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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0483.PDF
11 April 1958 499 time we did not know the R.A.F. definition of the Class C posi-tion, which at the low altitude would have been a very good fix.) Shortly after this we had our only break in the cloud and sawdirectly below a well-lit coastline. In an endeavour to dive through the hole, we came down to about 900ft, but it was toosmall and soon cloud swallowed us up again. A 180 deg turn failed to find it, so the Proctor laboured back to 1,500ft. Again Uxbridge was called for a fix and this time they madeus seven miles north-west of Hastings, again Class C. Trans- ferring the first fix, the navigator decided they were quite good,and that we were established between Airways Amber 1 and Amber 3. It now seemed that the best course of action was toclimb and try to improve on the class of fix. At 4,000ft we called for further fixes, and these too tied up wellwith our dead-reckoning, though there was no improvement in the class reported. Ironically enough, Uxbridge then asked if werequired further assistance. Reluctant to leave this, our only aid, I thanked them andchanged to Croydon Approach, but I received no reply. I was now relying completely on the navigator, whose abilityunder stress I did not know, but who was actually doing very well. However, I felt I should check the courses he gave me.But a Proctor will not fly by itself for long, especially in turbu- lence, and to leave the instruments for a few seconds to glanceat the map is a dangerous business. Each time I looked up, the artificial horizon bar had adopted some unaccustomed position.Once the ominous shudder of stall-warning caused me to drop everything with a start, and retrieve the horizon bar from thebottom of the instrument. A constant-speed propeller covers up the tell-tale labouring note of the engine. Engine Takes a Hand Suddenly the engine started to run rough. The same franticsearch for the torch to glance quickly over those instruments not illuminated by the cockpit lights. Magneto switches were tried,tanks changed, and a search made of the leading-edges for ice. With white-painted wings, this did not reveal much, but the out-side air thermometer still showed a couple of degrees in hand. After exercising the propeller the engine seemed smoother, butstill not quite happy. Earlier a tendency for carburettor icing had been noticed and warm air selected. As we headed, by dead reckoning, for East Grinstead, theCroydon Free Lane reporting point, we were out of radio con- tact; and the ominous approach of the London Control Area withits 1,500ft base did not ease one's troubled mind. In the back seats, a bottle of brandy was alternating with the one head-set, whichhas to be shared between the two passengers. The continued silence from Croydon began to shake my faithin the D.R. Were those fixes a really bad Class C? Surely we should raise Croydon by now? What if the set had packed up?This last thought was too horrid to contemplate. The cloud would probably be on the ground over the North Downs, andthere were numerous high masts which came to mind. Just when I thought it was time to return to 121.5 Mc/sCroydon came up faintly and, after a much-repeated conversation, told me that our signals were too weak to give a QDM. Beinganxious to drive the point well home, I repeated my request for a radar approach, passed previously via the F.I.R. controller,and then gave a "guestimate" based more on distance judged by radio-signal strength than on dead-reckoning. Checking and rechecking the course to allay visions of driftingoff into the night accompanied by fading and dramatic radio messages, it was found impossible to set the gyro to within10 deg of the magnetic compass, due to the turbulence. The esti- mate for East Grinstead came and went and still Croydon couldnot give us a QDM. But the navigator, who must have been suffering the most appalling agony by now, seemed confident."That's good," he would say from time to time, but I felt ashamed of any efforts to maintain course and height within InstrumentRating limits. At last Croydon Homer answered with a QDM, and no one wasmore surprised than I to realize that it actually put us inside the free lane. This was better. Course was adjusted to edge into themiddle, and height reduced to 1,250ft, which was the normal maximum for the lane. On being asked by Approach for myflight conditions and replying "1,250ft I.M.C.," I was smartly told to return to 1,500ft. Delayed on E.T.A. by a stronger headwind, and probably beingfurther south than assumed, the approach to Croydon seemed to take an age, and I inquired anxiously if the radar was working.The reply that radar had been alerted left little to do except sit and wait. Agonizing minutes dragged by during which Croydon'ssignals did not seem to get any stronger. This was pointed out, whereupon someone must have been dispatched to turn up thewick, for in a few seconds they came through strength five. By now airborne time was nearing two and a half hours, of**[hich the last hour had been on instruments with only the one Visual break. My real worry was the serviceability of the V.H.F. set. Without this we should be very badly placed indeed.Quite suddenly the voice I had been longing for broke in. "Echo Hotel, this is Croydon Direction, turn right on to 30 deg."Whoopee, we are in—I could now relax and let the other fellow bring us in. All I had to do was to follow instructions. I warnedhim that the gyro was probably ten degrees in error, but the warning was brushed off as a mere detail which could easily beovercome. "You are now on a left-hand base leg for three zero, turn rightright on to three-zero-zero." This was odd, but I was confident of the instruction and assumed that the downwind space waslimited and a three-quarter turn away would give more room for finals. Two corrections of heading followed, then we were told thatwe had 2| miles to go and should descend to 750ft, having pre- viously been given 550ft as a minimum. Imagine the relief when the cloud began to break and glimpsesof the lights of South London appeared. Worries about the sur- vival of the radio vanished with the cloud when, at just under800ft, we broke clear in slight drizzle and there ahead was the flashing-light ident. beacon, hardly recognized before the tworows of runway lights came up—showing us to be perfectly lined up and corrected for considerable drift. I was determinednow at least to make a decent landing—but the passengers could not have been impressed as we clipped the edge of the famousThree Zero hole. As the Proctor splashed slowly through the mud, exhaustionmanifested itself when I automatically turned left after acknow- ledging instructions to clear right. Some years ago it was my misfortune to be caught out by agale in a small yacht in the Channel. Again, weather information had been misleading, and for twenty-four hours the boat washove-to without showing lights. After the storm, temporary repairs were carried our, and we made harbour without a thoughtfor infringements of the law. But in the air it is different. Many questions were asked at Croydon. Everyone concernedhad a different idea of what should have been done. It all seemed so fatuous to my tired mind, when they might have congratulatedthemselves on their achievement. Two months went by before anything further was heard aboutthe incident, and then the usual letter arrived from M.T.C.A. inviting me to offer an explanation. The Ministry's view was thatinsufficient information about the weather had been obtained before take-off, as required by Rule 9(2) of section III ofSchedule II of the Air Navigation Order 1954. There followed an interesting interview with a Ministry gentleman who—for-tunately—turned out to be a pilot. The thing that really overawed me, however, was the thicknessof the file clearly marked BREACH OF REGULATIONS, together withthe aircraft type, its registration and the pilot's name. This contained reports from all sources, radio-tape transcripts,and a map with our track and heights plotted. Mercifully there was no violation of any airway, and the track was no mean creditto the navigator, especially in view of the very limited aid avail- able and the cramped and badly lit conditions under which he hadworked. Someone had done a lot of work compiling and sifting for thatfile, and it did strike one as odd that the pilot in question should not have been consulted until it was almost complete. I cameaway from that interview with no definite conclusions, except a feeling that it would not be necessary to give up private flying. A few days later, the interviewer took the trouble to ring meup to point out one or two details, and to say that the Ministry would be taking no further action. A letter to that effect followed.I wonder what will happen to that file. OLYMPIA 419 DEBUT \iyiTH David Ince at the controls, the first flights of the new" Olympia 419 sailplane were made from Thruxton Aerodrome on Saturday afternoon, March 29. Designed and built by Elliottsof Newbury, Ltd., this aircraft will be flown by Lt-Col. Anthony Deane-Drummond in the 1958 World Gliding Championships.A full range of handling tests was carried out during four flights amounting to about two hours' duration. These included spins,loops, turns and straight glides, and the machine's handling characteristics were reported by the pilot to agree excellently withthose predicted. It may be recalled that the new nineteen-metre aircraft is the fourth in the Olympia 4 series, its immediate pre-decessor being the 403 flown by Cdr. Anthony Goodhart in last year's national contests. The initial batch of Olympia 419s will comprise three machines.In addition, two examples of a smaller version, the fifteen-metre 415, are under construction by Elliotts, at least one of which willbe flown by a British pilot in the standard class at the Leszno world championships in June. Other types being considered foruse by the British team in the standard and open categories respectively are Slingsby's Skylark 2 and Skylark 3.
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