The 1980’s brought me into contact with some great people in the aviation fraternity and led me into flying some really interesting aircraft types. It also saw me flying into some interesting places as well.
This particular story I am about to tell saw me flying an old Army Auster 6, G-ATDN, better known in civilian guise as a Beagle Terrier, into the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford in 1986. When I say fly I mean I was accompanying the owner of the aircraft and assisted in the flying and particularly the navigation part of the journey, which led to a rather strange misunderstanding.
The owner of the Auster was Don Daines, Don also owned Express Aviation at Biggin Hill which was an engineering base and was also the operator of a Britten Norman Islander which by day flew out of Shoreham to Jersey and back. His airline operation was under the guise of SEA, (South Eastern Airlines) In the evening the aircraft would position up to Gatwick and operate as a freight aircraft carrying newspapers and mail to Rotterdam/Amsterdam.
I had been introduced to Don by a friend and colleague at Gatwick Handling by the name of Mick Berman. Don had just bought the Auster, he was a commercial pilot with many hours but had very little experience in vintage aircraft, particularly with a tail wheel undercarriage.
I flew with Don for a couple of hours at Biggin Hill, showing him the black art of tail-wheel operation. He then asked me if I would accompany him to the Air Tattoo at Fairford as he and his Auster had been given an invite to place the aircraft on the static display line. Of course, the ulterior motive for inviting me was that the aircraft had to be hand swung on the propeller and at Biggin Hill he had engineers to do it but at Fairford, he would have no one and he was not happy with swinging a prop.
The day arrived and a finer day could not be asked for, I arrived at Biggin Hill to find Don and his aircraft already out on the tarmac, he had made out a flight plan, and the route almost, corresponded with mine, both routes enabled us to stay outside controlled airspace, except Don had jotted down a number of frequencies to call on the radio and he had also elected to fly the route using the ADF on the aircraft. ADF stands for (Automatic Direction Finder) an antiquated form of electronic navigation even in those days and was way before the age of GPS.
The ADF is mounted within the aircraft, it appears similar to a compass rose on the instrument panel and works in conjunction with ground-based stations called NDB (Non Directional Beacon) Each ground-based beacon has a given frequency and emits a 360-degree signal, if the ADF on board is tuned into the NDB signal then the needle in the compass rose of the ADF will point towards the NDB, enabling the pilot to track the aircraft toward that signal.
Many of these ground stations have now been de-commissioned due to other sophisticated aids such as GPS. In 1986 however, there would have been many. This now renders today any ADF on board a light aircraft pretty much ineffective.
So Don’s knee pad had a number of NDB frequencies jotted down. We departed Biggin Hill heading due west bordering the southern edge of the Heathrow zone. Don was busy talking over the radio and tuning into his first NDB, probably Blackbush which was our turning point once clear of the zone. I, however, followed the much more ancient art of map reading, identifying points at five minutes intervals and marking the map with a dot using my felt marker pen. This enabled me to keep within five minutes of my last known certain fix. It also offered a known time flown so far on route giving a better ETA (estimated time of arrival at our destination.
Don hadn’t been chatting much with me over the intercom, mainly due to him talking to a number of different ground controllers on the radio, so I continued marking my map. We then altered our course overhead Blackbush, a distance of 30nm from Biggin, and set course for Fairford. The distance from Blackbush to Fairford is 40nm. In still air and flying at 80knots, this leg was about 30 minutes flight time.
Don continued to talk on the radio and he kept on flying the ADF needle and I continued to mark my chart at five-minute intervals. About three-quarters along this leg of the flight we flew over some beautiful countryside, the sparsely populated rolling downs of North Wiltshire. Don changed his radio frequency to Fairford approach and they asked him for his position and ETA. He looked at me and I said we were 10 nautical miles east of Swindon and about 12 minutes ETA. To which he said “What are you placing that fix on” and I replied that we were over a bowl valley on the downs and that there was a white horse in a field just to the west of us. The look on his face showed he was not encouraged by my answer, he drew a deep breath, and before I could explain he replied to Fairford saying that he was unsure of our position.
This was of course no problem as Fairford could tell the direction our transmissions were coming from and told us to turn north. Don turned to the north and I said, Ok this will take us across the railway into Swindon and up to the A420 where the VRP (Visual Report Point) at Faringdon town is. That should put us east of Fairford and ATC would probably then turn us onto long finals for runway 27.
This turned out to be the case and he was somewhat encouraged by my map reading skills, but not completely. We continued down the approach to runway 27. I have to point out here that Fairford was built for fast jets, not Austers. It has only one intersection to turn off the runway and the runway is just under 2 miles long. To give you an idea. RAF Fairford was the only Trans-oceanic Abort Landing site for NASA’s Space Shuttle in the UK. As well as having a sufficiently long runway for a shuttle landing, it also had NASA-trained fire and medical crews stationed on the airfield.
After giving you that piece of information it was becoming obvious to me that Don was intent on putting the Auster down on the numbers at the beginning of the runway, which meant we were about to do a very long taxi along the runway. Anybody on the approach behind us was going to get very frustrated. Luckily there was no one on finals behind us at that point and we began that long taxi to the first intersection, which was approximately one mile ahead of us. He did then realize the distance to cover and tried to speed up a bit, but he was about to find out that tailwheels, particularly Austers can get quite squirrely, especially on a hard surface runway. So after a couple of catches on the rudder pedals and an almost imminent ground loop we slowed down again to a walking pace and accepted the long taxi to that distant intersection.
Finally, we pulled into our allotted parking slot on the static line and shut the Auster down. All went quiet until Don turned to me and said, ”What was all that about a white horse in a field, for a position report” I showed him my VFR chart which quite clearly indicates a Wiltshire white horse cut out into the chalk on a hillside. If you look at the chart picture of our route I have indicated the white horse with a red arrow.
In fact, there are 7 white horses spread over the Wiltshire hills. He quietly accepted my explanation and nothing more was heard on the subject.
We had a great day as a guest of the International Tattoo organizers, but the time had come for us to depart back to Biggin Hill. We returned to the Auster and prepared to start her, I put chocks under the wheels and primed the Gypsy Major engine. The engine, as I said before has to be hand-swung which is a process some pilots avoid. Fair enough, if you are not happy with it then don’t do it. Anytime you stand near a propeller there is an ever-present danger. It must be treated as live at all times, there is a process and an understanding between the person swinging the prop and the pilot who controls the switches. The person swinging the prop is in charge and the pilot follows the instructions to the letter.
The photo’s here show two incorrect prop swinging procedures.
The photo on the left is wrong because of loose clothing.
On the right, no loose clothing, but still wrong. Anyone notice. No chocks.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The prop swinger always makes the calls to the pilot. Which the pilot confirms back.
Chocks in, brakes ON.
Fuel ON
Throttle CLOSED
Switches OFF..
Here the pilot must confirm back audibly and stick his hand out with his thumb pointing downwards.
Fuel is then primed and the prop is hand-swung to suck fuel into the engine.
Then the calls are:
Chocks in, brakes ON.
Fuel ON
Throttle SET
Switches ON and CONTACT.
The pilot again confirms back and then turns his hand to point his thumb upwards.
That all went well on the day, but the engine did not start, not even a cough, after a few pulls it was decided to prime again, but after one cough from the engine, nothing again. We could now smell fuel so it was decided we had flooded the engine and that we should retire for a brief respite whilst the wet plugs dried off.
It was at this point I noticed an old boy on the other side of the fence, he was waving his hands beckoning me to come over. I went over to him thinking I could wile away the time talking about the aircraft. No, not at all, this man was going to give me a piece of information that has proved itself time and time again.
He explained that he had been an ERK in WW2 and had been based within training command where he had been an engineer on Tiger Moths and their Gypsy Major engines. His explanation was that because of the tail-down position of the aircraft and the Gypsy being a four-cylinder inline engine, only the rear cylinder plugs were flooded and the front cylinder plugs would still be dry. If we raised the tail and primed the engine with its nose down we could then place the tail back down and start again. This we did and went through the start procedure again. On the second swing, the engine fired up, it run a bit rough because only the front two cylinders were operating but very quickly the rear two cylinders picked up and we had an operational aircraft. I pulled the chocks away, stowed them, and then went back to the old boy and thanked him for the knowledge of bygone days. He had apparently spent 4 years working in training command, in all weathers and all climates from Canada to Rhodesia. I wish I had his name, but he will undoubtedly have passed on by now, as I wrote this in 2020. I have often had the chance to impart that bit of knowledge to others over the years and I always tell them about my friend who stood on the other side of the fence on that day at Fairford.
Our return to Biggin Hill was uneventful, but Don was keen to question our friend’s knowledge to his engineers on how and why that had got us started at Fairford. They could only say that it sounded logical but no reference to that procedure had ever been found or seen in any manuals they had ever read.
I salute you sir for what you did back through those dark years of war and of course what you did on that day in 1986 at Fairford. I dedicate this story to you even though I cannot put your name to that dedication.
Lest we forget.
Onlyvfr 