Beginnings

The shock and awe of a BAC Lightning taking off on full reheat and going supersonic 250ft over the runway, pointing the nose vertical, and accelerating in to the blue..... not easily forgotten.

From a young age I was simply going to be a pilot. It was accepted and just a matter of time and A-levels.

The RAF taught me to glide in wooden gliders well enough for me to do several solo flights, taught me to shoot and parachute; and taught me the basics of powered flying in Chipmunks.

We would waddle out to the aircraft with parachutes hanging off our bottoms, then the RAF pilots would start the engines with shotgun cartridges, we'd zoom off in to the blue and they would delight in doing aerobatics and trying to make us throw up.

I remember hanging out of the straps upside down at 5,000ft as bits of debris floated upwards to the canopy thinking this had to be the coolest thing you could possibly do; I amassed so many hours in the Chipmunks they stopped trying to make me throw up and started teaching me how to actually fly the thing.

One 30 minute session per term month was a very slow way to learn to fly, and I was promised more and better flying if I signed up for University and then a commission. I was hooked....

I didn't want to be a fighter pilot; either a helicopter or Hercules transport pilot would have suited me.

But Fate intervened in the form of childhood German measles that had affected my eyesight, requiring an operation and leaving me with a measurable but unnoticeable squint, one of the few red flag medical conditions unable to be corrected by glasses, thus permanently preventing enrollment in the RAF as a pilot.

"You could be a navigator" they said, but even in those days I knew moving-map GPS displays would one day supplant the human in the back seat. Who has navigators now?

This being March 1980 (fuel crisis, power cuts, IMF loans, Winter of Discontent, strikes, Maggie fighting the Unions, queues at the petrol pumps, constant drizzle, CND on the march, you get the picture...) no commercial pilot training slots were available. anywhere.

So at 17 I was washed up, unable to fulfil my most fondly held ambition.

I got on with my life in different directions but deep down the flying bug and the Biggles effect have never really gone away. Every time I hear a light aircraft droning over I've always looked up enviously.

Even taking people to, or picking up people from airports and flying in the back of commercial aircraft as "Self Loading cargo" have always been a particular pleasure.

For 25 years the latent Biggles was held back by a lack of money caused by unappreciative employers, high mortgage rates, high taxes, wife, children and school fees.

One of my work colleagues was Tony Blackman, the Vulcan test pilot and in-between fixing his various (and usually highly technical) IT issues we talked about flying. He was an absolute enthusiast and urged me to learn. If only I had the money....

But in 2001 a business trip to California left me with a spare day and at the entrance to Sonoma County Airport near Santa Rosa. And I spied a flying school right next door.....

Inside 40 minutes the magnetic attraction of the aircraft had sucked me in and spat me out airside with a friendly instructor ready for a pre-flight, a refuel, a wobbly taxi around the apron, a less wobbly taxi to the holding point, a wonky take-off and a slow, rough climb to altitude in an old Cessna 152.

Some nice 30° and 45° banks, working the throttle to achieve a 360° turn at the same altitude, some constant speed climbs and descents, some tinkering with the trim tabs, some compass work (and how it came back quickly, it had been a long time since I'd flown a plane) and a return to the field.

Rau, my instructor, did the radio thing then left it to me and went to sleep in the right-hand seat until I cocked up the cross-wind leg on the approach and nearly took out an approaching water-bomber ("No, that's the runway you want; leave him alone").

An hour later my brand new FAA Jeppesen logbook (later looked on with bemusement by both the CAA and Spain's AESA) was signed, updated and a copy of William K Kershner's Student Pilot's Flight Manual was in my hands. I was hooked.......

It would be another 5 years before the finances were anything like up to the strain of a PPL, and I was damned if I was going to start learning, then stop again because of a lack of money.

During a holiday in South Africa in the Spring of 2006 I visited Johannesburg Lanseria Airport and had a second trial lesson with an enthusiastic young Afrikaaner over the High Veldt. It was enough to convince me the time was right to push the button, and in June 2006, I walked into the PFT office at Kidlington and quoted the magic incantation "Will you teach me to fly?"