylor, doing well not to be distracted by the small crowd that was gathering to watch and ask him questions about his little hooligan machine. He wanted to waste no more time and after pulling the prop through a few times, he swung the top blade and the little VW fired up, making the little Taylor tremble and quiver with its own excitement – seeming as eager as Richard was to get airborne. With a wave he was off and we watched him climb upward, his helmeted head poking up into the slipstream.
Jim and Bob agreed to show me the whereabouts of another little known strip that was nearby, owned by one of Richards old friends who I had flown with years before, but whom I hadn’t seen since moving back to the area after a spell living in Ireland and Lewis.
Being the versatile microlight fliers, Jim and Bob took off from the old taxi-way, straight into the southerly, leaving me to use the runway and contend with the by now gusty and full crosswind that was beyond the accepted 10 knot limit for JT, but she coped admirably and we were off again, climbing askance into the freshening wind and bright sunshine of the afternoon.
We rendezvoused north of the airfield and I followed Jim and Bobs’ microlight to Davids’ strip, tucked away at the bottom of some low hills in the Buchan countryside. Richard had been circling overhead and joined us, following behind. We must have looked a rag-tag bunch, like some odd flying circus; the microlight out in front, Richards crazy monoplane behind and the big old Auster floating along between the two.
David, the strip owner, heard us coming and came up on frequency, inviting us in to land or at least to fly by to say hello. Jim and Bob elected to head off back to the home strip after an orbit, but Richard and I flew a low pass and gave him a wave before going our separate ways to our home fields.
It had been a great afternoons’ flying – just good fun and great crosswind practice, if nothing else. Slipping down that invisible ramp of air to a final landing, wing tilted into the wind, I hoped there’d be a few more flying days like that one before the winter set in and we moved JT south to Perth. I’ll certainly let you know if there are!
The Auster Diaries 