The Flying Doctor

Formerly an Orkney Island resident, Martin Harvey is a retired doctor recently located to north east England. He's a keen builder and flyer and recounts his exploits here on a regular basis. You can chat to Martyn by using the forum thread link below. 

 

The Barnato Girls? - 10/12/12

We all know that the Barnato Boys were a very rich set of men who drove Blower Bentleys around race courses in Britain and Europe, and had themselves a very happy time. Woolf Barnato made and lost fortunes mining diamonds and gold in Africa, and was also a major financier of  W. O. Bentley, both his road and airplane engines. Well, if there were Bentley Boys, there must have been some Bentley Girls, but I know little about them.

Woolf Barnato had a Daughter, Diana Barnato Walker, who had just as much spirit as her illustrious Father, and became famous in quite a different way. Although she was given a Bentley on her 21st Birthday, she made her claim to fame driving Rolls-Royces. Big ones! 27 litres big! She was one of that special group, the Air Transport Auxiliary, who flew planes from the factories where they were assembled and test-flown to the bases where “The Few” flew them off to fight the War from which so many failed to return, and of those survivors barely a dwindling handful still live on.

In today’s world where it is illegal to discriminate on grounds of sex it is quite difficult to return to 1940 and find that women were barred from so many activities where we now expect them to co-operate equally with men. There has been a lot of water under a lot of bridges in the last 70 years. The then Editor of “The Aeroplane” spoke for many when he said that “women insist on wanting to do jobs which they are quite incapable of doing. The menace is the woman who thinks she ought to be flying a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly, or who wants to nose around as an Air Raid Warden and yet can’t cook her husband’s dinner”.

HHMMM!!  I wonder who would dare to say such a thing on the flight line of our clubs today without fear of a lynching. Well, actually, there are sadly no ladies in our club yet, but I still doubt if any member thinks that way now. But then things were very different. Women left their kitchen sinks and lino floors and flocked in droves to the munitions factories to work beside men for a lot less money. They took to tractors and ran farms as land girls. They dug for victory! They cut down beech trees and turned them in to DH Mosquitos. In Canada Elsie MacGill - the Queen of the Hurricanes - ran a factory with over 4,500 workers making Hurricanes, more than half being women.

And there was the Air Transport Auxiliary, formed on the day war broke out. There were plenty of  civilian aircrew who could not sign up for active service who would be needed to fly mail and supplies around, and also to deliver those much-needed planes. They were nicknamed “Ancient and Tattered Airmen”, and some were missing arms, legs, or eyes, but they could fly! And they accepted women! One such was Pauline Gower, aged 29 and with over 2,000 hours credited. She rather strongly disagreed with the Editor of “The Aeroplane” and gathered a group of like-minded girls around her as the ATA spread their wings. Initially they ferried Tiger Moth trainers around. There was a grandmother, a ballet dancer, an architect, an actress, an ice-hockey champion and a typist. Multi-taskers all! The cockpits were open and it was winter. Rosy cheeks and a bad hair day! But still The editor and his cronies prevailed and they couldn’t fly Spitfires till after The Battle of Britain! Eventually they flew anything that had wings and an engine, but they were NOT allowed to use guns or radio so were sometimes shot at by their own ack-ack (Amy Johnson was thought to have been shot down and killed by friendly fire) and had to navigate with basic maps and a compass in sun, wind, fog, and snow. Americans and women from other nations crossed the seas to join the ATA, and in 1943 they were at last given equal pay with their male colleagues, the first Government employees to be so honoured, and in 1944 they were allowed to fly across the channel.

And it was that Barnato Girl who did it! She flew a Spitfire to Brussels closely following her second husband in another Spitfire. Her first husband was one of “The Few” who never came back, and her second husband was killed some eighteen months later. One of the most glamorous and wealthy women of that era devoted a great part of her life to ferrying planes about so that their men - her man - could fly them. Years later she was able to say she never crashed - never even scratched one. And, of course, it was good for the boys to have some glamour around in those very tense times. One enterprising C.O. made sure she had to stay a bit longer by removing the spark plugs from her aircraft. It was a while before she found out how to start the engine! All-woman, she left anything under the bonnet to someone else! She flew 80 types of aircraft, and delivered 260 Spitfires. Yet there was one place she, nor any other ATA pilot ever flew to, and that was an aircraft carrier. No Thanks, the senior service rather agreed with that editor. Maybe there was something about 'The Ark' that was a bit protective and old-fashioned!

Open cockpit or closed, planes of that era were cold, and Diana felt the cold as much as the rest, so she swapped a gold watch for a fleece-lined jacket which she kept for the rest of her life. But it wasn’t RAF Issue. It was a bit more stylish. She was, after all, Diana Barnato

Page on twenty years, and Diana was the first British woman to break the sound barrier, in a Lightning, at over 1200mph, setting a world speed record for a woman pilot. Page on another 50 years, and the last time we flew off Orkney a woman was in full control of the flight deck. But I wonder how long before we have a female member of our club? Patricia tells me that in China they are making an enormous aqueduct requiring huge concrete sections to be lifted in to place by the biggest crane in the world. And who is driving it? A pretty 25 year old lass!

Wartime Bloopers - 22/10/12

In my last article I wrote about WD40 as being “War Department 40” and was immediately corrected by Malcolm and Ollie, so I must buy some humble pie and share it with them and all of you. I am sure I read recently in a copy of Flypast magazine, in the “Letters” section someone wrote about WD40 as “War Department 40”, and I thought that sounded good. However, Wikipedia states something different, and Ollie and Malcolm are correct. WD stands for Water Displacement, 40th formula. It was invented by one Norm Larsen in 1953 and it was the 40th formula he had used to find a protective spray to protect metal surfaces from water and rust. It was used to protect the Atlas rockets among other things from the nasty effects of the weather, and, perhaps supersonic travel. The original formula is, apparently, not patented so its secret is supposedly secure. It contains a non-volatile viscous water-displacing oil carried in a volatile hydrocarbon spray. The spray evaporates and leaves the oil to protect the surface and any crevices it has crept in to.

Come to think of it, isn’t that exactly what our aero fuel does? It contains a lot of oil dissolved in methanol which evaporates leaving the insides of our engines coated with protective oil. Pity there are other by-products of combustion which can cause our engines to rot if we don’t flush them out after use.

I am not the only one to create wartime bloopers. There are legion examples. Recently there were some programmes on telly reviewing the Spitfire (again!), the Bomber Boys, and the ATA. Just think, that glorious beast the Supermarine Spitfire was almost called the Shrew! I can imagine the German High Command being ordered to find and read a little-known literary work by one ShakespeareW to find out about Taming that Shrew. They would have been little wiser. Otto Daimler apparently called his first car after his daughter Mercedes. Good she wasn’t called Mary or Regina. And what if Rolls and Royce had been called Laurel and Hardy, or Gardin and Spayde?

I was interested to learn that our earlier WW2 Bombers were actually designed as day-time bombers. The rationale was that they could see the target, but they could also be seen, and so many were shot down that they rarely dropped their bombs within five miles of the target area. The Hampden had single manual .303 guns, rather like pea-shooters against the well armed ME 109s. They were a failure and were eventually withdrawn to mine-laying and torpedo duties. Maybe not surprisingly our glorious leaders had already made the same blooper in the Great War just 25 years before and had to change tactics.

Later bombers were better suited to night raids and were eventually more successful but hardly any more accurate. It is regretful that perhaps one of the biggest bloops was in failing to recognise the huge effort of Bomber Command and their appalling losses till just recently.

Some months ago I heard of a part-finished Piper Cub for sale, and I was interested. I then found out that it was constructed out of aluminium tubes and sheet of various dimensions, glued together with araldite or bolted with tiny bolts. It was partly covered with Solartex, and it was cheap!!

I could say the salesman saw me coming! This model was certainly different, and certainly had some challenges, and would keep me busy in the workshop for a while. You could say it was exquisitely engineered. The various lengths of aluminium tube were cut to length and shaped exactly to fit, and the wing ribs were cut and shaped out of thin aluminium sheet. It all fitted together like a Rubik Cube, and with some of its frustrations and complexity  But I didn’t realise just how difficult this might turn out to be. This kit must have been several years old, and the glue was beginning to crack in places and the 'special glue' was of course all gone. It looked like JB Weld so I reinforced those joints which appeared to be a bit mobile and put Loctite on all the bolts I could see. There were plenty I couldn’t get at in the wings and tail feathers which had been covered before I took ownership. The wing joiners were missing so I used some spare thick undercarriage wire for this, and added a third for good measure as they didn’t inspire me with much confidence.

The wings fitted perfectly, so I araldited the joiners in place with the wings bolted in place, and -- guess what? The wings came away exactly as I had hoped when I undid the bolts! That was a relief! The engine was a simple fit, and the fun really started when I revved it up. I found various bits of tube were coming loose and falling off as the glue joints failed the vibration test. Worse, those nuts and bolts in the wings and tail feathers which had NOT been loctited now decided to cry foul, and they were difficult to get at to repair. Covering with solartex was difficult as the cloth would not stick permanently to the aluminium. I had to extend the cloth to wrap round and stick on to itself.

The great day arrived, actually several great days arrived, and it was a pig to fly. The engine wasn’t right one day, the wheels collapsed on another day, the rims just disintegrated, then the grass had grown too long and it wouldn’t lift off, but finally it flew after demonstrating superb ground looping expertise, did a giddy circuit, and bent its landing gear on impact somewhere fairly close to its ground looping practice site. I had previously ascertained that the landing gear was an integral part of the construction and unbending it was going to be a nightmare. It also bent the wing tips, and all that lovely aluminium tubing has to be straightened and reglued and recovered. For the same money and a lot less effort I could have bought a little trainer and had hours of fun. There has to be a moral in there somewhere!

There is a guy who comes over from Sweden each year to the Nats with yards of aluminium weld wire and demonstrates his aluminium welding techniques to anyone who will watch. Now, if you want to get hold of an aluminium Piper Cub, why not talk to him first? You will find him at  alutighteurope@hotmail.com   Enjoy!

Patricia reminds me that SHE had already told me to get a nice easy plane to fly. She was, and always will be, right, and I love her to bits.

The Colditz Cock - 30/8/12

I had had a rather unfortunate day at the field with an engine that stopped running just a few seconds after my plane had left Terra Firma. It stalled and plunged rapidly towards that same Terra Firma, and found out just how firm-er that Terra was! After all the soaking we have had recently, and after the farmer had cut the grass for hay, the model received a very bloody nose and was returned to the car for investigations at a later date.

Watching telly later that evening I was interested to see a program about the glider that was nearly used to escape from Colditz in 1945. The presenter was the same guy who proved so conclusively that Barnes Wallace actually got it right when he built the Dam-Busters bomb. This presenter used computers with millions of gigabytes to show that the sketches Barnes Wallace drew on the backs of old envelopes were correct. Well, that shows as far as I can see how useful computers are, and that Barnes Wallace was an extraordinary genius. And the history books had already told us that! Same for the guys who built the Colditz Cock. The man behind the idea, Tony Rolt, was not even an airman. He realised that the roof of the chapel at Colditz was not visible to the guards and would make a good launch platform for a small glider. Two others, Bill Goldfinch and Jack Best, found a book conveniently left in the Library all about designing aircraft, so they and a team called “The Twelve Apostles” made a glider out of stolen bits of wood and wire snitched from odd places, in an attic overlooking the chapel, behind a false wall where the glider was prefabricated. Little did they realise that this glider where all the bits were prefabricated by different people in different places would one day spawn such a massive industry we now recognise as ARTF.

The end result looked a bit like a Piper Cub, and the runway was to be tables laid out on the chapel roof. Launch power was to be a bathtub full of concrete attached to a winch, and dropped out of a window at the appropriate time. Prison sleeping bags provided the coverings, and they were doped with porridge to proof the cloth. There was room for two, sitting back-to-back. Fortunately, the glider was never used, and it subsequently disappeared (the Russians eventually finished up owning Colditz). But the original plans were preserved and a 1/3 replica was built and flown from the chapel roof in 1993.

A full-size replica was flown from RAF Odiham in 2000. The replica used in this TV show was full-size but unmanned, and radio-controlled. After a few cliff-hanging (I think that should be roof-hanging) moments the launch was successful, and the landing was as eventful as some of my finer achievements. The glider made the journey across the river Mulde and broke up on impact with the Terra Firma mentioned above. Everyone could go home fairly satisfied and with a fairly full black bag, and I felt that if they could do that on telly, then my own achievement earlier that day was about OK.

Those two wars were grim affairs, and war still leaves an horrific mark on peoples lives. War influences so much of our daily activities. My favourite planes are all warbirds, a Spitfire, a Lancaster, and a Vulcan. Every day I use items directly descended from military activity of some sort, this computer for one. WD 40 is another, as that stands for War Department 40.

One spin-off I have been thinking about recently is disability from various causes (one of which would be getting locked up for years in a concentration camp), and we are about to begin the Paralympic Games. I was struck recently by a letter in RCM&E from Andrew Cross who is disabled and finds difficulty in flying model planes. I must confess that I had never given disability a thought till I read that letter, and I started wondering just how disability-friendly our sport, and our local field is.

How on earth could someone in a wheelchair get through six inches of mud and cow pats, open two heavy gates, and drive 300 mtr through grass a foot high to get to our strip? Answer, with great difficulty! But that person could easily come to our evening in the gym flying little models and have great fun.

I asked the BMFA for their views on the subject, and got an instant response in the form of a PDF file defining exactly what our response as individuals and as a Club should be. It is available on their website, and is well worth a read for us all, particularly for club officials, and particularly if improvements to premises are anticipated.

Andrew has persevered through considerable difficulties with a non-functioning left arm, and has at last found a club who have taken him under their wing and helped him along. They are the Halesowen Flyers. He has learnt how to build models one-handedly, sometimes using his chin to hold down the odd transfer while he smooths it out, and to fly and land them.

Like me, he also has learnt skills in repairing models, and he is now doing really well and is about to gain his 'B' Cert. I raise my hat to him, and I would be interested to hear of any other people who have triumphed through adversity to fly models, or from clubs who have disabled members, or from suppliers who deal in equipment suitable for disabled model flying. He has two exciting models in process, one of which will have a full sound system.

Now, why didn’t I think of that?   

Who framed Roger Rabbit? - 26/7/12

I just love this film, and I think my models sometimes behave as if they are really toon characters instead of the serious models I fondly hoped they would turn out to be. There is one scene which I really like when Roger Rabbit is hiding from the Weasel Toon Mafia in Tec Eddie Valiant’s sink. He is handcuffed to Valiant’s wrist which makes it exceedingly difficult to conceal him under the soapsuds and washing in the sink. When the Weasels finally leave and a semblance of order is restored Roger Rabbit  quietly withdraws his wrist out of the handcuffs and carries on as if nothing has happened. Valiant is incensed and asks if RR could have withdrawn his wrist at any time. “Oh no, only when it’s funny!” And that, perhaps, is the point of cartoons, and also of life in general. There has to be a funny side to life or everything gets dull and boring. Patricia and I see the funny side of most of what happens to us, and we are very happy together.

There has to be a funny side to our modelling or we will get too serious or even think ourselves important. Then we are so often seconds away from disaster and a rude awakening to our frailties. I have recognised over the last year that not many funny things have happened to me that I could pass on to you, probably because I have not been doing too much flying, but maybe that is all about to change.

We have done most of the work needed to tidy the house after our move to the 55th Parallel, and have experienced the worst weather so far since records began. That, at least, is the sort of prank that toons would play on anyone. Every month this year has broken some sort of record. My last trip to the strip found the grass over a foot tall all round the small area we have carved out of the field. Both gates to our field are inches deep in glucky oozy brown malodorous mud. This feels a bit like taking off a full-size plane in to elephant grass surrounding a small cricket pitch. It really sharpens the senses. Landings are just as much fun. With any sort of cross wind you have to get your approach exactly right or you catch wheels or wingtips in thick grass and cartwheel in to that Politician’s haven “The Long Grass”. toons’ delight.

Next time I am up there I will try to expand the strip a bit, if I can get the mower started. I am told having a small strip improves flying discipline, but it also refines one’s rebuilding pleasures and improves the sale of new models which I prefer not to support. Yes, one should be able to land on a sixpence, but not all of us get it right every time, and all of us benefit from a bit of slack occasionally.

In any case our editor’s excellent articles on landing a plane had drawings and photos of a strip the size of a pretty big football pitch, not a modest spotted hanky. Maybe the farmer will solve this problem for us and harvest this grass and turn it in to hay. What? In THIS weather? No way! Silage perhaps, but not hay. Get a toon sun to shine on it and dry it out! There is one other thing. Just as elephant grass hides elephants from view, so this hay-to-be hides all the sheep that may be wandering in this field. Lets hope we don’t land on one by accident.

One of the rules of pre-flight preparation is to check your model, and see that it still functions correctly at full throttle. There is nothing funnier than to see your model graciously rising in to the blue yonder --- and then find that is all it does because your intimate relationship with the model of your dreams has suffered a dramatic and terminal severance of some sort. Time to get one of those dum-dumb bullets and shoot it down. I found myself going through all these drills with one of my planes, and set the throttle wide open and checked the model while hanging on to my tranny with one hand while my other hand held on to the tail -- just! Suddenly I found that the model was completely dead to all commands, there was an SC .91 making an enormous amount of fuss just inches from my nose, and my arms getting slowly stretched just like a toon character. I tried gently moving the prop down in to the grass to try and stall the engine and found my face covered with a huge spray of mulched grass, mud, and bits of slugs and earthworms. Not good. And I knew I didn’t have a replacement prop. I thought of covering the end of the silencer with my finger and decided that would be a bit too sore. But I was just able to reach something on my flight box which would - just - cover the silencer -- the tiger died a death and the tail stopped twitching.

I had switched the Tx and the aero off and on to no avail before this. I did that again before removing the wing and finding to my great surprise that the battery and leads to the switch were quite hot and the battery was as dead as a toon. A replacement battery worked just fine, and further checks showed the switch was in full working order, and the short lead from the battery to the switch was fine. The receiver worked correctly. When I got home I checked the entire circuit again and it all worked fine, but then it glitched once. So then I looped the battery lead outside the fuse with a short lead to the receiver and disconnected the two whenever I wanted to turn the plane off. It must have been a little leprechaun playing games but I couldn‘t find any obvious fault. He must have been in the driver’s seat the next time I flew that plane.

The same thing happened, the engine stuck with throttle wide open until suddenly the engine stopped with a bang and the prop windmilled to a grumbly stop. No more flying for the day. At home I found that the throttle wire had disconnected itself from the carburettor clevis - how, I can’t fathom as both ends had been carefully secured, and the crankshaft had shrunk a bit as the main bearing pin had sheared off the crankshaft leaving the piston free to roam around the cylinder and the prop free to push the crank round. The sheared pin was still in the big end bearing.

Well, there’s something to laugh at. And if you have any bits of an SC, an ASP, or a Magnum .91 FS that you want to get rid of, send it to me and I will try and resurrect this poor little beast. All I need is a fairly complete crankshaft of the regulation length. I would like to fly that plane again! It always provides some entertainment.

Perhaps I should point out that my mention of toons has nothing to do with the Toon Army, or with Magpies or any birds or planes of a similar name, colour, or shape, nor even with a Tsunami. No, the Toon Army is a very special crowd and supports a very good team who are doing pretty well, thank you. More than I can say for my own team the Newcastle Falcons who failed by a single point staying in the Rugby Premier League and weren’t even allowed to play in the Sevens tournament which they won last year. We’ll get back. Arnie did.

Down to Earth - 26/6/12

That, I think, is what our sport eventually is all about. We spend inordinate amounts of time making our models, getting them ready to fly, trying to be better than the next man, or at least trying to be better than we were last time we flew, and it all depends on having your feet firmly on the ground. Preparation is vital.

Our glorious British weather helps at present to keep our feet – and our planes – down to earth. The wettest and windiest March, the sunniest April, the weirdest May, and a deluge and floods in June. I have been to our club field and stood beside the car watching the trees bend and sway in a strong freshening wind that was a gentle zephyr when I left home half an hour before. I have driven on to our field and felt that sickening slide and whine as a wheel twizzles in the soft turf, mud spatters the length of the car, and I know I might be stuck till the farmer happens by. Fortunately I still have my winter kit in the back and I can dig my way out and return to firmer ground. There have been times when my shoes have disappeared in inches of soft mud as I walk to our site. Fortunately, the farmer has put some drainage in to the fields recently, so things are better than they were in recent years. But when I finally get to our flight patch the grass is short and the ground is firm and leaving and returning to terra firma should be easy. Until last week when I found the grass a foot long after lots of rain and needing a serious haircut.

Dave Ashby has written two excellent articles (RCM&E May & June 2012) on returning to terra firma. Written for the flier who is just going solo they are so helpful, and contain useful refresher information for those returning to the sport. For me, I felt I was able to tick off what I could do and then practice what I thought I could do till I was happy. During my last few sessions I have revelled in the nice long runway and open space we have at our site, with trees and fences a long way away. This gives us the opportunity to taxi and slowly build up speed and steer on take-off rather than do a dragster start, and I have been happy just doing circuits, but keeping them accurately controlled for height and direction, and bringing the plane down a glide path right on to the strip, a (usually) gentle kiss the grass and away round again till I run out of time or fuel. Maybe I shall be ready for my A-Cert soon. An interesting point.

The aricle diagram shows a clockwise circuit. Our field has an anticlockwise circuit with a take-off in to the predominant westerly wind, then turning south away from parked cars. On the rare occasions when we have an easterly wind I find it odd to do clockwise circuits, and have to think carefully what I will do next, and so I practice doing figure-of-eights around the strip so I am comfortable with creating approaches from any angle.

Someone told me once that most people are happier doing anti-clockwise circuits than clockwise ones. Does that alter if you are left-handed? It has also been fun taking off and coming in across wind crabbing in to fly sideways along the strip. I vividly remember flying off Orkney in the Air Ambulance one stormy night with a 30kt crosswind gale and full ailerons till we were airborne. Landing at Aberdeen found us coming in at an angle of around 30-degrees to the runway, or so it seemed as a back-seat driver. In fact the runway wasn’t visible from the back seats till we were almost down and it appeared running sharply away to our left! NOT ideal conditions for a flimsy model!

An ominous omission from the articles is the great variety of other ways you can land a model. It doesn't mention the stall and in every model review I have read the author mentions the stall but at a great height. I have tried this so many times successfully, but still sometimes seem to get caught out with a stall when it shouldn’t have happened, and it is black bag time.

I remember one time in Orkney when a Spitfire went dead stick near the top of a loop. It was upside down, slowing fast, and I just managed to get it in to a dive, the right way up, and level off, when it hit the only fence post nearby, the one I couldn’t see. One wing was sliced in half.

Flaps are also mentioned and it is interesting how some planes seem to wallow if flaps are used. They possibly don’t really need flaps anyway, but if the technology is there, then why not get used to the idea just in case you fly a plane when they are useful?

The Bunt isn't mentioned! I gather that Spitfire pilots were told NEVER to start a loop lower than 4,000ft. The great thing about gravity is that it really does keep our feet on the ground and it works just as well on 4 tons of Spitfire hurtling around a loop at 400 mph, especially on the downward bit. A Bunt, of course is an inside-out loop and needs to be started at some considerable height unless you have a surfeit of black bags. Another way of filling black bags is getting fingers and thumbs muddled doing Cubans. Only half a roll is needed between each loop. Do more, and you will need yet more black bags. One gets in similar muddles when practising knife-edge circles in any direction.

We are now in June, and it is only this month that we have heard Cuckoos around here, and according to the nursery rhyme in June they change their tune, and soon they will be gone. I have only seen a couple of Swifts flying round the village but they tend to be more town dwellers. They are such agile birds with slim sickle-shaped wings. They never land except for nesting. There are swallows flying gracefully around the house, a pair of which have expressed an interest in our garage and workshop. They fly in and out whenever the doors are left open and perch purposefully on the roof trusses. I wonder if they will ever build a little mud hut under the eaves.

A bright spark advertised on the BMFA site --- “Wanted!  Where has the summer gone?”.  Can anyone help? Lost or Found? Contact the Met Office.

W.O. - 23/4/12

That was all they ever knew him by, just W. O. But in a world where engineering was very rapidly growing, expanding, changing and disintegrating those two letters stood for something that was immensely British. But even that changed just a few years ago.

He was born Walter Owen, in Hampstead near London, in 1888, was educated at Clifton College in Bristol to the age of 16, and then went to Doncaster to the Great Northern Railway to start his apprenticeship as a railway engineer. I must emphasize the 'Great' for several reasons. First, it was a leading railway company and went on to become the LNER which remained in mortal competition with the LMS till the railways were nationalised. They subsequently all got hatcheted by a certain Mr Beeching. Second, they produced the Flying Scotsman which set and still holds the world speed record for a steam train. Third, and most important, they were Yorkshire, by gum, and I grew up just three miles from the place where W. O. and the Flying Scotsman wove their thrall over the then known world. And I never knew I was so close to history until I started writing this article.

It was here that W. O. learnt all his engineering, how to design, cast, and machine all the components to create a Patrick Stirling Eight Foot Single which so moved him. He came close to fulfilling any boy’s dream by driving an express train when he was promoted Second Fireman on a Great Northern Express, and did the London-to-Leeds runs, some 400 miles in a day where he would shovel some seven tons of coal all by himself. He also experimented with and raced motor cycles during this time. Here he would have learnt something about reciprocating masses and the energy they consume, but where coal was mined just next door, and big was beautiful, perhaps in those days that was not too important, almost a bonus. Strange how so many of our 'greats' had humble beginnings. Spitfire Mitchell left school aged 16 for a locomotive engineering apprenticeship. Sydney Camm, described as a towering giant of an aeronautical engineer, started his working life as a carpenter’s apprentice. Roy Chadwick, Lancaster designer, started as a draughtsman. For that he needed to keep his hands clean and these were hard lives in those days. Churchill, on the other hand, wanted for nothing at Harrow, and waited till he retired before he took up apprenticeships in bricklaying and pig farming.

W. O. found that the railways were not for him, and so founded with his brother Horace Milner the firm Bentley and Bentley. Convinced that competition was the way to market cars, and finding that the cars he sold didn’t go fast enough, he made some aluminium pistons to replace the iron ones for his French DFP motors, balanced the crankshafts, and he was off on his second career breaking several records at Brooklands in 1913 and 1914. As the Great War began he realised that his idea for light aluminium components was vital for improved efficiency, but he had difficulty getting his message across (have you ever heard that about great British inventions before?). Maybe reciprocating mass was important after all. Finally the Navy came to the rescue and he was sent to Coventry. I find it a bit bizarre that the Navy should get interested in flying, and also send him as far away from the sea as possible, but such are the twists of nature. The Royal Air Force was then several years away from being invented. On his way he stopped off at Derby and convinced Rolls-Royce to use aluminium in their Eagle engine. Apart from making it go a lot faster it also ran a lot cooler. All good fun! He also passed through the Sunbeam factory and got them thinking sweetness and light, with the very successful Napier W 12 as a result.

When he did at last get to Coventry he set about designing his own rotary engine, the outstanding BR1 (Bentley Rotary 1) and the bigger BR2. These were competitors to the French Clerget engines powering a number of British planes of the time. The BR1 was bigger at 17 litres (it was a Bentley, of course), better (ditto), and cheaper (what? really?) than the French engine. The BR2 was almost 25 litres and later powered the Sopwith Snipe. I had no idea until very recently that Bentley made aero engines, nor that he pioneered the use of aluminium components so vital to our sport today.

In 1919 he restarted Bentley Motors Limited, and produced a robust three-litre car and sturdy chassis which soon won acclaim. A Bentley entered the 1922 Indianapolis race and came 13th at an average speed in excess of 80 mph. In 1923 a Bentley came 4th in the Le Mans 24hr race, and won the following year.

W. O. is credited with the statement “there is nothing like cubic capacity”, and I suppose if he could design a 25 litre aero engine it wouldn't be long before his little three-litre cars got breathed on and grew a bit. I breathe on my potato plants in the greenhouse, and they have certainly grown, but not in the way W. O. achieved. His great rival Ettore Bugatti smugly pointed out that “Mr Bentley builds the world’s fastest trucks”. But at least they beat the Bugattis. They grew to 4.5 litres, 6 litres, and the magnificent 8 litres. There were, of course, the Blower Bentleys and the Bentley boys were winning races. But the geat depression caught up with them all. Bentley sold all 100 of his 8 litre lorries. Bugatti sold just 3 of his 8 litre design. Barnato and his millions had gone on holiday for a while, and Rolls-Royce would not tolerate such competition for their Phantom marque. Bentley went bankrupt, Rolls-Royce beat Napier’s bid, and that part of W. O.’s life closed.

If I walk from my house across the village green, up the hill, round the corner and on a bit I see a house near the road. There are dilapidated barns adjacent and the corrugated iron roofing has come adrift and is flapping in the wind exposing gaunt ribs of timber and iron trusses. There are rotting farm machines around the barns. Hens and cockerels stroll around as if they own the place. There is a tired Range Rover parked near the paint-blistered front door. But by the back door, out of sight from the road, stand a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley, and they look splendid! Lots of cubic capacity and to spare. And you never see that farmer riding a bike! Rolls-Royce are now owned by BMW and Bentley are powered by a complicated W-12 engine and owned by Volkswagen. What a topsy-turvy world! But it was still W. O. Bentley, Esq. who pioneered the use of aluminium in the engines we so happily use today. If we were still in a 1920s timewarp I would love to see a tutorial by Alex Whittaker on how to cast your very own cast-iron aero glow engine of a full half-cubic-inch and weighing a mere pound-and-a-half! Suitable for his newly-designed Treiplane of 3-foot-wingspan. I love his writing, it is so full of fun and sound sense and compassion and his website is excellent.

Browsing Ebay the other night I found a book for sale, describing the quarter-scale Bentley BR2 engine built by an Australian Lew Blackmore with which he won the 1982 Duke of Edinburgh Challenge Cup in the British Model Engineer Exhibition, becoming the first entrant to take the cup from British soil. Now, this engine was a 9-cylinder rotary of some 5  litres! What sort of a model would you want to fly that monster in? He went on to start the astounding Napier Lion miniature engine, but died before completing it. This engine was the original W 12. And he only started model engineering after he retired. It’s amazing what a spot of 4X will do for you. Maybe there’s hope for me yet. Anyone got a lathe they want to sell?
 

Just William - 30/3/12

Everyone has heard of 'Just William' and everyone knows a 'Just William' who probably lives nearby and causes all sorts of havoc just when you thought you had seen the last of him. He was immortalised in the books which spawned numerous films and TV series, and although they are now many years old they still live on and fire the imagination of 'Just William' types. There was the Gang, and they met in the old barn in Farmer Jenks' field, and there was Jumble the trusty dog, a jumble of all sorts of mongrel features, and of course Violet Elizabeth Bott the lithping thpoiled daughter of the village millionaires liked by no-one. And there were their sworn enemies the rival gang, led by Hubert Lane.

William was very fond of sweets and fizzy drinks, very good at taking the mickey out of his teachers and others, although his pranks didn’t always work out the way he expected. As I said, a 'Just William' probably lives just round the corner from you, and you may be worried about just what he is going to get up to next. For example, several times a year the local farmer herds his sheep through the village, and pandemonium breaks out. He rounds them up off the fell, round the side of the cattle grid on the main road, past the church, left at the pub, across the main road, and over the village green past our house, all expertly managed and controlled by several sheep dogs. Now these sheep are Swaledales and they are notorious for doing everything but what you want them to do. Although they know exactly where they are going, they are very partial to a nice mouthful of pansies and we have a lot in our garden. The farmhands make sure all the villagers’ gates are shut before they start their drive, but just imagine what would happen if 'Just William' opened a few gates for a giggle. No, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

So, I read with some interest an email telling us that we had new members at our flying club, Graham and William. The grapevine hummed with the story that William was learning to fly, and was having some difficulty. Could we all be nice and helpful, please? It transpired that William had acquired a new plane and transmitter. But it also seemed that the set-up was all wrong and the plane was effectively unflyable. William persevered, and by the time our club chairman got involved the advice had to be “get some proper kit and start again”.

He had by this time also acquired a Real Flight simulator and was doing pretty well in the virtual world. I sometimes wonder what I would have done if I had been able to inhabit a virtual world. Probably little different from what I did in a real world. I tend to be practical rather than dwell in the fantastical and I have never been able to compete on video games. My kids always beat me! Well, we heard that William had a session on a buddy box with his real plane and did very well! When I was next up on our field I saw a father and son arrive with a modest aeroplane. I had finished flying so we chatted and who should this be than just William. And he proceeded to fly without a buddy box and with excellent control until he had flattened both his batteries. He went home a happy laddy.

It transpires that this William does have similarities with the leader of “The Outlaws”. He likes sweets, preferably Starbursts, and fizzy drinks but really prefers orange. He goes around with a gang of friends but it seems that there is no real rival gang and no turf warfare. Our club meets near (but not in) the old barn on farmer’s field, but I don’t think the farmer is called Jenks. We also meet in a barn for indoor flying each week (actually a school gymnasium).  Sadly, William has no jumble, no dog to call his own. He would like a sheepdog. I am sure he would train it to race round after his model and retrieve it when it landed. In fact his landings were very good, and quite close to his feet so the dog might need other exercise. There is one important difference - rather than not liking schoolwork and coming somewhere near the bottom of the class, our William usually comes top in his class and thinks he might like to be an aeronautical engineer, or perhaps study robotics. He is well on his way.

His plane now has quite a few flights to its credit, not all of them perfect, and some adjustments have been made, mostly with duct tape and various glues. William has been experimenting with variable wing geometry. He found the plane needed all the down elevator he could give it on one flight, and only discovered later that the motor had been reglued back on at the wrong angle of thrust. Well, how could you expect him to know that? But he worked it out and flew it all the same!

They say that “to travel hopefully is better than to arrive”. I wonder how many GCSE students could write an essay on that topic! As a result of hasty arrivals the wing now has a variety of fitting points giving rise to a variety of flying styles. When I heard this I suggested to William that he might be in line for a replacement plane, but no! His Dad had made it quite clear that he wouldn’t be buying new planes till this one was reduced to pulp. Well, I can advise from bitter personal experience on the numerous ways of reducing planes to pulp. Dad has very sensibly invested in a plane for which you can buy every new part you might need, so when the geometry gets too variable he just gets a new bit!

Which brings me neatly round to the main reason behind this piece, and this is to encourage lots more youngsters in to our clubs, and to teach them well and ensure they are encouraged to develop into fliers as expert as William (and there is always room for improvement!). There has been quite a lot in the magazine recently to bring the sport to younger people, and even to introduce learning to fly solo, without a club. Again, from bitter personal experience I can recommend very strongly that this is a lonely and tragic way to learn, and you are far better in a club if there is one anywhere near. I feel happy now to start at the bottom of the ladder in my new club and relearn what I never really correctly learnt in Orkney. But at least it has made entertaining reading for all of you.

So let me encourage all you early fliers, those returning to the sport after a break, Dads proudly watching their kids, get stuck in, enjoy the sport, start at the bottom and progress when your tutor says you are good enough (and NOT before), learn to program your transmitter correctly, and make sure you get a really good simulator - the best you can afford. It is invaluable, and far cheaper than crashing planes. Our local paper asked if they could do an article about model flying, and we got a page of great publicity and lots of photos. Much better than some papers treat the sport, and we await an interested response from the readership.

Very good as William is, I see in the BMFA News that he has been trumped by Connor Gotts in the Norwich club. He is just seven years old, and has just passed his 'A' certificate and is looking forward to passing his 'B' cert. He is well ahead of me!

A final point. We have a club rule that everyone must have a functional model restraint, and the model must be secure before it is started. Have you ever tried to buy one? Well, yes, almost impossible, and one shop suggested I make one out of recycled central heating bits. Help is at hand. There is one enterprising lad who makes excellent restraints out of stainless steel, and mine is expertly finished. He will have one waiting for you. He periodically advertises in the BMFA Classifieds. His name is David Playfair and his email is  playfair5000@yahoo.co.uk  They are cheap at £14 Find out for yourself how good he is, and tell your mates. Make sure all models are securely restrained before they jump up and injure someone. And enjoy your flying as the spring makes tentative approaches. I saw a daisy yesterday.

Kiln Pit Hill - 1/3/12

It was the same Farmer who introduced me to his Llamas and the horse $#!t who told me about the strange people he had seen wandering round Kiln Pit Hill. This was shortly after we had moved to this village. I was working really hard on this little cottage and he frequently drove past on his tractor or his Land Rover, trying to keep his Swaledales in order. Now, these animals write their own rules and require full-time care, and probably a blog all for themselves. They are the sheep world Houdinis, and if you ever see a sheep on the road, chances are it will have a blackish face, cute horns, a quizzical eye, and it will dash past you in the only direction you thought it could never go.

This is the friendliest village we have ever lived in, and while resting after emptying a barrowful of building rubble in to the skip the Farmer drove past and stopped to chat. The Land Rover had at least 3 Border Collies lolling around in the back, tongues hanging out a good six inches. It transpired that he knew of a field where he thought they were going to play cricket. It was flat (a relative term in these rolling hills) and they had got a mower and cut the grass really short. They weren’t really dressed for cricket. Then they went back to their cars---and took out some aeroplanes. Bemused, he went on about his business and recounted it all to me some weeks later. It was some time later again that I went up one sunny Wednesday evening to see for myself. It was a mere five miles away, but “Fully booked and four on the waiting list. Leave your email, and we may write”. I later heard that the winds over that site are quite difficult most of the time. I shall be a lot happier with the Guys at Hexham. I still haven’t heard back from the guys at Kiln Pit Hill.

I wonder what they smelted at Kiln Pit Hill. Definitely not aeroplanes though there was at least one “Fire and Brimstone” flyer. There are remains of lead mines all over this area, with forlorn chimneys sticking up in to the sky and tumble-down buildings (probably kilns!) adjacent. Some of them have names. Some don’t. They probably also smelted silver and copper. They also mined and smelted iron where the ironstone drifts came close enough to the surface to dig in to, as they did for coal. There are also some very odd names remaining in the villages round here which raise as many questions as they answer. If you mined lead for a living you wouldn’t be mining it for too many years, not if you lived in Killhope! How could you face the day when you came from Killhope and returned to Killhope to sleep? How about Stoney Heap, and how appropriate that this is now the site of the council tip! Muggleswick is close by. It sounds like a wiggly worm. Well, there is no place like home, and No Place is a village on the way to Sunderland.  Chester-le-Street displays its Roman origins so close to Hadrians Wall and the remains of Watling Street, and also hosts that strange and English game Cricket during the summer. But where did Tow Law get its name from? Another very strange village is called Unthank. Apparently there are other Unthanks around Northumberland, and the name is said to apply to traveller communities. One of my brothers lives near Gunnerside and Crackpot.

But what beats them all is Snods Edge. It sounds like a dreepy old man with a sniffy nose, but you won’t find it on any map other than an Ordnance Survey, as there is no village of that name. There is an active church, and a scattering of around four houses, and that is all. All the congregation drive in from local towns and villages, and there is church activity every day of the week. I have heard that the name derives from the fact that the snow lies up to Snods Edge and no further, but I don’t believe that for a moment. Snow round here lies thick and heavy and doesn’t respect village boundaries. We have had plenty this year. And we will not dare to drive past Snods Edge after snow as the hills up to and down from it will be treacherous. I found to my horror just how necessary winter tyres are round here as my regular road tyres simply cannot cope with snow. In Norway we needed snow tyres by law from November to March. We travelled the high Pass of Drumochter near Inverness in a blizzard, but that was in a little Corsa which coped quite well, but not this Zafira. And now it is quite difficult to get winter tyres. Well, if we can get out of the village we will have to shop in different directions which aren‘t snowed in, and perhaps get some skis for my models. And if we can’t get out, I have a secret supply of Christmas potatoes as an experiment in the greenhouse, and some odd bits of wood to make some skis for me. Hmm, I wonder if the dreepy old man has a scythe over his shoulder? I wonder what he would do if he had a dreepy nose? Or if he found I had a dreepy nose?

Take a look at the 4th page of the thread attached to this blog, the bottom entry, and revel in a video of the Hurricane. It was posted by Simon Chaddock, and to him we extend our grateful thanks (His signature photo is a DR1 in stunning livery!). It shows footage of the manufacture of Hurricanes at Longbridge, a long way away from their main factory close to the great Racing circuit at Brooklands from where the test pilots made their first flights. They all looked so busy, and everyone seemed to have their own dedicated job. Simon has some interesting facts to offer about the Hurricane wing. Is anyone building a Hurricane during the winter? Which one are you modelling it around?     

Come On, the Falcons!! - 23/1/12

I have come to the conclusion that there may be other sports besides flying model aircraft that may attract some of us, possibly to the detriment of the overwhelming desire to whizz lumps of balsa around the heavens on a Sunday afternoon. I don’t fly when there is a Grand Prix or a MotoGP on telly. I sit down and watch people amuse themselves at my expense. For the very first time in my life I went to a real live football match the other day, and it was fun! I am not quite sure why I have never done this before, but there is a first time for everything, and this was it.

Now, this was not the game they play with the round ball. No, this was the oval ball, the one they can pick up and run with, and jump up and down on other players with, and have a very happy time. And I am a Union Man, not a League man, and one day I hope to watch Wales play at the Millenium Stadium, if I can get a ticket.

Well, my Neighbour had a spare ticket to a match, so I jumped at the chance. The Falcons are by some way the strongest club in our league. They hold all the others up (or everybody else is jumping up and down on them), and will probably get relegated at the end of the season. Roy has a season ticket and knew all the tricks. The best way to enjoy the match, particularly on a very cold and frosty day, was to get properly prepared. So we stopped off at the Dobbin and Dray a good hour and a half before kick-off.

Sunday Roast and a jar of ale was a good defence against freezing toes, and when the plates came they were enormous, with Yorkshire puddings swimming in puddles of gravy drowning slabs of meat, and a large bowl of veg. Conversation sagged for a few minutes as we trenchermen attended to the business, and then we were able to look around us and see how others were faring. I was surprised to see a fair number of women around. One, sitting nearby, was marshalling several men and even more jars of ale when her enormous platter of Sunday roast arrived. We were sitting behind her, and when she turned sideways I realised she was exactly the shape of a rugby ball from just about every angle. Jonny Wilkinson once played at this ground, and I doubt if even he could have—well, lets leave that one!

The Dobbin and Dray has a large car park and is but a short walk from the ground, so the Yorkshires were settling very comfortably by the time we were in our seats. Yes, there were plenty of women there, and obviously very knowledgeable about the game. Not quite as pretty as the cheerleaders.

Sport on TV gets you right in to the point of the action, with instant replays, and a demonstration of who fouled who, who hit who for why, and so on. It tries to create atmosphere with shots of the crowd, which I find adds very little. I was worried I would miss the close-ups and replays, and might not follow the ref’s decisions. After all, many years have passed since I played rugby, and the rules have changed a lot since then. The Falcons were playing an Italian side, and maybe they were worried about the rules—or maybe not. But I needn’t have worried. The Falcons scored a brilliant try in the first five minutes and I could follow it all as the floodlights pushed the dying sun off the pitch. And I could also see the whole pitch at once, and see who was creeping up offside, and see who was in front of the kicker, and see which way he should have passed, and it was all great fun. And the women all screamed in the right places, and they really enjoyed it. I cheered and shouted too, till I was a little horse, or should I say Dobbin?

And the Falcons won,  43-0. But still I’d rather be flying, unless it is raining, or snowing, or too windy. Then I might just phone Roy and see if he has a spare ticket.

Huff and Puff

Last year was for me awful in terms of flying. The weather was awful, and we were getting ready to move so I didn’t make any new models and the ones in the garage had lived well, shall we say? So the fuel in the can in my flight box was at least a year old when I came to try things out last week. Could I make any engines run? No, not one, and I got so frustrated I nearly kicked the models into next week. And the most infuriating thing was that when I came home and told Patricia how I had NOT got on she said straight away  “Did you use fresh fuel?”  Now how on earth could she know that fuel might degrade if left in the garage? But she was, of course, absolutely right. It must be love, or at least, feminine intuition. The wind is howling around the windows now, but next fine day I will be prepared with nice fresh fuel.

I wanted to try some air retracts I had bought and fitted to a model. They worked fine, till I found they came down all on their own as they were spring-downs. I found the filler valve was faulty and there was no way of repairing it. I phoned Dave at Inwood Models who is an absolute goldmine of wisdom and ordered a Robart Deluxe air set which was an expensive way of buying a replacement valve, but a cheap way of getting several other useful items such as a transfer port, pressure valve, and a tank. He said his advice to purchasers of new ARTFs - with - retracts was first to take out the retracts and BIN THEM, then replace them with Robarts.

They are the only sets he knows are reliable and won’t leak. He has had so many modellers come in saying they had to belly-flop because their retracts didn’t come down. Well, at least the instructions were written in best Chinglish. Robart retracts cost at least half the price of a decent ARTF these days, but they are usually transferable to new models, they are reliable, and the model will land on its own wheels. Maybe it is worth spending a few bob to save a few bob. I had a couple of Chinglish sets I had bought second hand, and tried them out under water. There were streams of bubbles coming out from all sorts of places, particularly the new red control valve. This infuriated me. To think I had bought a faulty valve!!  It was late, I was fed up, so I retired to warm up in the kitchen, with the help of a little Strengthening Medicine Santa had left for me.

There are some moments when one drifts between waking and sleeping when the world seems to come in to order, when ideas flow, and often as quickly disappear. I expect Einstein had these fairly often. Sometimes I think of puns I could use in this blog, and usually they are gone by the next morning. Perhaps these are the moments when The BFG came visiting and blew his dreams in to our heads. As I was drifting off to sleep I realised that there were 2 tubes from every air ram, the greatest leak was in the “Up” position, and so there must be a faulty ram somewhere. So, after a refreshing night’s sleep I got the bucket out the following morning and tried every ram on its own. They all worked fine. But all the rams together still leaked. Now, I wonder why they were sold off cheap? I think I will need to talk to Inwood Models again and enquire about Robart Retracts.

Dobbin - 12/12/11

If I walk up the hill from our house and along a lane I pass an area of burnt-out gorse, and a little further on I come to a field in which are two horses. One is dark, has enormous hairy feet, a gentle and large round nose, and a bum big enough to fill the gap between the shafts of an old-fashioned milk wagon. He looks like the proverbial Dobbin. There were a few like him on Orkney, but they were much bigger Clydesdales and they were imported there by the friendly farmer who emigrated there from Weardale where we now live. Huge horses, traditional shire horses, the sort you see in shows, and the sort Vaux Breweries used to pull their immaculate drays around the pubs in Sunderland.

Sadly they are now gone, a victim of the accountant’s red pencil, no longer profitable. I wonder what the accountants of old would have said when they saw the bills generated by those enormous Destriers and Palfreys used by the Knights of old and the Crusaders. Perhaps it is best that we don’t enquire too closely.

There are workhorses, and there are workhorses. They are always in the shadow of their more illustrious thoroughbred cousins. We can all remember Arkle, and Red Rum, but who can recall a Dobbin? No? Anyone heard of a chap called Camm? No? How about Mitchell? Aah, you mean Spitfire Mitchell!!  Well, Sydney Camm was Hawker’s chief designer and he built the Hurricane, aptly nicknamed the “Workhorse“ of Fighter Command. He started his march to fame as a carpenter’s apprentice. Hawker were very good at building fighter biplanes made on wooden frames held together with string and old chewing gum, and with a war imminent there was little time to experiment with the new technologies coming in with stressed aluminium sheet. So the Hurricane was built around a frame of steel and wood, all covered with doped fabric. This put significant limitations on what the plane could achieve in aerodynamics, but it also meant that you could strafe it from one end to the other often with surprisingly little damage, which could be mended with fabric and dope.

A similar attack on a Spitfire would possibly have it written off. It also made it a very steady plane and a good gun platform. They carried 40mm tankbusting guns later in the War to very good effect, although firing a burst from them slowed the plane down quite a bit. Workhorse maybe, but in some areas it could out-manoeuvre the Spitfire and the opposition.

One benefit of good old-fashioned construction was that the various bits of the plane could be packed up in crates and sent to various parts of the world and easily re-assembled -- provided that you had all the right bits. You would look a bit silly with two right wings or an extra tailplane. It was also a lot cheaper and easier to build and maintain than the Spitfire. And they were sent to just about every corner of the globe. And construction methods did change during the plane’s lifetime. For example the wings were later sheeted in aluminium rather than fabric which increased the speed and handling although one plane did fly with a port fabric wing and a starboard aluminium wing. Now, there’s something I might try one day. The metal wings could carry far greater loads attached to the wings, including 500 lb bombs.

The Browning machine gun was not licensed for use in UK when the Hurricane was designed so the less reliable Vickers gun was initially installed. And Rolls-Royce got the weight of their Merlin engine wrong by 80lb so the C of G changed subtly. Now, I would move the battery or shift a bit of lead if I wanted to change the C of G but Sydney Camm had a better idea. He added another 400 rounds of ammunition to the guns. The all-up weight rose to just over 2 tons, with just over 1000hp to pull it round the skies. By the end of its life both these figures had doubled. The plane handled well from the start, but needed a firm hand on the controls to make it do what you wanted  it to do. The Spitfire, by contrast, was more responsive, with a thoroughbred’s fingertip response to the bridle rather than that of a shire horse. But pilots who have experience of both planes said they were both very good, but different.

One of Sydney Camm’s aims from the inception was to give the pilot a good view forward. We have all seen Spitfires coming in to land sideways following a circular route, because the pilots could not see the runway through that great nose. They had to be taxied in a zig-zag so the pilots could see what they were about to run in to. But not Dobbin. Her nose was a gentle curvaceous slope, and the cockpit was quite high with a broad arched backbone down to the tail so there was a better view and greater wind resistance than her thoroughbred sister. There was more room in the cockpit but a penalty with the forward fuel tank right between your legs. Not much fun if that got hit.

All in all, there were some 14,000 Hurricanes built. If we say, in round figures, that the war lasted around 1400 days, there were perhaps 10 Hurricanes lost per day. 10 young men who may never grow up to see their kids. And our glorious leaders still tell us that “we are learning from our mistakes”. Well, for some of us, “To err is human”. Too human.

We see now that women will be crewing our Submarines. No such luck in those days. There were no women front-line pilots, and only a few in the Air Transport Corps. These brave women flew planes from the factories to airfields where they would be used on active service, and when they got there they were often ignored by the receiving flying officers. They were not allowed to use the radios, and sometimes got lost in bad weather. One girl who flew a bomber in on her own had the plane searched from tip to toe as no-one believed she could have flown the plane without any help! Brave Girl!

There was one other famous woman who had a lot to do with Dobbin. Elsie MacGill was the World’s first female aircraft designer, the first to receive an electrical engineering degree in Canada, and the first to receive a masters degree in aeronautical engineering in the USA. In 1938 she joined Canada Car and Foundry as their Chief Aeronautical Engineer and was soon in charge of all fighter aircraft production. She organised the manufacture of all the tools required to produce the Hurricanes, and produced a “Winterised” version which was probably a winner on the Slalom slopes. She had over 4,500 staff working for her, half of them women, and won herself the title “Queen of the Hurricanes”.

Not a “Bad Hair Day”!

It will soon be Christmas. We wish you the very best during this Season, and lets hope that Santa gets it right for YOU!!

Horse Manure - 1/12/11

Our new garden is not as big as our last garden, and does not permit flying of any sort other than small helicopters or maybe indoor foamies. But a local farmer said I could use one of his fields if I wanted to. It even, apparently, had a tarmac landing strip to make life easier, and a nice high wall to stop the wind howling around the perimeter. “Yes” he said, “It will be fine once you have cleared away all that Horse $#!t.” Perhaps he had heard about my flying from some other source, but I think it was about the best description of what I do that I have ever heard. I visited the place a few days later and saw for myself what a suitable place it was. The tarmac was smaller than a tennis court, the grass mounded over the edge of the tarmac and rolled in to the distance in undulating waves. The grass was fairly short, and the llamas were fairly sleek. They eyed me from a discreet distance, and I returned their stare, watchful, and wondering who could get to the gate first! I know a thing or two about llamas. They spit, and they are better at it than most schoolboys. They are also used to protecting themselves from Cougars and Wolves in their native ranges and I didn’t fancy inspecting them or their teeth at close quarters, or getting them riled by buzzing a noisy plane at them or even bombarding them with balsa fragments or black bags. They are used as guard dogs for flocks of sheep in some areas. The wall was the retaining dam wall of a small reservoir with quite a lot of weed and some ducks, and it did nothing to the prevailing wind funnelling down the long valley other than make vortices which would tumble a model out of the sky quick as a wink.

The llamas began to move, in opposite directions, and I looked at the gate. It seemed a long way away, so, whistling a jaunty tune I strolled nonchalantly towards it. Strange how difficult whistling is when you have no spit in your mouth. I’m not sure I could hear the llamas whistling, but they were quietly moving in different directions pretending to eat grass. I reached the gate first, jumped over it and strolled on to my car, still having difficulty with my whistling. I now find the farmer is going to erect a huge wind turbine on his field to extract the best energy out of the wind over the dam. Probably a water wheel as well! Well, no worse hazards to flying than my willow hedge I left behind in Orkney. I also had occasion to phone my friendly farmer neighbour in Orkney about old times, and heard what the new owner of our house is doing. Apparently he is making a back porch, “You know, where you crashed your aeroplanes!” He actually emigrated to Orkney many years ago from the next valley to here, and has relatives a few miles from here. The llama farmer knows them. I wonder if that is how he heard about my flying.

But now I fly somewhere completely different. Hexham MFC has a beautiful field of many acres with panoramic views of rolling hills with views on a clear day almost up to the Borders and away to Carlisle. We can’t quite see Durham cathedral in the other direction. The wind is often fairly strong there, and today was no exception. But even with the wind, and even as my first flight for over a year, the take-off was perfect, and a gentle climb out with no trees in the way to make life difficult. In fact, no trees for a LONG way. I have decided to start at this club as if I were a beginner and learn how I ought to fly, and so far things are looking good - people are happy to tell me everything, and I listen. I have a nice trainer with big wings which flipped around the sky as the gusts took it. It didn’t much like turning out of the wind on ailerons so I dialled in a fair bit of rudder for turns, and when it got blown onto its back I could turn it back the right way again, all much higher up than I was used to in Orkney, easily three mistakes high, but there was so much sky to play in. Then all went very quiet, and a long glide down on dead stick to a nice three-point-landing not quite on the strip, but almost good enough for an A-cert. It was worth a year’s wait! The second flight was just as much fun, but this time I flew through the dying sun as I aimed for the strip on finals and the plane went a teensy bit sideways and the landing wasn’t quite so tidy. When I took the wing off I found the right aileron servo arm had broken. Now, I know I had checked both ailerons just before launch so perhaps it had broken on landing. Strange there was so little aileron authority on the flights. It will be repaired soon and we will await another good day to practice bumps. It is so good to be flying again, and with such a nice bunch of pals. It must be 25 years since I was last a club member.

I wrote last time about items “lost in the post”. Well, it seems that there are a few who aren’t too concerned what they sell, or how they advertise. Caveat Emptor are the watchwords, which means 'let the buyer beware'. Make sure you ask all the questions before you agree a sale, and make sure your money transactions are secure. Remember, the BMFA is there to help us all so let them know as soon as anything goes wrong. Maybe it is best to buy from club members who you know, but that limits what is on offer. Certainly the BMFA classifieds seems to be thriving, though I have never seen llamas for sale.

Lost in Post - 27/10/11

Help! I need somebody’s Help!
Have you ever had a model or a payment go 'Lost in the Post'? Do you know of anyone in your club who has had such an experience? If so, let me know! I recently had this happen to me, and it is not funny, and not something I would like to boast about. Nor, I doubt, would you.
 
I saw a nice model advertised on the BMFA classifieds site, and emailed the seller. We agreed the price and I sent the cheque. No kit arrived and after another email I was told the cheque never arrived. So, I put another one in the post, but this time as we were about to move from Orkney I gave our rental address, where we had no internet facilities. I was also working very hard, and didn’t get out to any Internet cafes to keep in touch with the world till we got back online in June. I found a polite note to say that the kit had been returned from my address as undeliverable, and could I confirm the correct address. I immediately did so, and never had any replies at all to several emails till I asked the BMFA Classifieds to confirm his contact details.

 

Still no response till he tried to advertise something else and found his access blocked. At this point the s*o*u*p* really did hit the fan with a flurry of wild emails, and a promise to send a cheque. That was weeks ago, and since then a couple of texts very late at night to ask if I had got the cheque, which of course never arrived.
 
So, if you see a real bargain and the seller reduces it further, BEWARE. You are also likely to be too late, as I see 'SOLD' on lots of interesting goodies on the BMFA site!
 
This sounds like a good scam. You could say the cheque never arrived, and cash it weeks later. You could say the kit was definitely sent but got “Lost in the Post”. Well, of course, we ALL knock the good old Royal Mail, don’t we! And we all have some experience of tax returns or birthday cards going AWOL, so it may come as no surprise to lose the occasional kit, except when WE are paying! But at least we expect fellow aviators to behave in a reasonable way. This guy hasn’t, and the Police are now aware of all his details.
 
The BMFA relies on the integrity and mutual trust of all its Members. If I buy things from the BMFA Classifieds I expect them to be WYSIWYG, and so far I have had only 2 bad experiences out of dozens of purchases. I have never sold a model – I just use black bin liners for disposal. But I have sold engines and trannies and have very satisfied customers. I expect to be treated as I expect to treat others. By the way, if you are thinking of keeping a few WYSIWYGs for fattening for Christmas, you are way too late. They are  “What you see is what you get”
 
So if you know of anyone who has had a bad experience, let me or Dave Ashby know. Raise this at your Club AGM. Table a question now so it is definitely on the agenda, and let us raise awareness of this as a possible scam to beware of.
 
The Barbie Dolls
 
Our new home is in a small village on the Durham/Northumberland border, in exquisite countryside. Whichever way we drive out we have wonderful views over rolling hills, with lots of trees. Patricia loves to see trees, and there were virtually none in Orkney. There is also an active village life which is dominated neither by Jerusalem nor the WI.

 

There are such things as Onion-Growing-Contests, even Bean-Contests. We were buttonholed at the pub quiz one night and told we would soon be given two onions and two beans which would need a great deal of cherishing and tender loving care before being presented at the grand prize-giving later in the year. The onions and beans, when they did arrive, looked very small and sorry for themselves and in need of a confidence boost. They arrived around the time we were battling to put in the kitchen window, left by Bob with the pony tail, and were dumped in the bit of soil outside the workshop door for the soothing wind and softening rain to work their charms upon. The workshop was a busy place, and these poor plants didn’t get much peace to do their fattening-up stuff.
 
The grand day drew near, and we were told we had to DRESS these onions before presenting them. Now, those of you who have allotments will immediately know what that involves, but I have never used a greenhouse, nor even grown a potato. When I told Patricia that we needed to dress these creatures a cunning and knowing look crept in to one eye and spread across her face.
 
“Martyn, Sweetheart, I need your Barbie Dolls”
 
Now, possession of a box of Barbie Dolls is not something a macho aviator readily owns up to, so I reluctantly got them down from a very high shelf, and she helped herself. I once had fond hopes of building a model big enough to be populated with a crew of Barbie and Ken, Darby and Jane, Action Man with gripping hands, and Bob the Builder, but so far I have only got the plans. In any case, all my Barbies have very long and slender legs which don’t bend at the knees but do articulate at the hips. While this may drive Ken wild, they don’t fit in a crowded cockpit and I might be obliged to amputate or kneecap them to make them comfortable.
 
Meanwhile Patricia was busy, and I was left wondering how I was going to explain to all and sundry why I had a box full of Barbie and Co. I need not have worried. Patricia heaved this onion out by its hair, cleaned it till it shone, plaited the green bits in to arms and legs, painted a face on it, and won first prize of a mars bar, much to the disgruntling of those who produced really massive onions and beans a yard long. I should say that her first prize was in a completely new category of “Best-dressed-Onion” in which there was only one adult entry and only one junior entry. If this goes on year after year I will have no Barbies left. Maybe a good thing! The prize for the biggest onion went to one some 20 times bigger than Barbie-with-tears, and Bob with the pony tail won the best overall onion. Our other non-prize-winning onion is still growing. We will keep it for Sunday lunch.
 
I have at last found a Flying Club, not too far away, and a great bunch of mates. They even fly indoors during the winter, so I will need to get something small to fly with them. Your advice will be much appreciated. They meet in the RAFA Club in Hexham every month to swap beers and I am looking forward to getting to know them. I just hope that is a two-way street! Look up the Hexham MFC and read about those Naughty Boys. You will enjoy it! And they really do have trouble keeping out of the way of low-flying jets.


The Nats - 10/10/11

At last I have been able to fulfil a dream that has been churning around in my head for a decade and more. As I struggled to fly models in Orkney against considerable difficulties I read and heard about people in the real world who could talk with other modellers, compare build results, refine their covering skills, and practice their flying skills. Most of all, I missed people who could tell me when and where I was going wrong - as you have all recognised, that was a very frequent occurrence.

There are people who first learn to walk before they can run, and there are people who listen to what others tell them, and then there is the rest of us who run and jump and play and listen to others and take sound advice only when it makes us feel good. Do you remember your Dad and Mammy shouting something like that at you? Well, I think I have a teachable spirit, I like to listen and learn, particularly when there is someone good at teaching whom I can listen to. Ask Patricia, if she will stop her hysterical giggles for a moment. She knows what I am really like. She knows I always take her advice!

We had repaired the roof , for the second time, the skip was off the drive, I had located the mower, at the very back of the garage. I had dragged it out and coaxed it out of dormancy in to some sort of spluttering life and actually mowed our nice little lawn. At my school, so many years ago, there was a maths teacher who had a room away down the corridor near the Gym. The room letter was “F” and he had a small room where the 6th form boys worked called “Delta F”, some sort of tribute to calculus which they were studying where they could make “X” disappear if they applied “delta X” to the equation. I never did enjoy maths, dating from my time in infancy when I was off sick when my class learnt their “times tables”. I have never caught up, and I am sure that is why I have such difficulties with programming these clever transmitters they have these days. Well, this little lawn takes about 10 minutes to cut and dump the cuttings, and is tiny compared to the “Airport 1” I left behind in Orkney, so we will have to call it “Airport Delta 1”. Like “Delta X” it might disappear altogether if we don’t look after it. There are horses over one wall and cows over another, and sheep occasionally wander in through the front gate to eat pansies, so we do have to be careful. Perhaps we should leave a freezer near the gate with a bungee tied to the door handle and a label “mutton dressed up as lamb, this way please“. These Swaledale/Mule cross sheep are a law unto themselves and worth a story of their own.

It was time for a break. Patricia did NOT want to watch model aeroplanes fly round, particularly if it involved muddy fields, stewed tea, and greaseburgers for snacks. I was not promising her a lengthy shopping trip off to Grantham for comic relief, so she stayed at home hemming curtains while I ticked off one of those “must do” jobs and actually got to “The Nats”. I was also able to meet friends and family I hadn’t seen for a long time. And I didn’t argue with either of my sisters!

I stayed with a dear friend near Fulbeck, not too far from Barkston Heath, and stopped at the RAF Cranwell historical museum. This is well worth a visit, and they accommodate caravans if you ask nicely. I found out that the De Havilland Vampire was made of wood, like its illustrious forbear the Mosquito. There are also several cutaway engines on display.

The following day, after a leisurely breakfast with Ben, I arrived at Barkston Heath well before the crack of noon and was amazed to see so much swarming activity. With car parked and programme studied I still couldn’t decide where to go first, so followed the noise and the greater crowd to the nearest display. I got more and more gobswiped as the day wore on! There was a traditional Orkney breeze gusting and swirling across the runway and one pilot after another showed how good they were and what their planes would do. I was mightily impressed! For me, the real wonders were the formation stunts by the Red Arrows team. Taking off and landing within metres of each other and hurtling towards each other to pass within metres and a closing speed of hundreds of miles per hour. You need to be seriously good to do that. Or, for something quite different, how about some prop hanging when your tail wheel has hardly had time to leave the ground and all can see the wind blowing the plane back down the strip? Quite amazing! And the other thing which amazed me was the beauty of these models. They were immaculately turned out, seemingly perfect in every detail, faithful to their originals, and representing hundreds of hours of dedication. I have so much to learn. I also looked at the scale entries, and again was so impressed! Yes, so much to learn.

I haven’t seen control line flying since I left school. I remember one day when some of my pals were flying their models on the back lawn and Hughes got his fingers and thumbs muddled, or he got dizzy from going round in circles. He ploughed his model in to the school wall just below the room where I learnt latin. His face was a picture, with slack control lines and bits of debris flying in all directions. I sympathise, and if I knew his address I would send him my tee shirt. I have several! But the stunts these guys got up to were something very different again. I turned away seeing curly stars.

“The Nats” wouldn’t be what they are without the trade presence. I assume they must bring in a lot of income for the organisers, and if you need a bit to make your model fly you can just pop off to a nearby marquee, very different from having to wait for a week for an order to be sent up to the wild northlands. I was suitably dazed by all there was on display, and the possibility of actually touching goods before buying, seeing just what you are going to buy rather than letting someone else do the choosing. Of course, I couldn’t pass up such an opportunity, and took a few things home with me. I was mightily impressed with the Perma-Grit Display. I have never seen these tools in the shops I have visited before, and my efforts in sticking sandpaper to blocks of wood wasn’t terribly effective. So, my thanks go to the beautiful lady who encouraged me to invest in something really worth-while, and to the modeller who said he bought a new and differently-shaped file every time he came to the show. That is quite a recommendation, and if you haven’t got a Perma-grit tool of your own yet, look them up on their website and buy one. You won’t regret it.

The giant swapmeet on Sunday morning is a must-see. My breakfast with Ben was a leisurely affair, requiring detailed attention to at least one boiled egg, toast and marmalade, and yet further catching-up from our absence in Orkney and Norway for ten years. Ben is now quite old, and I was travelling on to another friend so the parting was a fond farewell and an arrival at Barkston Heath well after the stalls were set up and most of the bargains had gone. They told me the action was well under way by 7am, if you have ever heard of that time. No worry, there were a few items left to browse over, and yet more spectacular flying displays to watch before my trip towards Worcester to meet another flying friend who merits a chapter all to himself, if only because talking to him is a bit like talking with Spike Milligan - a bit off-the-wall, funny, and very challenging, like, “Why can’t I think like that?” He has been a great influence on my modelling and flying, but more of him anon.

The Earth Moved - 22/8/11

In Orkney we lived under the flight path to our Airport and had the odd aircraft flying over our house and bringing in excited passengers and taking away satisfied tourists. The planes were almost all the same wind-up propeller jobs with the odd jet from Leuchars to spice up proceedings. We even had a Spitfire by special invitation. Here in the North-East of England we also live under the flight path, for Newcastle Airport, and on a good day we can see a jet every 5 minutes coasting along before making the turn to starboard on finals. Sometimes they get it slightly wrong and we hear them spooling up their powerful engines to gain a few more knots of airspeed before shutting them down again. And there are other jets, lots more, and just as noisy, probably practising for the next conflict we get dragged in to. But these don’t come from Leuchars, oh no! I think the MOD are planning to turn it in to a game reserve and shoot grouse on it. Leuchars weeps, along with many more who depend on it. The rainfall there in August has been three times higher than any previous year!

Sunderland has a spectacular two-day air display, and it is free!. You just turn up, wander down to the beach, and sit and watch. Join a lengthy queue and you can get a fabulous Minchella’s ice cream, or a pastie, or fish and chips, or you can stake out a bit of beach and delve in to your own bag of swag. There follows 5 hours of the spectacular on both the Saturday and the Sunday. We turned up on Sunday, leaving the lawn to cut itself. There were many display teams, lots of aerobatics, lots of smoke trails and hearts in the ether. The Breitling wing-walkers were there, dancing in thin air it seemed. Wow! They must get cold!

Looking out over the waves in to the sea fret we could see shapes emerging over the slight mist, but more often the sounds gave the direction we needed to look, and also what we were looking for. The heavy beat of whirling scimitars as two dancing helicopters pirouetted over the waves. The gentle roar of a pair of radials as a Catalina motored overhead, showing off its graceful shape, floats up, floats down, and wheels down to prove that it really was amphibian. But it never did a water landing for us. Maybe next year?

A Spitfire was the star of a bygone era, showing off a whole series of manoeuvres. I tremble inside when I hear the roar of those Rolls-Royce engines, and think of the history tangled inextricably with the lives of those who flew and serviced them so many years ago. And they still thrill us! A Hawker Hurricane also came and performed a beautiful series of manoeuvres. Strange, it sounded quite different from the Spitfire. Maybe it had been re-engined at some time, maybe a different exhaust stack. Odd how one small item can alter one’s appreciation of an event. The display was excellent. The effect wasn’t quite so good.

As a child I saw Meteors and Canberras and V Bombers flying over RAF Finningley( now romantically called Robin Hood Airport). I was amazed to see a De Havilland Vampire whistling overhead, a twin-boom jet tube with a cockpit at the front. It did a beautiful display, and then whistled away to some other site. That brought back some memories. And then there was a Hawker Hunter with a spectacular paint job strutting its stuff! A lot noisier, a lot faster, and a lot more aggressive. But not as noisy or as fast as a Tornado. Later there was a full display team of Hunters with lots of smoke trails.

We knew something was about to happen. There was a feeling in the air. There was something through the sea fret we couldn’t quite make out. Like a mirage the air was dancing but there was something threatening. This was huge and menacing, and coming straight at us! There is no other plane in the World like this one. There never has been, and there never will be. There is now only one of these still flying, and it is all British! This huge Avro Vulcan flew straight over us and banked away right to circle back, so slowly it seemed to be floating rather than flying. I almost waited for it to flap its enormous wings to gain a bit of height. Instead it opened its throttles a bit and left a cloud of brown smoke haze and a lot of scattered decibels. It flew through its routine faultlessly, bomb doors open, bomb doors closed, wheels down, wheels up, turn away from the beach and roll those throttle levers slowly up to the gates. This was what I left Orkney for, moved all those miles for, to see a Vulcan fly! To hear a Vulcan on full throttle! To feel that chest-crushing incredible noise of a Vulcan doing its business! It must be around 40 years ago that I last saw a Vulcan fly, and the thrill now is even greater than it was then. I have stood under the Vulcan at Sunderland Air Museum, and felt the awesome power of its looks, and felt the thrill of the plane, and a part of the thrill of knowing that it was all British, but this was so much better. I felt so proud of this thing, and being British. I find it difficult to describe the power of those engines at full burn, to see 100 tons of aeroplane stand on its tail. It is something like being right next to a thunder-clap that just goes on and on and on until the plane is a spot in the distance.

And that was how and why the Earth moved. And that was why there was nothing else to do but just get up off the grass or sand and go home. We can live off the memories till we experience something similar, if we ever do. If you have never seen or heard a Vulcan, make sure you do so before a thunder-clap hits you. You won’t regret it! There are just 7 years between the design and birth of the Lancaster Bomber and the Vulcan. The same Company, the same Design team, and what an amazing difference! What a tremendous quantum leap forward! This Vulcan, the first B2 to be delivered to the RAF, is now over 50 years old and still going-- strong? NO!! Immensely! The Marque celebrates its 60th anniversary next year. The Flying Scotsman was only 40 years old when it was put out to grass. Patricia is not usually much moved by planes, certainly the ones I play with. But this, of all the planes we have seen, made her feel like I did, almost brought the tears to her eyes. It might do the same to you.

And after all that, back to terra firma, the bit that hasn’t moved. I keep a cider bottle under the kitchen sink. I find this comforting for those days when work has been hard, I have got my hands grubby, and I have worked up a modest sweat. I can leave my garden shoes at the back door, creep across the kitchen, and slake my thirst. But just recently I have noticed this cider bottle has company. There is a large bottle of strong bleach standing just next to it, and the cap is missing. I am wondering if Patricia may have some alternative game-plan. I know in America they fly out of things called “Bleachers”, and I wonder if this is what Patricia has in mind. I hope not! But if you find this column suddenly fades and goes all blotchy, you will realise that I took a swig out of the wrong bottle!

Hallo New House! - 2/8/11

The World is built on trust. We trust our spouses and children, we trust our police, we trust our councillors, and of course we trust our politicians. Probably them most of all, and it seems that the Euro politicians have been travelling on an even juicier gravy train than our own domesticated variety. So you may appreciate that when we agreed to sell our house in Orkney and buy a house nearer the hub of the universe, we could rely on things to go smoothly. “Yes, we want your house, but not for 6 months”. OK, so we had an unexpected six months to get a move organised. We threw or gave things away that we didn’t need, we polished and bubble-wrapped everything, then wrapped things in cardboard to ensure their safety for 'The Grand Transfer'. But with a few days to go we realised we would have to go in to storage, and rent for a short time as a mark of our trust in our fellow man. They say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do, and they are dead right, up there with divorces and funerals. We have done them all, too often. Then we found rather more to do than we had bargained for when we finally got the keys. We knew we needed a damp proof course, so the plaster came off the walls, along with the wallpaper, the radiators, the exposed CH piping, the sockets and wiring, and the carpets. Good job the garage was a decent size, and waterproof. Ratproof, yes, but NOT spider-proof as Patricia found out to her consternation. The carpets were on the floors, not the walls, but they went in the garage just the same. Before the damp-proofers were out the plumber was in, and then the electrician. He had a ball. Greying and prematurely bald, I found him with a new fuse box (a consumer Unit in proper parlance) in one hand, and five wires in the other. “You’ve got a big dis going on here, a very big dis! I can’t find the ends of any of these wires” And not until he found a roof void above the kitchen did he find the ends of some of those wires. There were rings off rings, spurs off spurs, rings off radials, radials with bells on, and the odd disconnected earth. The “Dis” was apparently a disconnection or several.

I had in my file a domestic electrical installation certificate purchased at great expense before buying the house, a sort of guarantee that it was safe to buy. A trustable document. Maybe not so secure as we had thought. At least the earth trip must have worked for that electrician, bless him. But now all is well, and we can cook, and read in tungsten radiance, and use power tools. We even – at last – have a phone line and the Internet.

Bob the Builder

The plumber was a remarkable man. Now getting close to 80 he was still putting in a regular day’s work, and knowledgeable and competent about just about everything in building. Formerly a director of a precision engineering company he worked easily to exacting standards. His name was Bob, and he had 'Bob The Builder' painted on his wagon, underlined by “Building to Engineering Standards”. And it was no idle boast.

Travelling with him one day to fetch a stone lintel we watched carfuls of children stop and stare and laugh at the signage on his van. He could best be described as portly, as all of him fitted in to one postcode, and all of him fitted in to one boiler suit. He had fierce eyes and beetling brows needing regular trimming, and leaving one in no doubt that upsetting Bob might not be a good idea. But his heart was pure gold. We knew when he was around as he was always whistling. Unless there was a problem, when the whistling stopped for a thinking break.

On the whole, not very often. He noticed when the electrician stuck the kitchen light inaccessibly behind the fridge, and when the builder put the back doorstep a centimetre too high so the door drain holes were covered up, but he kept his own counsel. I was navvying for all these people, mainly to chivvy the work on so we could start a life, and I found working for Bob a real eye-opener. Things were either right, or they needed doing properly, and this was the fruits of a lifetime of working within fine tolerances. I wonder, if I used that sort of meticulous precision on my models, would they fly a lot better? He replaced the skirting boards. “No, you’d best get new, they’ve been repainted too many times, they will never look good”. But the corners and mitres on the new boards were so neat you couldn’t get a feeler gauge in the joints. And some of the old boards found their way in to shelves for Patricia’s airing cupboard, and as bookshelves. The tired paintwork was “refreshed”. “Of course, you can’t leave old architraving beside new skirting. It will just laugh at you.” And so all that was changed. So who hasn’t used exactly the same argument about model planes. “You MUST have digital servos, Must have 2.4, Must have a 4-stroke, Must have an outrunner/roadrunner.” So, the new skirting boards and door architraving look really nice beside each other.

The Suit

Bob has always liked to wear a suit to work. As director he favoured blue pin-stripes, with the waistcoat cut rather more trimly than these days. Now, it is a boiler suit, but still a suit. One day he came a bit late, very dapper in a cream suit. He had to go off to the dentist to get a tooth pulled but turned up a bit later in his regular suit. There is another suit he wears, and this featured in a story he told Patricia over a glass of wine one evening.

Waking early one morning he was annoyed to see young rabbits feasting on his lawn. His wife was still sleeping peacefully. Bob frowns on such deadly sins as sloth and gluttony. He thought he would sort all this out, so he got his gun and carefully opened the window and took a steady aim at the nearest rabbit. It is strange how events sometimes march their own way to spring surprises on you. God in His infinite wisdom took this very moment in all eternity to raise a gentle zephyr which blew the window closed just as Bob pulled the trigger! The window shattered into a million fragments with an awful crash, his wife leapt out of bed, dreams equally shattered, and the rabbits were rolling around on the lawn laughing their socks off. Bob was in a suit, of course, his birthday suit.

The Spare Part

We fitted the new kitchen. Wonderful! This was just what Patricia had always wanted. Now she had it. Fitting the sink required some rather surprising technology. In order to fit the tap you hit this priceless ceramic sink with a big hammer. “Yes, you just bray it wi a hammer” I watched Bob do this, sweating with anxiety! Do you ever build your models with a big hammer? Finally, at the third stroke, the tap hole appeared and the sink was still in one piece. So did Patricia now have the kitchen she so longed for? They had sent the wrong sink waste units, rendering the entire kitchen useless. Try getting the right bits out of these companies? Try wringing blood out of stones! It is as easy as getting a kit manufacturer to replace a faulty bit, maybe a broken cowl or missing firewall. Maybe easier to buy a new kit. But after a long time on the just-installed phone we got a promise of a replacement kit and a fortnight later we could actually turn on a tap and watch water gurgle down the right sink. This is perhaps not quite the progress I had anticipated as I can now indulge in the washing-up!

Let Sleeping Moths Lie

We seem to have rather a lot of creepy-crawlies creeping out from cracks and crannies. Patricia can’t stand them. I had boarded over the back of the stairs in an attempt to keep these creatures out of our life, but found Patricia standing petrified and unable to move in the middle of the kitchen. There was a moth, a BIG one, in Mrs Brown’s cupboard under the stairs. She told me to take a tissue and get rid of it. Donning protective spectacles (this moth may have been a venomous spitting moth) I bravely crawled along the floor of the cupboard to catch this creature unawares -- and pounced! Patricia was furious when I burst out laughing and rolling around on the floor! This dangerous moth was in fact a grey cable clip I had used to secure the ply board to the stair back. It is still there. Maybe one day, if I get really annoyed, I shall bang another on in and see if they breed.

Wyaye

I have always been interested in dialects and the different expressions people use in different areas. I grew up in Yorkshire and once had a “Waterdale” accent. That altered a bit after moves to London , Denmark, and Devon where I made enquiries in to the numerous brews of local ciders. “Av’ee seen the bung ver thick’eer barrel? Do ee know where’tis to?” “It was in that peck of cider you just drank” “Oo Arr, jer means oi Zwollered it? Properjob!” In other places sentences are peppered with “Innit?”. Here, they say “Yernaaworramean?” like “Build that wall here, Yernaaworramean? Else you‘ll get wrong off the Gaffer” to which the answer is “Wyaye”. “Hoy” means throw. Now, I know Hoy as an Island in Orkney, so I may be forgiven a little confusion when a brickie shouts “Hoyusahammer”

To which I should reply “wyaye”

But Bob always says “whyess”. Perhaps the result of wearing suits.

For those of us who were born after decimalisation I might note that a peck is two gallons, and four pecks make a bushel. So I think that there are a good 50 units of alcohol in a peck of cider and I would have to advise against attempting to drink a peck of anything, let alone cider. I read a story about one west country man who apparently always drank a peck o’ zuider a day. They knew he was ailing when he could only manage a gallon a day. Those were the days of horses and carts, hay wains and pitch forks, where you worked up a sweat all day. Maybe they didn’t ferment such a heady brew as you can get these days. What a way to live!
 

 

Ferret Moans - 11/7/11

For some people it is easier than for others to get words mixed up. For some, Lysdexia Lures and they can’t help getting words muddled. For others it is a game to jiggle words around and create alternative meanings for them. For the observer the results can be hilarious, for example the TV series “Allo, Allo!”

Ferret Moans is Patricia’s alternative meaning for that strange phenomenon pheromones. These are chemical messengers transmitting the strangest and most exciting messages over great distances, causing the recipients to behave in bizarre (but perhaps predictable) manners. A male moth may sense just one molecule of a pheromone released by a female and he instantly stops what he is doing and chases the lady upwind. A shark needs just a dash of blood in the water and he goes off for miles in search of dinner.

Now these activities are clearly beneficial for the survival of those species. Fortunately for us, we don’t drop what we are doing and rush off when a pretty woman walks past (not usually, not most of us). Nor do we rush off to the A and E department at the smell of blood (most run the opposite way). But how do we respond to the sight and smell of a model shop, or the noise and free space of a club site? The intoxicating smell of burning castor? Not much differently to the poor moth, caught in an impossible web of pre-programmed behaviour. We HAVE to get there, we HAVE to spend money, we HAVE to fly. For me, things were a bit different. There were no pheromones capable of drifting over the wind-swept Pentland Firth, but I will certainly get affected now I am South!

Patricia had her official clipboard on display. She was standing on a grassy patch near some blocks of flats, and was trying to talk with some local residents rather the worse for the morning’s drinking. “So who lives at No 122?” They all pointed at someone else. One had a thin silver chain from his wrist disappearing in to the grass. Patricia tapped her clipboard again. They all pointed again, at someone different. A pair of beady black eyes peeped through the grass near Patricia’s flip-flops. A pink nose, a brown furry face, and a ferret ran up inside Patricia’s jeans. There was a silver chain round its neck. Now, Patricia wears that style of jeans where progress even for ferrets gets difficult above the knee, and the ferret came down disappointed and resumed its wanderings in the long grass. “So, you’re not afraid of ferrets?” “No, do you live at No 122?”

That was Patricia’s alternative Ferret Moan. She had some interesting times working for the council, with her friend Jane. Jane lived through life in a sort of a daze, probably because she was far too vain to use glasses, and some things were just too far out of focus. I know how she must have felt, as I now can’t clearly see the prices in the small print without my reading glasses when I go shopping for model bits and sometime get badly caught out.

It was a quiet winter day, and a stray Parakeet perched in a bush looking very sorry for itself. “Look!” said Patricia. “It’s a bush” said Jane. “No, the white Parrot on top” said Patricia. “That’s snow” said Jane. Finally, they had the Parakeet corralled in a cardboard box and in custody at the local Police Station. “Who’s a clever boy, then!” Job well done. But neither of them had reckoned on The Clarion trumpeting their dramatic story in next day’s news, read by everyone in the office, including their manager, for whom they had a very rude nickname.

The architects had a rat in a cage displayed in a prominent position in their department. They were very fond of it, but that didn’t mean to say that their behaviour was in any way rat-like. Far from it. They were grief-stricken when the rat disappeared one day when the office was unaccountably empty for a few minutes. A day or two later the chief architect answered his phone and heard the rat squeaking at the other end. It was a plastic rat, and if you squeezed it the right way it would squeak appreciatively. This went on for some weeks, with anonymous and untraceable squeaks until a ransom demand was delivered. Finally, an honourable settlement was reached, the rat returned to head the department, and the architects could get on with their lives unmolested. They say you are never more than ten feet away from a rat in Britain, council-designed or not.

Patricia and Jane were often involved in collecting survey data, on one occasion noting the volume of traffic down a certain road to the river. “Look, What’s that moving over there?” said Patricia. “Oh, it’s just the wind” said Jane. “Then why has it got a helmet and a flak jacket?” said Patricia. Some while later The Police had completed their enquiries, and Patricia and Jane were able to leave the Police Station and resume their work. There had been an armed robbery at a nearby post office. Patricia and Jane 'didn’t see nothing, officer'.

The manager with the rude name had a plastic frog suspended from the lamp-pull over his desk. It seemed this council needed mascots of some sort to stimulate achievement, but with a noose round its neck this frog had croaked once too often. It went missing, and after a while appeared tied to Patricia’s lamp-pull. Of course, the manager noticed it immediately. “Who is responsible for this?” he enquired. Jane pointed to Patricia, who in all innocence was unable to reply. His name then changed to an even ruder one.

Then she met me. It was all so different before everything changed.
 

A Finely Collimated Retrospectoscope - 21/6/11

And if you don’t know what one of them is, ask Andy Ellison, or Alex Whittaker, or Brian Winch, or Tony Nijhuis, or any of the experts who contribute to RCM&E. They all use one, or have had one used on them, and it is not one of those things you stick up your --- they stick up you --- they use in clinics. It doesn’t feature in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, nor in the Definitive Medical Dictionary, nor does it appear if you google it, although the “Northern Ireland Assembly” comes as close as you get. Try it. And if you can convince the editor you know what it is, he will give you a chocolate noddy for trying (or I will get one for being VERY trying).

The Latin meaning of “collimate” is to bring together in to a straight line, and the usual application is with optical instruments such that they point or see in exactly the same line (eg. each arm of a binocular, or a gun sight and a gun) or with electronic instruments such that they point their rays in exactly the same beam. “Retrospection” is to look back, in anger or not, at one’s life to see what went right or wrong, and to wonder whether you would change anything if you had your time again, like “Ailerons, elevator, rudder----- Oh £$%$£??!!£$”. It is much more fun to look back at someone else’s life, often with amusement, and to forget your own mishaps.

Actually, this vitally important instrument is owned by everyone reading this column. It starts with the eyes and finishes in the grey matter between the ears. A Retrospectoscope therefore does not exist except in various peoples’ vivid imagination, so your editor can sit safe behind his desk.

We've left Orkney now, and have moved to a flying field in the north east so now may be a good time to look back with some fondness at our time there, and on this column, and the many friends we have made through the comments you have added.

If you google “Bloody Orkney” you will find a poem written by an RAF Officer who was so impressed with Orkney that he put his thoughts down for posteriority. Little has changed since then and we have found his words as true today as when he wrote them. He also wrote lots of other things which just wouldn’t get through The editor’s red pencil.

 

There are also some good things. Orkney has more ancient sites going back to the Stone Age than any comparable area in Europe. Scara Brae is a perfectly preserved Stone Age village thousands of years older than the pyramids, and there is a large stone circle, The Ring of Brodgar. Orkney has the world’s shortest registered civil airline route, between the Islands of Westray and Papa Westray. It lasts just 90 seconds with a following wind, or no time at all if the weather is bad. The island has no less than three ferry services to the mainland which run in almost all weathers or things like bread and dripping go short. There are planes to Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow from where you can catch a plane to somewhere else if that was where you were actually going. Orkney isn’t quite the hub of the universe. In fact, I agree with the Irishman who said “Well, if you want to get to Dublin, you would NEVER start from here.” And so, from now on, we might never be starting from 'here' ever again.

And what will we most miss? The wind for a start. People write to the papers if there is no wind for a day, and people don’t write to the papers when the wind rises above 70 mph because that isn’t that rare. The highest recent gust was around 115 mph. And we will miss the winters. They say if you can stand the first winter you will stay. We lasted seven but you will need to see for yourselves what you are missing, so take a look at the visitorkney website, and book yourself a visit. Two people did and wrote about it on this column. They both enjoyed themselves.

I first started writing here after several emails to David Ashby at RCM&E, when the column began as an occasional contribution. I had never written before and was amazed when people actually replied! That encouraged me greatly, and the antics we got up to here provided ample fruit to enjoy. I got in to model flying accidentally when I saw an ad in a local paper many years ago for a plane and radio kit, and idly showed my two sons. I got no peace till I had driven miles to see and buy this kit, and then found a club just a few miles from our home.

 

We had happy times till we moved and the boys’ interests changed, and I moved to Sunderland, where I met and married my beautiful wife Patricia. Our move to Orkney was via Norway and I carted boxfuls of aero junk from place to place. Here at last I had space to play but no-one to teach me, and my arrivals and disasters have provided much hilarity for you, dear reader, and much heartache for me. Patricia also feels my pain, particularly when I have occasionally cut my finger. I once did that the day before our holiday to Skye, had to get another GP to stitch me up, and Patricia had to drive all the way round the top of Scotland. The scenery was stunning, and so was the pain. And when we got there we didn’t see a single eagle which we so wanted to see, golden or white-tailed. Sea eagles were relatively common in Norway - enormous birds like flying doors, and silly ridiculously short tails. They are rarely seen on Orkney, but there is a legend on Hoy of a baby being snatched by an eagle and the mother climbing up the sheer cliffs to the eyrie to rescue her child.

Each winter sees 70,000 geese and swans in from Iceland and Siberia and they make lovely patterns in the sky, often much higher up than I can fly. They take all that effort to get there, and then people shoot them. Each spring we see hares playing catch and shadowboxing in the fields beyond 'The Bog', sometimes in our garden. But this last year there were no hares and lots of rabbits running round the garden. Near the house on the hill there live black rabbits, and there are other communities of black rabbits around Orkney not to be confused with the Great Black Were-Rabbit who attacked Airport One one dreadful day.

Regular visitors are the short-eared owls and hen harriers who quarter The Bog looking for voles or pheasant or duck chicks. They fly lazily on big wings and float along, sometimes having to fly hard in to strong winds that throw them about. It must take real skill to drop on a tiny creature with accuracy in a 30mph gale. Miss your meal and starve. ravens are common, and their raucous croaks are distinctive and different from the hooded crows, rooks, and jackdaws who sidle up to the patio to snatch a crumb of bread as if no-one was watching or could see them up to no good. The rooks have funny black baggy knickers which seem at the point of slipping down and embarrassing their owners. They obviously have a sense of humour.

In Wales there are feeding points for the once very rare red kites, now widespread throughout Britain. We saw a buzzard tearing a piece of meat to bits and eating it. Two rooks sidled up behind it and deliberately pulled its tail feathers with their beaks. Startled and very angry, the buzzard glared over its shoulder, and then finished its meal. the kites, meanwhile played touch-and go and picked up chunks of meat straight off the ground and ate them on the wing! Wish I could fly like that.

Bye Bye, Orkney! - 4/4/11

We moved in to this house just seven years ago, after I was offered the sort of job I had always wanted. We knew a little about Orkney, having come up for a holiday a year before. That was a bit odd, as we had intended to go to Guernsey, but whatever we did trying to book a holiday in that other beautiful Island just went wrong. Our hotel bookings didn’t go through, the travel agents didn’t respond, and our attempts to book flights went wrong. So, we said, if we can’t go south, how far north can we go? We had been to Shetland a couple of years previously, so that left Orkney, and the rest, as they say, is history. And for that holiday we didn’t have a single glitch in our arrangements. Some things are just meant to be.

Orkney, you may have realised, is not an ordinary place. RURAL these days seems to epitomise “The Archers” and a five minute drive to the Pzazz and Zing of Bustling Borchester. My father never missed an episode, and I can’t stand The Archers. If you want REMOTE you can go to Rhayader and watch Kites, Alston and get snowed in, Wilmington (either one) and watch Buzzards, and in each case you are not two hours drive from a city, with all that means in services you may or may not want or need. For Patricia that means Debenhams, Next, T K Maxx. For me, it means B & Q, Wickes, a luxury hot chocolate at Marks and Spencer’s cafe, and in some cities a decent model shop. REMOTE also means less than an hour’s drive to a decent flying club.

Such rules don’t apply to Orkney. In fact, I am not sure that any rules apply here as it seems to go at its own pace and write its own rules. Fortunately, the only railway on Orkney is a private toy one on one of Orkney’s many remoter and inhabited smaller Islands. It no longer offers trips to visitors. If there had been a railway, and if Dr Richard Beeching had visited it, he would probably have closed down the entire Island system as unprofitable. Perhaps, too, we should be relieved that there are no mines still operating, or That Lady might have closed us down and cancelled all ferry services to Orkney, possibly having to reinstate them after rescuing that other group of insignificant British Islands just off Argentina. We do have some of our own energy supplies now; in peat cuttings handed down through generations and still firing the remaining whisky stills here; wind farms; and wave and tide generation still in the experimental stage. We do export the best beef and lamb in Britain. But all our other needs are shipped in, and I can’t imagine what that carbon footprint is. And that is not the only problem. Live REMOTE anywhere else and the courier vans will turn on their satnavs, dial in your postcode, and will bring your latest models and transmitters at least twice a week, if not daily. Dial up an internet order, pay for it with Visa, and then put in a KW postcode and the worldwideweb goes crazy. “Sorry Dear, the Computer says No”. There is a sort of courier service here, but I am not sure how connected it is to the rest of the world. Our brave removal firm will collect and deliver for you, natiowide, at a price, but often the best way is to go and collect it yourself.

If you want to get from Rhayader to Liverpool you might allow about three hours and set off, any time, and unless someone is herding geese to market, you will get there. Here, unless you can walk or drive on water you have to wait for a ferry, morning, lunchtime, or evening, early booking recommended or take pot luck, £50.00 each way for a car. As I write I see several artics lumbering their 40-ton trailers south to one of the ferry terminals where they will swap them for trailers just unloaded from the ferry bringing goods and passengers in from a real world. They might just have to move the decimal place in their transport costs if they add on the diesel and tyre wear from Inverness. The same applies to health care. We have GPs, and a cottage hospital which they run, but if you are ill it is the Air Ambulance to Aberdeen if one is available (they cover Western Isles and Shetland as well) and if it can fly (wind, cloud, and snow permitting). Apparently they were “Unable” to attend last year some 50 times for a variety of reasons. Just don’t get sick in a blizzard!

In Norway we found miles of bridges connecting their many Islands, and more miles of tunnels connecting other remote communities. One, 25km long, ran right through a mountain, with rest rooms and a burger bar in the middle. Simples! I wonder where dynamite was invented? Did Alfred Nobel have something to do with it? There is a long bridge with tunnel connecting Denmark to Sweden. Here in Orkney, they had a vote on tunnels and bridges and it was rejected four to one. “We like our separate and remote Islands” said the residents, most of whom had immigrated in from unremote places like Ambridge or Mornington Crescent. The old Orcadians would quite like a few bridges so they could get to shops and relatives.

Journeys south need some planning. Getting from our house to Thurso, 30 miles by crow south and the top end of the A9 on the Scottish Mainland, takes at least 2 hours via the ferry, then three more hours to Inverness which I think is about the size of Borchester, and then another four hours to Edinburgh with a much larger range of services. In reverse, get behind a tractor on the A9 coming north (overtaking is NOT easy on these roads) and you might miss the last ferry home and have to book in to a hotel for the night.

I have often mentioned the wind (almost constant) and weather. “We have 9 months of winter and three months of bad weather” we proudly boast, and it is true. The winter days are barely six hours long, and some find that quite SAD and depressing. Those who enjoy getting out to see other places find Orkney is a bit of an open prison. Drive round Orkney to see the sights one day, and drive round Orkney in the opposite direction the next day for a different perspective on life. Neither journey takes too long. There aren’t the spectacular views you get in the North-West of Scotland, or in The Lakes, or Snowdon. Perhaps the prettiest views are on Hoy, another ferry trip away, with two large mountains and a community of summer houses which attracts visitors from as far away as Longhope just a couple of miles distant.

It is not all bad. Orkney has a fascination over people who move here, and they tend to stay. There are more ancient sites here than anywhere else of a similar size in Europe, and well worth a visit to see how our forbears lived 5000 years ago. There are well-preserved farm museums going back 300 years. Whalers and Arctic Explorers victualled in the quaint and barely changed streets in Stromness. There is diving on the wrecks in Scapa Flow which is internationally recognised. Crime is low, and there are good schools. The stress and pace of life here are less than in a city, if you need to live stress-free. I well remember one ex-Marine I worked with in Devon who always answered the phone “Care-Bear here, Stress-level Zero!” The natural world is just outside the window, with numerous birds visible as I write, and the sea visible from the kitchen window. In fact, the sea is close by anywhere in Orkney, mostly within a mile, and maximum five miles from your front door, and it has always played a powerful influence on Orkney life. It controls our weather and temperature. It controls what we harvest. It controls how we come and go, today just as it did those villagers who came and went 5,000 years ago at Scara Brae, except they didn’t have planes or cars.

Now it is time for us to go. My dream job has ended, amid the worst medical politics I have ever experienced, and I think it is time to retire gracefully. There have been good times on Orkney, in particular the opportunity to mess about in my own garage and fly from my own garden. There have been bad times, and when we get on the ferry for the last time we can leave them behind.

But remember, I might be moving to a Club near YOU!
 

 

 

Use this forum thread link or the one below if you have any feedback or messages for Martyn.