“Clear Prop!”
“Clear Prop!”
“Clear Prop!”
How exciting it was to hear that phrase being shouted with enthusiasm and gusto once again from the cockpits of multiple aircraft at Rossall Field. It was almost like a scene from the start of the Lemans 24 hour race in the 1950s. Back then the drivers used to sprint to their cars at the start of the race, this was before the days of ‘elf and safety.
After a month of Lockdown 2.0 and having had some pretty poor weather in the weekends running up to ‘Lockdown day’ on November 5th, I was as excited as everyone else at the airfield to be going flying once more.
The weather wasn’t perfect, but we had light northerly winds and a relatively decent cloud base, and although the runway was ‘soft’ in places, it was useable. By ‘soft’ I mean ‘keep the engine running at close to take-off power if you don’t want to get stuck, soft’. But fortunately that was only in a few distinct areas on the taxiways, and at the Northern end of the main runway.
None of that mattered though. What mattered was that we were going flying again and I was working as an instructor.
I’m still new to instructing and today proved to be quite tiring, as even though I only flew 3 sorties, they were back-to-back to try and ensure we made the most of the light on these short winter days. The two students I flew with were glad to be back flying too and got a lot out of the lessons in the air and on the ground.
I’m really enjoying the variety of flying I get whilst instructing and working out how best to teach different individuals and what works and what doesn’t. I’m also really grateful for the chance to be flying again even though I haven’t had the chance to get my own aircraft out of the hangar for a while.
On that note, I do need to run the engine on Harriet, star of #insidethecyclone soon as its been a couple of months since I last flew her. Since then I’ve spent a long day giving her a good winter deep clean and making sure all the covers were on snuggly ready for the winter.
As its winter, the sheep are back on the field. You may remember I wrote a blog about those annoying ungulated quadrupeds earlier this year and their propensity to inconveniently hang around on the runway using it as a toilet when you are trying to use it as an, er, runway.
While I was walking around and checking over Harriet last weekend, one of my club mates wandered up and asked me:
“Are you taking Harriet flying?”
“Er, no. I didn’t spend nearly 8 hours cleaning her just to take her out today and get her covered in mud and sheep shit.” was my fairly direct reply.
I mean, that stuff is the stickiest thing on earth and if you are ever short of contact adhesive I suggest you make your way to your nearest sheep farmers field…
Anyway, not long to go now until the days start to get longer and we can think about spring and some warmer, drier weather…
…hopefully.
Inside the Cyclone, the story of Harriet, my AX3, is available to purchase on Amazon.
Dan Roach Flying Author 