When you think about aviation accidents, most people would immediately think of fires or explosions in mid-air, or collisions with other aircraft, or crashing into the ground or obstructions on the ground.
My friend Chris, who is also learning to fly Tiger Moths, has generously allowed me to retell the story of an incident that befell him a couple of weeks ago. It just goes to show that sometimes it's the simple things which go wrong.
It's all up to you now: captaincy and self-reliance
Here's another vignette about trends I've noticed in my last few lessons of circuit training, in this case increasing independence.
Going round in circles
Since I last posted, I've had a few more lessons, all training for flying in the circuit. Since I've now described the circuits itself in great detail (maybe too much?), I'm going to change focus a little. Instead of trying to tell the narrative of each lesson, I'll write some shorter posts, each about one aspect of what I'm learning. I'll start with something I've noticed a lot more while hanging around the airport: traffic.
Approach to landing
Properly, the next exercise after stalls should be incipient spins, but when the time came, the wind was 5 knots straight down the runway, ideal weather for circuit training, so my instructor suggested I should start learning to land, and come back to stalls another day.
Stalling the Tiger Moth Part 2
After experiencing the stall last time, this time I get to do it for myself. But even making the aircraft fall out of the sky turns out to be less exciting than dodging other Tiger Moths, Spitfires, and even a Boeing 777.
Stalling the Tiger Moth
This weekend I got to experience the stall for the first time, and it wasn't as scary as I thought.
The wind is a Messerschmitt
Taxying a Tiger Moth in the wind can be tricky, but there's a mnemonic to help you do the right thing.
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