The first time (Flying)

Who’d be without it?

Do you remember the first time? You heard about it, you read about it, you saw it happen or you overheard an adult going on and on about it. It seemed unbelievable, farcical, and even physically impossible.

Then you moved from reading about it to dreaming about it. If you were a child of the 90’s onwards you probably even simulated it, with a joystick.

If you were an early developer, as a young spotty teenager you finally got to have a go yourself. The initial attempts were probably pretty clumsy. A few ham fisted, white knuckled, knee knocking shy touch and goes. Hopefully she was a tolerant creature and put up with your first fumbling attempts.

As you gained experience, you became a little smoother, grew in confidence and improved your approach technique. You would have picked up a few tips from the old boys around the bar. Finally you would have been ready to go all the way.

The first time alone, just you and her you have never forgotten. You would have been in a state of euphoria for days, walking on air, the King of all you purveyed. In short for everyone else you would have been intolerably smarmy.

Eventually after a few partnerships you would have settled down into a solid routine of practicing every Saturday. Sometimes something fancier took your eye and you moved on to bigger, faster, flasher models.

If you were rich enough you brought into a long term relationship that required a lot of maintenance and less frequency of doing it due to other (family) commitments. After a number of years you may have become too complacent. You found on final approach that everything suddenly went pear shaped because you weren’t paying enough attention.

A bit of wake turbulence, a hurried recovery, and a pride sapping go around. Expensive if the creature involved felt at all aggrieved by your handling. If you were wise you learnt from the bad experience and applied more attention to the next new partnership.

Then there are the shows. All blue skies and perfect performances. Beautifully outfitted and ingeniously choreographed. Music, lights, action. An addicts dream.

Too attend these performances you need a hat and sunglasses for disguise (it wouldn’t do your reputation any good being seen at these occasions). Some of the attendees bring scanners to listen in on the backstage gossip. If you’ve money you can bribe certain officials to letting you into privileged seating. If you’re really loaded you can slip some money down the front of the performer’s outfits and they might take you for a ride. The general public has to line the front row and crane their necks to see the best of the performance.

The show of course is an ecstasy of seductive noises and magical tricks. The smell of Avgas is erotic and the taste of pies and waffles overwhelming. The best thing, the thing that gets the body vibrating is the pulsating of the air by the high thrusting creatures of foreign extraction. They demand attention with their sexy lines and their impressive maneuvers. They are flighty and don’t tend to hang around to sign autographs much to the disappointment of their fans. The machines on display leave you weak at the knees and gasping for breath. Awestruck. You’ve never seen the like. As for the vertical dances!!!

 

Knowing that they are too hot for a mere mortal to handle you mossie on home afterwards still a bit star struck and go back to your old girl with renewed vigour. You are feeling revitalized and ready to try something new and exciting.

 
You remember the first time, you remember the bare times, you remember the adventurous times and you wonder at the whole miracle of it. Ah FLIGHT who’d be without it. From your 16^th birthday to your dying breath you live for it. It is your life if you are so afflicted. 

Pick and Mix (Flying)

Pick and Mix

Who remembers Woolworths’ Pick and Mix? For a child of the 1970s it was an Aladdin’s cave of delight. For those who missed the experience, Pick and Mix was an assortment of lolly bins from which you could choose your own. It was about choice, it was about range and it was about the only time I cared about maths. How many lollies could I buy for 50 cents?

I know these days New World has lolly bins, but it’s not the same. It’s not a novelty any more, and besides, what’s with the bran and fruit?

I grew up in small town New Zealand. Te Puke had a tiny Woolworths and therefore a limited pick and mix range. I didn’t know true variety until I visited my grandmother in Auckland. The Auckland Woolworths Pick and Mix was beyond my wildest dreams. The problem arose that no matter how I did the maths, 50 cents couldn’t buy me one of everything. I quickly learned to be selective.

Moving forward a few years, I now have lots more things to make choices about. Aviation events for one.

Wanaka and Omaka are easy choices. The SAA (Sports Aircraft Association) fly in is compulsory attendance. Mandeville I have yet to experience. These are all fun and exciting, but on the world scale they are like the Te Puke Woolworths’ Pick and Mix store, small and cosy.

Going to the EAA AirVenture, at Oshkosh was like walking into the Auckland Woolworths Pick and Mix department. I was a wide eyed child again in a candy store. It is a week-long show of everything that flies, looks like it should fly or looks like it’ll never fly and then does, just to prove you wrong. It is Wanaka on some serious steroids.       

In 2010 (when I went), numbers were down as there were weather issues just prior to the show – three days of torrential rain. A lot of the grounds were too muddy for aircraft parking and camping. The attendees were counted at a mere 535,000 persons obviously give or take a thousand. I am not sure if they counted me seven times because I went every day, or just once. I brought a different T-shirt every day, so perhaps seven times.

Ten thousand aircraft homed in on Wisconsin for the show, 2380 of those being show planes. They can land them three at a time on the main runway, three miles long. Then there is a second runway at right angles to the main one. It’s just crazy to watch. All communication is one way. You just do as you are told. There were an estimated 36,000 campers (on high ground).

Every day in the afternoon there is an air show for about three hours. On Saturday they had the first ever night show which was the chocolate coating to the whole week. Aerobatics, formation flying AND fireworks attached to the aeroplanes!

There were 777 commercial exhibitors were you could buy everything from a Lear-jet, to a logbook for your dog. During the day there were seminars, movies, book signings, talks, forums and workshops on everything from fabric and wood to GPS and electric aeroplanes. It didn’t matter if you flew, fixed, built, taught or modelled – there was something for everybody with an aviation bent. (Some of the wives preferred the malls?).

Oshkosh requires good walking shoes, sunblock, a sunhat and a set of spider eyes to see everything. The display aircraft are parked separately in their appropriate categories. Although I was there a week I still had to pick and mix. There’s only so many hours in a week and I wasted some of it sleeping.

Here’s what I managed to see:

Straight up the middle there were the business jets, Honda, Cessna, Lear (Milk-bottles ). In Aeroshell square there were the airliners (Jet planes). On the flight line there were the aerobatic aeroplanes, the Pitts, Viper (Smokers). To the left were the homebuilts, RVs 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12, Kitfoxes, and the Rans (Jaffas). Further along to the left were the Warbirds, Seafury, Harvard, Mustang, Corsair, Skyhawk, Glacier Girl, and the Bs (Gumballs). In amongst the warbirds was a Catalina from the islands (Coconut Ice). Just past these were the Chipmunks (Peanuts). Stage left was the GA camping area. Cessna, Beechcraft, Cherokees (Pineapple Lumps). Across the runway was the military: army aircraft (Spearmints), navy aircraft (Peppermints), Air Force (Minties).

It was then advisable to catch a tractor trailer unit to return the miles back to the centre of proceedings, Aeroshell square. Just to the right, were the WW1 multi-winged things, (Liquorice allsorts). Slightly to the right again were the vintage aircraft; the Stearmans, Staggerwings, Curtis Robins, and the odd Tiger Moth, (Fudge). This was also the home of the only real coffee in a 20 mile radius.



Further along to the right were the ultralights, gyrocopters, Trikes, Dominators, and just weird stuff, (Nut mix and Chocolate Coated Cashews). Next the DC-3s in all liveries, (Fruit Balls). One morning, down this end they inflated the balloons (Bubble gum). Right at the very far end of the field they parked the Alaskan aircraft. You know those ones with fat tyres, and huge engines for STOL work (Eskimos). If you then caught a bus you could go out to the seaplanes base and see the Cessnas, Icons, Piper Cubs, Beavers anything really with wings and floats (Jelly Babies).

Back at the main airfield if you travelled down the main drag and over to the museum you could see the airship (Easter egg). Model aeroplanes (Kinder Surprises) were out when the wind was gentle, and the helicopters (Wine gums) took punters for joyrides. There were several ways of seeing the whole lolly shop from above. One being the Ford Trimotor (M&M&M).

I searched high and low, but nowhere did I find a Bolkow Junior (Roses Chocolate), dear little chocolate with a soft centre. Even without them it is still the biggest, brightest, buzziest airshow on earth. Loaded with variety, volume and value for money. Just what a sweet-toothed aviatrix wants in a candy store. 

First published Aviation News October 2010

 

 

Cat a lena and the Ardmore mice (Flying)

Cats and Mice

Pussycat pussycat where have you been

I’ve been to Ardmore to visit the Queen
Pussycat pussycat what did you do there
I chased a mouse from under her chair

Admore has a cat. Probably more than one, but the one I am thinking of is a pure breed, shorthaired, *British blue. Certainly some of her pilots are short on hair. British blues are known for their insatiable appetite, akin to a Labrador in the dog world. They are very tolerant and great with kids. They love company and start to purr when a large crowd gathers. Their claws stay retracted, except when threatened with vacuum cleaners or water. They like water, but only around their feet, not a complete dunking.

British blues have an ability to make even the non feline-lover want to pat them. They have barrel bodies, with short legs, but what makes them really cute is their round open faces with wide-open eyes that look at you like Puss in the movie Sherik. If you’ve got food in your hand they can somehow turn up the charm and move like a spirit to be at your side in seconds.

This British blue, lets call her (Cat-a) Lena, appears to snooze on a favourite patch of lawn in front of the Warbirds clubhouse. She lazes about soaking up the sun (between showers), with a paw draped over her eyes. (She’s not called the Z-cat for nothing). 

Don’t be fooled. She is still a Cat.

All hangars have mice. Two hangars at Ardmore have bigger than normal mice. Shall we call them Foxy Felicity (CJF) and Dame EditH (EDH). They are small innocuous creatures that hardly anybody notices. They are not big on crowds, and they generally scurry from hangar to hangar in the hope that nobody spots them, especially a cat. If they have to venture out they usually poke their noses out into the wind, sniff the breeze, twitch their whiskers and confer with another mouse before making any dangerous forays.

Occasionally traps are set and baited with cheese to catch mice. The cheeses commonly used are; Young Gun yea-ha eeee-damn, Cloudy bay Camembert, Destination Blue vein, Compliancy Colby, and Dry as a bone tank aged Cheddar. I am pleased to say the mice at Ardmore are far too wise to fall for these traps.

Lately one of the said mice, Dame EDitH has been darting around the hangars more than usual. Avionics workshop, paint shop, and the engine shop are some of the places she’s been seen. Then on a Sunday not so long ago, out the taxiways, down the runway and into the sky! Lena is no slouch when there is live food in the offering and she was in hot pursuit. If you listened very carefully you would have heard Dame EDitH taunting Lena with “you can’t catch me” and Lena replying “Can-so” (Which happens to be her middle name) while they chased each other’s tails around the circuit. Thankfully she didn’t and Dame EDitH raced back into her hidey-hole just in the nick of time.

Now if you’re out and about at Ardmore in the near future and you are very observant you might even catch a flash of red from the tail of Foxy Felicity. I hear she is getting brave enough to make a dash out onto the runway. Egged on by Dame EditH of course. If you’re incredibly lucky you could see the green country mouse, Hot Harriet (CJH) too. A handsome trio with 20/20 hindsight.

Cats have always loved to play with mice and mice have always teased cats but there is one other reason why Lena is especially watchful of EditH, she is jealous. There is a certain pilot who shares his affection between both. So if you see said pilot out with EditH keep it to yourself because it’ll all end in tears if they don’t get a head start on Lena. Mouse-kee-tears.