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B.Umble Flys again-part 23,

Crash, Bang, Wallop, by B.Umble.

The telephone rang and made us both jump.  I answered it immediately.

“Do you want the good news first or the bad news first?”

‘Biggles’!

“I really do not mind”, I told him without adding the ‘or care’ for I was pretty certain that the next utterance would also be in the form of a question.

I had enlisted the aid of my next-door neighbour in an attempt to complete several dozen forms, which needed to be returned to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (now known as DEFRA) prior to a specified date.

I was not in the mood to play guessing games.  The forms resemble a book but at least all the pages are numbered and a reply, but not paid envelope is provided for the return of the completed missive.

“Guess what?” he continued.

“No just tell me what you have broken,” I said, feeling somewhat irritated by this telephonic intrusion.

“How do you know I have broken anything at all?”

“Experience tells me that it is on the cards-get on with it! 

”Guess what?” he again repeated.

“I will not be down to the Banana Strip today but hope to be there next Thursday as normal-see you Thursday-‘bye”.

I was I suppose, being fairly uncharitable but we were particularly busy at that time and my helpmate had other worries on her mind being in the middle of the lambing season.

“The wheel came off on my side again,” he said before I could ring off.

“Where? I naturally asked meaning at which airfield starting at the Banana Strip and working outwards.  There were only two airfields he could find on his own-Great Oakley, occasionally (Felixstowe) and Brock Farm (Billericay) most of the time.

“On my side-this is the third time!”

“Where?” I more or less shouted, “Where have you left the aeroplane?”

 I felt I needed to know if I was going to be forced into setting out on a recovery mission.

“Are you talking ‘AT’ or have you been joyriding?  I asked.

“Guess” and then he hurriedly added “At Great Oakley”.

“Alfie has lost a wheel and I cannot understand it as I had the ball in the middle all the way in just as Alan instructed”, Alan being the Chief Flying Instructor at the Banana Strip.

“Was Alan with you?” I asked incredulously.

“No of course not.  I had a friend with me”.

I breathed a sigh of relief.  It would never do to have the CFI falling out of the sky even with ‘Biggles’ in the driving seat.

”Can you get ‘AT’ back onto its wheels? I asked.

“I am on my way to Taunton now (Wessex Aircraft Company) to get a new axle.  Just having breakfast.  Will you give me a hand tomorrow?

“No, not tomorrow I am afraid but Thursday, I will be free to help”, I promised.

“I will telephone you this evening to make arrangements, when you are in a better mood”, said ‘Biggles’ and rang off.

We eventually completed the forms and sealed them in the return envelope.

“Sorry to bother you Chris (Chris Draper) but ‘Biggles’ telephoned me earlier to tell me he has broken the axle on ‘AT’s P1 side and has left ‘AT’ at Great Oakley.  Do you know if it is flyable?”

“No idea except that ‘your mate’ told me it only needs a new axle and possibly a new shock absorber”, he replied to my query.

“He has not asked me to help in any way so I am keeping out of it”; Chris told me but did add that if I needed help in getting ‘AT’ home I only had to ask.

Chris Draper is the most generous of persons when confronted by these situations and will always throw himself into an aircraft recovery plan regardless of how busy he might be at the time.  He will never let anyone down.

“I suggest you get it back here on the trailer and inspect the damage and take it from there”, said Chris, and added, “From what little I have heard from ‘your mate’ I suspect it has suffered more damage than just a broken axle”.

Chris rang off at this point but not before telling me that I could borrow his car and trailer in order to ‘pick her up’.

Another telephone conversation with ‘Biggles’ in the evening, confirmed that he had acquired the parts he thought necessary to make ‘AT’ airworthy once more and that all we had to do was to work out the logistics of the operation.

“We will have to go to Great Oakley and get ‘AT’ back on to its wheels and then decide what to do next” I told him.

I was greatly surprised to be told by ‘Biggles’ that he had already achieved this as he had been able to drive to Taunton and back to Great Oakley in the day and repair ‘AT’.  This had to be a feat of endurance.  He even gave me a reasonably accurate estimate of his average speed over the return journey.

I was full of admiration.

For a time things were looking brighter, but not for long.  I left home earlier than usual on the Thursday morning and met up with ‘Biggles’ at the Banana Strip.  We set off for Great Oakley in Chris Draper’s car towing Chris Draper’s trailer.  Common sense had prevailed and our plan was to bring ‘AT’ home for further inspection.

The journey to Great Oakley took us two hours travelling at a very sedate speed considering that ‘Biggles’ was the driver in charge.

A forlorn, bedraggled looking ‘AT’ was standing on a patch of grass some distance from the front of a large hangar but close to the club buildings.  Although we had driven through a number of rain showers on our journey the weather was in a kindly mood being reasonably mild with just the hint of a southwesterly wind blowing across the site.

I got out of the car and walked around the Falcon inspecting it from all angles and promptly declared,

“Its lopsided!”

“No it is not, it is simply the way I have tied it down”, he argued

A short dispute followed as to ‘AT’s ability to fly at all before we started the de-rigging process.  I had at least won this little battle.

“How hard did you hit the ground?  I asked.

“Made an awful noise!” he told me,  “and my passenger had never flown before”.

“Never will again I should not wonder”, I said.

It will mean two trips because there is no room on the trailer for the wings-we will have to come back for those”, ‘Biggles’ complained.

“It would mean two trips anyway if you fell out of the sky in an attempt to take ‘AT’ back by air-one to the hospital and one to take the bits back to the Banana Strip”.

Chris had given me a few pointers before leaving the Banana Strip as to what one should look for in the ‘damage to airframe’ category.  ‘AT’ went far beyond Chris’s descriptions of possible damage. 

‘AT’ was bent.

“Marvellous isn’t it? I let you out on your own and this is what you do”, I told him.

“Your fault!” he told me.

I ignored this statement for the time being and after de-rigging the aircraft we winched the fuselage onto the trailer and tied it down prior to setting off for home.  We carried ‘AT’s wings into the large hangar and left them in a space provided ready for collection at a later date.

We departed Great Oakley in good time to avoid the usual daily rush hour traffic jams approaching the Dartford Bridge.

“Why my fault?” I asked ‘Biggles’ as he negotiated the potholed track leading away from the airfield towards the main road.

“What actually happened and why?”  I asked.

“Think I got ‘Alfie’ a tad too slow but I had the ball in the middle”, he told me.

“These things happen to everyone at some stage and most times one gets away with it but sometimes not”, I told him in an attempt to bring him some cheer.

“At least you were obviously not going at 80 mph plus on this occasion–a complete reversal of normal procedure has occurred but why?”

“You have gone from ‘Captain Bunny Hop’ to ‘Captain Splat’ all in one easy lesson!” I observed.

We had by this time reached the main road or the country lane that would bring us onto the main London Highway.  A smoother ride was in prospect from this point onwards, although ‘Biggles’ had never previously driven a vehicle with trailer attached until that day, so it was not exactly a trouble free journey when any form of reversing was required.

‘Biggles’ had decided that the damage to ‘AT’ was as much my fault as his own because he kept telling me that if I had been with him ‘this would never have happened and that he had the ball in the middle!’ 

I had earlier decided that I would have to ask him about this new thought process but not until we were back on the road.  We were now ‘back on the road’.

“You keep repeating the phrase, ‘I had the ball in the middle’ as if this was the be all and end all of the landing process.  What are you saying?  Why are you saying it?”

‘Biggles’ went into a long explanation. 

He had, he told me, booked a lesson earlier in the previous week with Alan Cashin our Chief Flying Instructor at the Banana Strip.  Alan, as far as I was able to ascertain had asked ‘Biggles’ during the course of this lesson to firstly slow down his approach to a more reasonable speed as 80mph-plus-was neither wise nor acceptable and to land in a straight, no drift, line by having a glance at the ‘ball’ and keeping it ‘in the middle’ so ensuring a reasonable chance of keeping ‘AT’ straight on contact with the runway and minimising the stresses on the undercarriage.

‘Biggles’, true to form had I suspect decided that this ‘ball phenomenon’ was the true secret of a good landing and with his undoubted ability to concentrate entirely on one feature only, had totally ignored all the other little indicators that should be taken into consideration when close to the ground.  ‘Target Fixation’ possibly, had again taken over with the result that we were driving along very pleasant leafy lanes, somewhere in the vicinity of Felixstowe, towing a very bent and battered ‘AT’-fuselage only of course.

We arrived at the Banana Strip without incident other than a puncture in one of the trailer’s four small wheels and decided to leave ‘AT’ in position on the trailer overnight, with the permission of Chris Draper.

“What do you reckon, Chris?” I asked the next day in a telephone conversation with Chris Draper.

Chris was totally non-committal and told me that, as he had not been asked to inspect ‘AT’ he was therefore, unable to make comment.

“All I will say to you as a friend is stay away from it!”

There then followed a typical ‘Biggles’ saga of ‘horse trading’ culminating in another journey to Taunton but this time with ‘AT’ in tow in the hope of persuading the Wessex Aircraft Company to effect a few simple repairs in order to achieve his aim of getting ‘AT’ back into the air.

Also at this time ‘Biggles’ and I returned to Great Oakley to collect ‘AT’s wings.  The journey took but two hours to reach Great Oakley but something like five and one half hours to make the return journey due to vast traffic jams, accidents and road closures on escape roads.  The journey home took on nightmare proportions.

The wings survived the journey and we were able to return Chris’s car to him and thank him for his extreme indulgence in the whole matter to date.  I hoped that we would not have to transport ‘AT’ to any other ‘Biggles’ induced destination on one of his whims.

“ Will you give me a hand today to put Alfie’s wings back on?” asked ‘Biggles’ when he telephoned me at my home before setting out from his home in Essex.

“Is it all repaired?” I asked in some alarm remembering Chris Draper’s words of warning.

He assured me that all would be well and that once the wings were reattached we would go flying in the afternoon.

“Not unless you get Chris to pass it as fit to fly, in his capacity as Chief and Senior Inspector–we will not”, I told him.

“You worry too much”, he told me and rang off.

I duly helped in the re-rigging of ‘AT’ very much against my better judgement in view of Chris’s warning.

If anything ‘AT’ appeared to be in an even worse state of disrepair once we had reaffixed the wings.  There had been a considerable amount of hammer work and bracket bending necessary to achieve this feat of engineering.

“It is not just lopsided it can be seen to be completely out of line in every respect”, I complained to ‘Biggles’ when the job was done.

“NO WAY AM I GOING UP IN THAT,” I told him.

“You worry too much” he told me for the second time that day.

“I have every good reason to worry-ask Chris to spare us a few moments and come over here and if he passes it I will reconsider my not unreasonable decision”.

“He is too busy working on the SLA and anyway I don’t want to involve him on an official basis”, he told me.

I did not delve into the mysteries of the ‘Biggles’ thinking at the time or even later, but ‘AT’ looked grotesque in its present form and I suspected that ‘Biggles’ was again in ‘target fixation’ mode the only thing of concern to him being the re-launching of ‘AT’ into the skies above the Banana Strip thus proving to all at the Banana Strip that the damage sustained had been negligible.

I went home earlier than normal that day.

Two days later the telephone rang once more and the voice on the other end of the line was that of ‘Biggles’.

He had been warned that flying that machine would be an extremely dangerous undertaking until the repairs had been completed, inspected and passed.

I could not have agreed more. 

I believe it was Chris Draper who had told him or at least suggested that ‘AT’ will not be flown from his, Chris Draper’s, airfield until fully airworthy.

‘Biggles’ suddenly suffered two strokes of good fortune and as a result went into overdrive.

The ‘Popham’ weekend was upon us and ‘Biggles’ set off by car staying at a local hotel so as to be able to attend the event over the weekend.

He searched out and spoke to a French gentleman from the X-Air Company based in France, who explained in graphic detail exactly how he should approach the repair work.  I felt that Anglo French diplomatic relations would almost certainly have suffered another set back from this encounter but allowed it to pass at this juncture.

This meeting was fortuitous because the ‘pundits’ at the Banana Strip had told us that virtually every piece of ‘AT’ would have to be removed before work could start.  The pieces to be removed included the engine, the windscreen and the actual pod (cockpit) otherwise one would not be able to reach the damaged areas. 

‘Biggles’ returned to the Banana Strip carrying his notes of the Anglo French conversation.  The Frenchman had assured him that by drilling two holes in the outer pod skin he would be able to reach a number of bolts that otherwise are unreachable necessitating the removal of all the aforementioned items and so it transpired.

His second stroke of good fortune had been the completion of his new hangar.

The hangars had been finished that week by a team of two constructors from Preston in Lancashire.  ‘Biggles’ had of course appointed himself as  ‘Charge-hand-in Chief’ and had directed operations.  Fortunately the construction men knew their job so delays, although many when ‘Biggles’ was in residence, were only short lived.

‘Biggles’ had now reversed course, something he is certainly adept at achieving in the air and had accepted that there was no ‘quick fix’ in prospect for ‘AT’s ailments.

‘Biggles’ then moved from overdrive to super drive-warp factor seven.

 By the time I returned to the Banana Strip, two days later, he had moved ‘AT’ into his new hangar and had suspended her by means of ropes and straps from the overhead roofing struts.

 ‘AT’s wings had once again been removed and were now propped against one wall.

‘Biggles’, now having been convinced by various persons and pundits that ‘AT’ had been dangerously damaged, had thrown himself into the repair work and was organising it in a very thorough and very sensibly meticulous, manner. 

Work commenced that day.

The cause of the ‘lop sided look’ was the severe damage to a tube consisting of three tubes in one.  This particular tube runs across the aircraft laterally, being positioned immediately under the two seats and forming the basis of the whole framework of the fuselage structure.  Each end of this tube also supports the under carriage attachments but the tube had been crushed and bent by ‘AT’s impact with the Great Oakley runway.

I am not an engineer nor am I skilled in the art of ‘tinkering’ as is ‘Biggles’ but I felt during and after the completion of the repairs that I could have rebuilt the whole framework unaided by using his drawings and instructions.

‘Biggles’ removed nothing at all from the framework without first making a note and drawing of its original position and if it had any attachments and where the nuts, bolts and washers should be positioned when reassembling the aircraft at a later date.

The drawings were of invaluable assistance and had been prepared with a particular eye to detail. 

Well-done ‘Biggles’.

Once all the broken and bent pieces had been removed my role in the repair process was confined to holding, supporting, pushing or pulling the odd tube or pieces of airframe to ease and facilitate the replacement of a crucial bolt or pin by ‘Biggles’. 

He does not trust me to wield a spanner in the same way that I do not trust his flying.

The time span had spread into a second month after the damage had been sustained by ‘AT’ and in the mean time I had flown ‘OR’ on numerous occasions and had also flown as a guest in Patrick’s Ikarus and twice in Chris Draper’s newly constructed SLA.

The Ikarus must, I thought at the time, be the ‘Rolls Royce’ of the Microlight world.   I suppose the one word that would sum up the aircraft is ‘smooth’ and it has a smell as only found in quality motorcars.  Patrick, although a newly qualified pilot flew his aircraft with a precision and relaxed skill usually found only in far more experienced pilots.

The ‘Biggles’ Falcon slowly regained its original shape and this was all due to his minutely detailed drawings and notes, some twelve A4 pages in all, covered on both sides of each sheet!

I heard myself congratulating ‘Biggles’ on his achievement-much to my surprise considering the off-hand manner in which I have denigrated and poked fun at, most of his ‘tinkering’ in the past but credit was most certainly due.

Chris Draper had played a very important part too on an unofficial basis by keeping an eye on the work in progress and by quietly suggesting a slightly different approach to ease or facilitate a continuation of the job in hand and finally on an official basis by inspecting ‘AT’ and passing the work as being of a very high standard. 

The paper work complete we were free to fly in G-THAT once more.

‘Biggles’ was delighted and quite rightly proud of his achievement-I was not so sure. 

Had he learned anything at all from the experience? 

Would I now be in safer hands?

I think these were rhetorical questions but hope springs eternal.

B. Umble. 

Back to Part 22   Forward to part 24