subsequent flights as more sequences and requirements were introduced, I began to slip further.
I had always been tense and nervous in the air, despite the magic of it all. My immaturity, combined with Clough’s outgoing and matter-of-fact manner and the workload of ground training, led to the deterioration of my performance. A forgotten checklist item, a missed radio call, incorrect speed or a wrong aircraft configuration could lead to a thump on the arm or helmet from Clough. On the downwind leg of one circuit, he began calling me names over the intercom in a calculated tirade. As I approached the base turn for final approach, my lips tightened under the boom microphone. I concentrated on flying accurately and tried to focus on the rest of the flight. It was an attempt to break me. An outburst or emotional collapse would have resulted in immediate course failure. I had been marked as too young, under-confident, and probably not suitable for further training as a military pilot. It would be up to me to prove them wrong.
Other course-mates were struggling too. As spinning and aerobatics were introduced, some were chronically airsick, and had to be contemptuously flown home by their instructors while they clutched paper bags. Most pilots – myself included – gradually became desensitised to motion sickness, except for an unlucky few. There was an establishment at Point Cook called the School of Aviation Medicine. The chronically sick students were grounded and sent to AvMed for a desensitisation program. This involved four sessions a day in the ‘Vertigon’, an enclosed box that rotated on a pivot with a simulated cockpit inside. The students sat in the box, its lid was closed, and various head movements had to be carried out while the Vertigon was rotated round and round, the occupant’s head moving up and down, to bring them to the point of vomiting. One or two fell by the wayside, while other determined students returned after a thoroughly unpleasant few days.
Most of us underwent ‘sight board runs’ at various stages of our training at Point Cook. A forgotten checklist or action, a whiff of overconfidence, a poor landing, and it was off to the sight board. One of the Point Cook runways was a sealed asphalt strip, but the rest were grass marked by white gable markers, and at the end of one of the runways was the infamous ‘sight board’. Steering the CT-4 straight down the centreline of the runway was important, and the large red and white checkerboard was set up at the strip’s far end as an aim point for the pilot nearly a kilometre away. The miscreant would have to run to the sight board, breeding magpies swooping, usually wearing a helmet, a parachute pack and a life jacket, very hot under all of the equipment. There could be no cheating by turning back early; he would have to sign his name on the board. The signature would be checked by the instructor later.
Another punishment was being ordered to get out of the aircraft immediately after landing and while the instructor taxied in, the student had to grip the aircraft’s wing tip and run to keep up, for onlookers to watch and to point at. To a nineteen-year-old, all of this was very character forming. Poor drill from the course when marching to lectures resulted in Scrubber following the squad close behind in a van while we ran ‘at the double’, briefcases bouncing, to lectures.
Life at Point Cook was not always grim. At one of the discos I had met a trainee WAAF with whom I spent occasional weekend afternoons. A small group of army officers had joined our course, in training as army pilots, and were mature and pleasant. Those of them who graduated from Point Cook would not proceed to the Macchi jets: they would go to their base at Oakey, Queensland, for specialist training on army aircraft. They lived in the Officers’ Mess, not our ancient cadets’ accommodation.
A separate course of students from Papua New Guinea (PNG) arrived. Good humoured members of the PNG Defence Force, the ‘PNGs’ were accommodated in a nearby block. Few could drive a motor vehicle, and they (and their flying instructors) had a hard road ahead. One of the first evenings after they arrived was Panic Night, where rooms had to be cleaned and polished for inspection by the WOD. This involved use of the 1960s vintage floor polishers that had huge single rotating bristle brushes that spun and throbbed while the operator clung to the handgrips. The PNGs had not experienced any form of floor-cleaning appliance before, and there was much hilarity and mock fear as the things came alive, with some of them jumping up onto their beds. Later, a group of PNG students purchased an old car that had been sitting up on blocks for months in the Cadets’ Mess car park. The fact that none of them could drive was not a problem for them: Friday afternoon’s entertainment was to sit in it while they worked through the contents of several cartons of beer. Many of these men passed their training at Point Cook and went on to successful careers in the PNG Defence Forces and later, with international airlines.
My battle with the CT-4 began to ease a little thanks to one bright spot: I was reasonably competent at ‘instrument flying’. It was becoming apparent that my feel for the aircraft was not great: my circuits were average, and I was not good at aerobatics (even the basic loops and rolls). We had begun navigation training, and my calculations and map reading were often muddled. Instrument flying was somewhat of a relief, because I did not have worry about what was going on outside! Most of the other students hated flying on instruments.
Simon at Pilotmakers had stressed the importance of looking at the aircraft’s ‘attitude’. It was vital to focus on the picture of the horizon, the attitude, in relation to the windscreen rather than chasing the needles on the instrument panel. But the air force made an art form of ‘attitude flying’ using the ‘selective radial scan’, like the spokes of a wheel: look at the horizon, then inside to one instrument, maybe the altimeter, back outside to the horizon, in to another instrument, say the air speed indicator, back out to the horizon, and so forth. Staring at one instrument for too long, or looking inside at other instruments, would inevitably lead to the aircraft’s attitude with respect to the horizon (and the surrounding airflow) changing, especially if the pilot had committed the cardinal sin of not trimming the aircraft properly. ‘Attitude plus power equals performance!’ This mantra joined ‘trim or fail’ from the instructors. ‘Select the correct attitude, set the required [engine] power, and you will get the [aircraft] performance you want,’ stressed the instructors. Instrument flying merely meant replacing the sometimes-vague horizon of earth and sky ahead through the windscreen with a small artificial one in the cockpit. And this instrument had numbers on it.
A diligent studier, all I had to do was to memorise the various attitudes (expressed in degrees), the power settings and the ‘by numbers’ instrument flying procedures, and the CT-4 would do my bidding. No need to look outside: in fact, we had hoods placed over our helmets to restrict vision. No need to look for, avoid and report to ‘Sir’ any other aircraft spotted in the vicinity. No harsh manoeuvring or aerobatics. The military were insistent on good instrument flying skills, because its pilots were required to not just fly but to ‘fight’ their aircraft in all weather conditions, day and night, in cloud or rain. Regardless of how good a student’s aerobatics or visual flying skills were, if his instrument work was not up to standard, he was finished. Most of 100 Course scraped through the rudimentary instrument flying at Point Cook: the basic manoeuvres, ‘homings’ and ‘let downs’ through ‘cloud’ directed by radio to overhead the fields at Point Cook and Laverton. But apart from the occasional silly procedural error, I did reasonably well at instrument flying. Then things looked up further: I had a new instructor.
‘Hawkeye’, another air force flight lieutenant, was as urbane as a Point Cook instructor could be, and less aggressive about mistakes. I had scraped through the early progress tests in circuits, aerobatics and practice forced landings, and did reasonably well in the flight devoted to assessing the candidate’s instrument flying. A junior course, Number 101, had arrived at Point Cook, and those who remained of the senior course, 99, were about to move on to the coveted jets at Pearce. There were more solo consolidation flights, the manoeuvres and requirements strictly laid out and monitored by a Duty Instructor in the control tower, and I experienced the joy of solo circuits and aerobatics. But I was still having good days and bad days. I was considered safe for a solo navigation exercise. The academic workload eased gradually as the exams were cleared, and the syllabus flights were counted down until the final one: the Basic Handling Test, or BHT. Pass this, and it was off to the golden west where the Macchi jets
