Sean the next morning. In the afternoon I would switch to the passenger seat, and Richard, now fully legal, and I would head off together on a cross-country flight. On Sunday the process would be repeated, after which, tired but fulfilled, we would head back to London. This was the idea anyway. But the weather did not return to the clement skies of our summer holiday, and with Sean a lot busier at weekends it was hard to determine how instructive these weekends were. With less time to become immersed in the flying, I often arrived for my lesson still distracted by the week’s unsolved advertising problems and unmet deadlines. The period between putting away the Thruster on Sunday evening, and getting back into the cockpit (if all went well) the following Saturday morning, seemed like a lifetime.
By the end of August I could take off and fly straight and level pretty competently (as, Richard pointed out, anyone could). I could feel if the nose was too high or too low. I could do gentle and medium turns, both climbing and descending. And I could do full-power steep turns sufficiently accurately that the ball of the slip indicator remained roughly central in its window, and I felt the blast of air of my own wake as I completed the turn (Sean’s more rough and ready definition of a perfect turn). Descending, I didn’t need to check the air speed indicator to know when I was going between 50-55 knots: I could feel by the back pressure on the stick.
However, when it came to landing, everything went to pieces.
I just could not get it right. Some people, I suppose, simply have a better sense of space and distance than others. I found the whole exercise of gauging an even, controlled descent from an altitude of around 1,000 feet down to a few feet off the ground at a specified spot in the landscape, by co-ordinated adjustment of throttle, ailerons, elevators and rudder, virtually impossible. Even if I did manage it, once I was down to near ground level, getting the Thruster smoothly onto the turf was another matter altogether. All might be well down to fifteen or ten feet from the ground. Sean would say something encouraging like ‘Nice. Very nice. That’s a perfect approach. This is going to be good, I can feel it.’ Then, when we were a foot or two from the ground, it would all go wrong. I would flare out (the action of rounding from a descending attitude to a level one just above the surface of the runway) too early, stall too high above the ground, crash down and bounce. I would flare out too late, slam into the ground, and bounce. Even if I flared out just right, and got the wheels onto the ground, she just would not stay there. With a mind of her own she would leap into the air again in a series of terrific balloons and kangaroo-like bounces. Each time Sean would have to take over and bring her back under control. Lesson after lesson went by doing nothing but landings, landings and landings.
At one stage I thought I had it, and so did Sean. ‘One more like that,’ he would say, ‘and you can go solo.’ Then I would mess up the next one. It became a familiar routine. Each lesson he would say, ‘Right. We’ll get you solo this time Ants,’ and the end of the lesson would come and the matter wouldn’t be mentioned again. At other times he would say, doubtfully, ‘I don’t know, Ants, maybe I should send you solo. It might be the best way.’
It began to depress me. My knowledge—buttressed by Sean’s repeated assurances—that the Thruster was, even by tail-dragger standards, an exceptionally difficult plane to land, had made it an exciting challenge to start with. But any reassurance that had conferred had long since begun to ring hollow. The others, including Dan, had all gone solo ages ago.
I constructed reasons and explanations for myself. Richard had already done his licence. So had Mr Watson. Dan, living in Norfolk, had access to the plane in good weather on a regular basis, while I had to take my chances at weekends: in any one hour lesson I got, at the most (by the time I had completed each circuit), only eight attempts at landing. But the fact remained that I had now done eleven hours of flying—twenty-five if you included my hours in Africa—and I still hadn’t gone solo. It had become an issue. In every account of learning to fly that I had read, the subject had gone solo in a quarter of the time. Roald Dahl in Going Solo had done it in seven hours forty minutes. Cecil Lewis in Sagittarius Rising had soloed his Maurice Farman Longhorn after an hour and twenty minutes. An hour and twenty minutes. I even recalled that James Herriot had learnt to fly and when I looked up Vet in a Spin I discovered he had done it in nine hours. In the Battle of Britain seventeen-year-olds—seventeen-year-olds—were flying Spitfires—Spitfires—after the time I had been flying. I began to feel resentful and bitter. Why did the plane have to be stuck in Norfolk? Why was I saddled with such a lousy instructor? Why was I pouring money into this pointless activity?
I had almost accepted that landing aeroplanes was one of those talents, like rolling hose-pipes or folding maps, that either you had or hadn’t when, one showery Saturday morning on the last day of August, I did three passable landings in succession—and Sean told me to take her up alone. ‘Remember, with only one, she’ll climb much faster,’ he said. I felt far from confident.
Sean was right. Without a passenger aboard I seemed to be in the air almost before the throttle was fully open. She leapt off the ground, and once airborne seemed much lighter too, bouncing around a lot more. I was at 800 feet, the height at which I normally executed a gentle climbing turn into the crosswind leg, before I was two thirds of the way down the runway. It felt hideously lonely looking to my right and seeing, where Sean should have been, just an empty seat, with the safety harness buckled across it. By the time I reached the point where I normally turned crosswind I was already at 1,200 feet and realised that I should be levelling off. I reduced the power to the usual 5,700 rpm, but the Thruster continued to climb furiously—1,250, 1,300, 1,400 feet. I had to reduce the power to 5,000 rpm before the altimeter needle finally held steady. As I repeated Sean’s rule to myself (‘Attitude, Power, Trim’), for the first time I remembered the trimmer; I had forgotten to set it at all. Already it was time to turn onto the downwind leg. And—what was I thinking of?—I was almost halfway round the circuit and I hadn’t given a thought to what would happen if the engine failed. I should have been scouring the ground for suitable fields. And this is what I was busy doing when, suddenly, I was engulfed in cloud.
I didn’t see it coming. It must have been some low stuff, sweeping across on the breeze, as it had been all morning. I must have climbed into its path by levelling off so high.
Had I kept my head I might have guessed that, if I only lost a little height or maintained my heading for a few moments, I must soon get clear. I was in no mood for keeping my head however: this was my first solo. Suddenly engulfed in a dense, impenetrable white-out, my stripped, disorientated senses screamed helplessly for information. I scanned the instruments desperately for clues. But my mind refused to tell me what was relevant and what was not. Which dial could help? What information mattered? The readings began to leap out at me as my eyes flicked from one to another. Not to stall, that was the main thing; so I opened the throttle and lowered the nose.
After a few moments more, my only clear sensation was that I was about to fall out of the left-hand side of the cockpit: I could actually feel my weight against the strap of the harness. So to level the plane, I moved the stick tight. This failed to correct the sensation which in fact grew stronger. So I moved the stick as far right as it would go. Knowing I should accompany this with some right rudder, for a moment I became transfixed by trying to centre the ball in the slip indicator.
Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the cloud was gone. I was spiralling in a near vertical right-hand turn over the centre of what should have been my final approach. There was the airfield directly ahead. My spell of blind flying must have lasted a matter of thirty or forty seconds at the most.
I levelled the wings, reduced the power and got her down. It was not great. I bounced a couple of times. But I got her down. The relief was overwhelming. I had done it. It had been close, but I had gone solo and brought the aircraft and myself back in one piece. The cloud which had contributed so much grief had disappeared as fast as it had come and already, as I started to taxi back to the hangar, the sun was shining. Everything seemed so normal and ordinary and safe now I was back
