The Anonymous Widower

Only The Irish!

I love Ireland and the Irish.  My father always claimed that there was an Irish ancestor in our blood, but I’ve never found them, amongst a real mixture, of which any London mongrel would be proud.

In July 1990, our horse, Vague Shot, travelled to Ireland to run in the McGrath Stakes in the Irish Derby meeting at the Curragh. He was second and that paid the expenses of the trip. The Derby though was unusual that year in that Hamdam Al Maktoum’s filly, Salsabil, was attempting to defeat the colts. I remember that I flew myself, C and a friend, Gillian, over in my Cessna 340A to the main Dublin Airport.

I think we had lunch at the Regans close to the course andTadey and Moira came with us to the races in the afternoon. I remember that Tadey helped saddle Vague Shot and the horse duly delivered. I also remember C and Moira having a bet on Belmez in the Derby at outrageous each-way odds. When Salsabil won, they couldn’t find the ticket as their selection had been third, but Moira talked the Tote into paying out anyway.

So we had had a good day on the hospitality, racing and betting fronts.

We then left to go back to the airport in our hire car. Normally, this was an easy journey of about an hour, but as we approached the airport, the traffic had slowed to a crawl and people were parking on the roadside and running towards the airport. In the end we did the same and after half-an-hour we had dumped the keys with the car hire company and had walked to the general aviation terminal.

I asked what was going on only to be told, that the Irish team were returning from the 1990 World Cup and that Dublin had also given Nelson Mandela the freedom of the city. Only the Irish would organise three major events on the same day. But I think they had a great party!

There were people running about all over the airport hoping to greet the footballers on their return, so taxiing the aircraft was difficult and in some ways a bit dangerous for the trespassers.  In the end however, we scraped out of the airport almost in the dark and delivered Gillian to Stansted. The terminal was all locked up, so what about security? Finally, we arrived at Ipswich and went home for supper.

July 14, 2010 Posted by | Sport, Transport/Travel | , , , , | 1 Comment

Incident at Leeds

I learned to fly soon after we moved to Ipswich in about 1974.  It had always been something that I’d want to do.  But C never flew with me for some years.

She probably flew with me some time in about 1986 for the first time and that was rather a hary flight to Prestwick, where because of bad weather we ended up in Glasgow.  It wasn’t bumpy, but there was just a lot of low cloud and we were above it, so you had the problem of getting into the airport.  But we did safely.

But she was always a nervous passenger.

Until that is we flew to Prestwick to see a horse we owned called Debach Dust run at the nearby Ayr racecourse.

The horse ridden by Kim Tinkler had shown her usual ability and had done nothing, so we weren’t all that pleased in many ways after flying all the way from Ipswich.  But it was a hell of a lot better than driving all that way and in that the trip up took about three hours as opposed to about seven or eight in a car.  In fact one trip on a Friday to that part of Scotland had taken twelve hours, so we knew the advantages of flying, even if C was very reluctant.

September 17th, 1988 was a beautifully clear day for flying, but I remember as Tango-Tango, my Piper Arrow cruised at a good altitude over the Southern Uplands of Scotland, the wind was making it rather bumpy.  C was sitting quietly beside me, trying to make as little fuss as possible.

To say all hell broke loose would be wrong, as it was just that after about an hour into the flight, that the oil pressure in the single engine was starting to fade and drop to zero.  In other words, we were losing oil and had to get down as quickly as possible. 

But before you think that this was a serious situation, I had several things in my favour.

The visibility was good and I could see northern England laid out before me, so if I had to land without power, there would have been plenty of wide open fields in which to do what every pilot dreads; a forced landing.

But more importantly, I was at 5,000 feet or so and I was only about 50 nautical miles from the major airport at Leeds.  It also was probably the nearest airport too, so the choice of where to go was made up for me.  Many air accidents have happened because pilots attempt to get to their home base.  I wasn’t going to take that risk, but I did prepare C for a bumpy emergency landing on the moors.

Throttling back and losing height slowly seemed to be the best thing to do and as I still had some oil pressure, I hoped that this action would get me to Leeds without losing all power. 

Now in all the bad films, you always call Mayday, when you are in trouble.  But in my case, I assessed that with an average amount of luck, I’d be OK.  Especially, as I had set up Leeds airport on my navigation equipment, so that I knew exactly where I was heading.  I also knew the airport quite well and also the problems that you sometimes get when approaching from the east due to downdrafts.

So I made what is a Pan-Pan call and Leeds cleared me to come in on Runway 09.  This would mean that I had the shortest distance to travel to land, but that I would have to land with a crosswind from the right.

Very little else happened and I turned on to finals at about eight hundred feet, so that if the engine decided to go completely AWOL, I would still make the runway.  I also knew that I had 1100 metres of runway, which was quite enough for the little Piper.

C kept absolutely quiet in all this time!  What she was thinking she never really told me!

But it all happened without incident and I landed Tango-Tango successfully with no problem and was able to taxi the plane off the runway to the light aviation terminal.

It wasn’t an easy journey from Leeds to Ipswich though.  There wasn’t a car hire firm open and in the end it was a taxi to the train station, a train to Peterborough and then a lift from there with our eldest son.

But C never again worried about going in a light aircraft with me. 

So much so that within a year we flew all around Australia in a similar Piper Arrow.

But that is another story!

May 3, 2010 Posted by | Sport, Transport/Travel | , , , | 5 Comments

Getting an Australian Visa

Some years ago, my late wife and I went to Australia.  It was actually a flying holiday, where I hired a Piper Arrow and flew all around the wider south-east of the country.  We flew a roundabout route from Sydney via Mildura, Adelaide, Cooper Pede, Yulara, Alice Springs, Mount Isa, Cairns, Dunk Island, Mackay, Brisbane and Goondawindi.  It took about three weeks and was a very enjoyable trip.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the trip was that in the first few days in Sydney, I had to pass the exams for my pilots licence.  It would have been divorce if I’d failed.  But then I don’t fail, when there is no plan B.

But to get the visa for Australia, you had to go to the High Commission and wait in line.

For this trip, I just did it over the Internet.  It worked very smoothly. 

If you need to get an Australian visa click here.

April 22, 2010 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

The Volcanic Dust Farce

Farce is not too strong a word.

I was listening to Simon Calder last night on BBC Radio 5.  He was very critical of government and government agencies locking down UK airspace, when if we’d used the US rules, flying would just have been a little more difficult.

Now under EU rules, airlines and tour companies are liable for a lot of the costs of the delays suffered by passengers. But if these delays were caused by bad government science then who pays?

I would not be happy with a bill for several thousand pounds, so I would want someone to pay me.  If the airlines felt the government were at fault, then it would end up being a bean feast for lawyers.

This one will run and run!

I think though that this farce, shows Nulabor in all their stupidity.  They did nothing but hide behind the rules, then they sent a couple of gunboats and then they had to cave in when they were the only European government that was banning flying.

What would I have done in Prudence’s place?

I would have made sure that as soon as possible we tested all of the science and engineering.  If this was being done, we didn’t know about it, which shows how this government feels that nanny-knows-best secrecy is the best policy.

I would have brought in expert advice from countries like the United States, where they have a lot of experience and different rules about flying in volcanic ash. 

In the end they imposed American rules and the airports opened. 

If they had worked quickly, instead of hoping the problem just went away, the airports would have been opened a lot early.

Let’s hope the people of the UK realise who’s to blame for much of this farce.

April 21, 2010 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , , , | 2 Comments

Thoughts on Airliners in the Volcanic Dust

As I’ve said before I’m an experienced, although no longer current pilot. I’m also an engineer, who has always been interested in the way planes work and also what causes accidents.

I respect airlines like Lufthansa, British Airways and KLM.  They have excellent safety records and would in my view do nothing rash.  After all, if you took a chance and you had a serious crash, even one without any injuries, your airline would go down the toilet.  So when Lufthansa says that they found no damage after flying through the volcanic dust, I trust their engineers to have checked and checked that there is no damage and their spokesman to be truthful and not put any spin on it.

But these airlines are not the problem, as I believe that all A-list airlines would never do anything that would knowingly compromise safety.  Suppose though that airliners were allowed to be flown in the current state of volcanic dust, but with certain conditions on flight and maintenance rules.  It wouldn’t just apply to the good ones, but to the bad and the ugly too! 

Can governments afford for Air Neck-End to have an accident? 

Of course they can’t!  So they have to legislate not for the best with special rules, but for those airlines that I would never use on grounds of safety.  You’ll probably find that it’s all to do with competition rules and you can’t use safety fears to keep new entrants out of the market.

Let’s also at this point put in a good word for Ryanair.  They have been more than honest with cancelling their schedules for longer than their competitors.  It may be prudent too, so that you don’t have masses of people swilling round the check-in desks. O’Leary is no fool.

But I’m also reminded about a story from Liverpool University.  One of my fellow students came from Derby.  He told how Rolls-Royce bought time-expired chickens to use for testing jet engines.

I hope that large quantities of the volcanic dust are being fired through something like a Trent.

Note that the engine being tested at Derby in the mid-1960s was the RB211, the engine that bankrupted Rolls-Royce.  The Trent is a derivative from that engine and to say it has been successful would be an understatement. The basic design is older than my children.

So we should let the pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers sort this problem out and keep the politicians well out of the way.  And if it means we have different rules for different airlines to satisfy the safety needs, so be it!

April 19, 2010 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 1 Comment

The Navy’s Going

So Prudence has called in the Royal Navy.

Knowing his luck, this will mean the wind changes and everything will be alright.

April 19, 2010 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

Can We Fly Round the Volcanic Cloud?

I’ve never flown an airliner, but I have flown over a 1,000 hours in small aircraft.

So let’s put in a few stories.

  • I have flown to Cardiff airport many times and several times when I have been there, British Airways have been doing circuits and practice landings and take-offs in a 747.
  • I once flew into Dulles airport on a very quiet Sunday and the pilot did a short approach turning on to finals at just a few hundred feet.
  • I read a safety report about a pilot who ditched and had his MayDay call answered by a TWA 747.  It then did steep turns at a few hundred feet to mark his life-raft.

So contrary to what you may think, big aircraft like 747s and Airbus 330/340/380 are not lumbering giants, but very manoeuvrable aircraft that can fly happily at lower levels.  It doesn’t do too much for their fuel consumption though. 

Now the volcanic cloud is generally above 3,000 feet, so could we not fly to Spain, which is open?  It would need to be  in Visual Flight Rules, but it would surely be possible to create an airbridge to say Madrid.  Most of the flight would be over water and it should not be difficult to create a low-level airway.

Why has there been so little talk of doing this?

There was one article in the Daily Mail. Read it!

April 19, 2010 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

The Airlines are Revolting

Some airlines like KLM and Lufthansa have been flight testing in the volcanic ash.  According to the BBC, results seem promising.

Let’s hope so.

April 18, 2010 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

I Wish I Still Had Delta-Delta

Delta-Delta was my Cessna 340A.  This was a six seater twin piston engined aircraft.  So could I still fly the aircraft with all this volcanic dust about.  There is a good technical article called How Volcanic Ash Threatens Aircraft  in New Scientist, which explains all the problems very well.

Volcanic ash is composed of particles of glassy pulverised rock less than 2 millimetres in diameter. When an aircraft flies into it at its high cruising speed, the cockpit windows get a sandblasting, obscuring the pilots’ view. Crucially, though, the engines suck the dust in, where it melts in the hot combustion chamber and fuses to form globs on the turbine vanes that block the engine airflow. Only when it cools and solidifies – as the aircraft plummets engineless – can enough of the muck flake off to allow an engine restart.

So that convinces me as an ex-pilot with over a 1,000 hours on the clock, that the authorities are not being over cautious.

But it is this comment on the article that is interesting.

There isn’t a blanket ban on flying in the UK. AIUI, NATS has closed controlled airspace. You are allowed to fly outside controlled airspace, and planes can fly ‘VFR’ (Visual Flight Rules) which are more restrictive than ‘IFR’ (Instrument Flight Rules) (eg for VFR you have to fly slower, and within sight of the ground). For IFR you have to be in touch with air traffic control, for VFR you don’t (as long as you are outside controlled airspace), you just do your own thing.

So, a Cessna can probably fly fine under VFR at the moment, while a 747 can’t. Similarly, gliders, paragliders will all be fine, since they always fly VFR, and rarely go into controlled airspace.

Theoretically, I suppose, something like a 737 could fly VFR within the UK (they have been known to if controlled airspace is busy), but would have to land at airfields outside of controlled airspace, and there aren’t many of those big enough to take that size of plane.

Also, a jet engine is much more susceptible to problems from ash than a (non-turbo) prop plane is.

A light aircraft prop engine has pretty much just a (very powerful) engine with the same technology as a car, so it has air filters which will protect it from dust (as long as you don’t overuse the ‘carb heat’ function), and light aircraft don’t go fast enough for dust to have a significant abrasive effect.

So Delta-Delta could fly VFR at least in the UK.  The last point is the most important.  A piston-engined aircraft should be protected from dust ingestion.

Whether I could rescue all my mates stuck in foreign parts, I do not know.  It would just depend on the rules on the continent.

April 17, 2010 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , | 1 Comment

Manchester to Australia

Just watching the Manchester City/United Derby on Sky.

The pitchside advertising says fly from Manchester to Australia on Etihad Airways.

You could be so lucky at the moment.

April 17, 2010 Posted by | Sport, Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

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