THOSE WEATHER "GODS" KEEP SMILING

Tuesday 2nd August

Once again, I have been fortunate with the weather.  Surface wind was variable, 3 knots, scattered cloud at 4500' and 2000' wind variable, 5 knots.  So, nice and smooth and no wind-shear.  I had DQV (Piper Arrow) booked and it was a familiar "local" over to the west coast at Raglan via a City departure and then back for a circuit - one only as it was starting to get a bit crowded - long time since I have had four traffic advisory calls (apart from runway sequencing) in a single arrival and one circuit.  Good that the visibility was OK, but a bit of haze to the East of the airport with lowish sun was causing a fair bit of glare on downwind for 18, so it was probably for the best that I forgot about the turning off the landing light on the climb out after my touch and go. That should have made it easier to be seen, although DQV's bright blue and orange probably showed up better that those (nearly) all-white Cessnas and Katanas.

So, that was my brief flight today (0.8 hrs in the book) and now to the Hall of Fame.  Tempting though it is to concentrate on the well-known combat pilots that everyone is familiar with, as an all-round science geek I have a soft spot for the designers and engineers that made it all happen.  So, the two new additions are:

Sir Barnes Neville Wallis who should need no introduction.  The archetypal "Boffin", working for Vickers for most of his career, he played a large part in  airship (R100) and aircraft (Wellington bomber) design, but is probably best known for his work on "Upkeep", the cylindrical mine used by 617 Squadron to bomb the Ruhr dams.  He was also instrumental in designing the "Swing-wing" (variable geometry wing) which, when funding in the UK was cut, was further developed in the US and used on the F-14 Tomcat and F-111 among other designs.


The next in my personal Hall-of-Fame is probably less well known.  Roy Chadwick was chief designer at Avro from 1919 until his tragic death in an air crash in 1947.  He is best known for the Avro Lancaster and also designed the modifications to enable the "Lanc" to carry Wallis's "Upkeep" on the Dams raid (Operation "Chastise").  He also had a major hand in the Avro Lincoln (the Lancaster's successor) and early work on jet design which led to the Avro Vulcan.


That's all for now.  Weather permitting, I should be flying the Stearman again next week.