Five go flying at Popham
It
was at a club meeting during the winter months that Alan Gornell who was guest
speaker that night suggested that for the princely sum of £5 (which
he donated to charity) some of us may like to experience a flight in his Thruster
Microlight. At the time with several beers safely relocated it seemed a marvelous
idea and there were many who dug deep and handed over a crispy blue beer token.
Months later in the middle of summer, five of us gathered at Popham Airfield, and standing beside this extremely micro and very light looking airplane we were beginning to have doubts of our sanity on that winter's night (read as alcohol induced madness).
Picture on the right shows Popham Airfield as you enter the circuit for a landing approach.
Colin
Hannah poses next to G-MYEE which took us all safely up, but more importantly
got us all down again.
Looking around the Thruster and inspecting it more closely convinced me of our madness ( I was certain that I had built stronger model aircraft). This machine is a sort of conventional layout. The fuselage is an alloy boom, with a two seater side by side cockpit suspened beneath. The engine above and in front of the wing. When you are flying, the sensation is one of dangling under an aircraft sitting on a kids climbing frame fitted with a motorcycle fairing ( but boy is it a great sensation!).
We were relieved to see Alan spending a very long time pre-flighting
the machine, checking and double checking everything.
Although it was a gorgeous hot summer's day, Alan advised us to wear a flying
suit, as the temperature dropped considerably in the open cockpit. It was
interesting to see Chris Moynihan struggling to do up the zip on the flying
suit, exclaiming that he could not have possibly put on that much weight,
only to discover that there was a double zip and two inches of material was
dangling between his legs. Nothing changes eh Chris?
So
the time had come for us to take it in turns to fly in the machine. Picture
on the right shows Terry Antell about to takeoff, explaining to Alan Gornell
how it's done. We all had flights in excess off half an hour, each with a
large amount of that time at the controls. A superb experience.
There were a few incidents one being Colin Hannah's landing approach. On finals which Alan had called on the radio, a Cessna waiting to takeoff decided he could accelerate faster than the poor old Thruster and get away in front of them, which he duly did the only problem being the turbulence left in his wake. Colin was quietly sitting in the cockpit as they descended over the main road to land, when all hell let loose and Alan had to open the throttle and fly through the turbulence to land right at the bottom end of the runway. Needless to say he was not a 'happy bunny'. Strangely nobody used Colin's flying suit again that day.
This
view from the cockpit shows our local slopes from Laddle Hill through to White
Hill in the distance. From the air you can see just how insignificant they
appear. This flight was also logged on Alan's G.P.S and it was interesting
to view the flight path and see recognisable features appear on the rolling
map.
We all had a superb day out topped of by a meal and a few beer's at a local watering hole.(I'm beginning to get the impression that all our events revolve around alcohol in some way).
Would we do it again YOU BETCHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!